4 ms·

To play devil's advocate, I think some people confuse terse, succinct communication with being mean. I find this to be a common cultural difference between cont

To play devil's advocate, I think some people confuse terse, succinct communication with being mean. I find this to be a common cultural difference between contributors from different backgrounds. Personally I find a lot of "welcoming" language to be excessively saccharine and ultimately insincere. Something between being talked down to like I'm a child and corpo-slop. Ultimately I don't think there's necessarily a one-size-fits-all solution here and it's weird that some people expect that such a thing can or should exist.

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zahlman 9mo ago
> To play devil's advocate, I think some people confuse terse, succinct communication with being mean. I agree completely (this was part of my findings in https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/394952/173477 https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/394952/173477).
BoxOfRain 9mo ago
Personally I'm not a fan of terse writing; if something's worth saying at all it's worth using suitably expressive language to describe it, and being short and cold with people isn't a good form of interpersonal communication in my view. Pleasantries are important for establishing mutual respect, if they're considered the baseline of politeness in a particular culture then it's overtly disrespectful to forgo them with strangers. Terseness is efficient for the writer certainly, but it's not necessarily for the reader.
- yencabulator 9mo ago
  Written like you're on one side of the cultural barrier and think that you have to be somehow naturally correct because that's what's natural to you. To others, that attitude is just arrogant and self-centered. Why should one particular culture dictate the behavior of everyone, and especially why should it be your culture? What you call "establishing mutual respect" is just "insincere and shallow" to others. I do not believe for a second that a grocery store cashier wants to know how my day has been.
  - BoxOfRain 9mo ago
    That's not what I mean, I don't like corpo-speak either. I mean just treating people like they're human beings, neither with affected shortness nor affected warmth. I really don't like the common notion that you have to be cold and short with people to be a good engineer, it makes the culture considerably less pleasant and more abrasive than it needs to be in my view. I could just as well turn that around and say why should we all adopt your preference of unpleasantly curt communication? Is that not also an imposition of someone else's culture?
    - yencabulator 9mo ago
      What if short isn't "cold" at all? That's a value you're projecting to it. I understand there are cultures that value flowery speech more than mine. I'm asking you to stop using emotionally loaded words to describe how other people behave.
      - deleted 9mo ago
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zahlman 9mo ago

> To play devil's advocate, I think some people confuse terse, succinct communication with being mean. I agree completely (this was part of my findings in https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/394952/173477 https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/394952/173477).

BoxOfRain 9mo ago

Personally I'm not a fan of terse writing; if something's worth saying at all it's worth using suitably expressive language to describe it, and being short and cold with people isn't a good form of interpersonal communication in my view. Pleasantries are important for establishing mutual respect, if they're considered the baseline of politeness in a particular culture then it's overtly disrespectful to forgo them with strangers. Terseness is efficient for the writer certainly, but it's not necessarily for the reader.

yencabulator 9mo ago
Written like you're on one side of the cultural barrier and think that you have to be somehow naturally correct because that's what's natural to you. To others, that attitude is just arrogant and self-centered. Why should one particular culture dictate the behavior of everyone, and especially why should it be your culture? What you call "establishing mutual respect" is just "insincere and shallow" to others. I do not believe for a second that a grocery store cashier wants to know how my day has been.
- BoxOfRain 9mo ago
  That's not what I mean, I don't like corpo-speak either. I mean just treating people like they're human beings, neither with affected shortness nor affected warmth. I really don't like the common notion that you have to be cold and short with people to be a good engineer, it makes the culture considerably less pleasant and more abrasive than it needs to be in my view. I could just as well turn that around and say why should we all adopt your preference of unpleasantly curt communication? Is that not also an imposition of someone else's culture?
  - yencabulator 9mo ago
    What if short isn't "cold" at all? That's a value you're projecting to it. I understand there are cultures that value flowery speech more than mine. I'm asking you to stop using emotionally loaded words to describe how other people behave.
    - deleted 9mo ago
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