I am not convinced that this friction exists. Often times things can be rephrased quite easily, e.g. "you're just plain wrong" can be "I don't think that's correct" or "I feel this may be mistaken".

These examples are simple, but in my own writing I've never noticed an example where I wanted to be clear, but wasn't able to do so while still being nice.

It is true that truly constructive comments are much harder to write, since they take significantly more effort: you need to carefully read the original article, think about it, maybe do a bit of additional research, etc, whereas a quick "this is just wrong because [X]" after reading the title is much easier.

That makes it sound subjective, unsettled and open to negotiation. Which may be inappropriate when talking about such things that are considered medical consensus. In a way you're just the messenger, not the expert who can elucidate minor nuances behind the statement.

Perhaps it could be made more impersonal (i.e. remove the "you") and providing a 3rd party as source. But inserting weasel words doesn't help when you try to convey rather strongly established facts.

Indeed, they are. Which is more important to you, being right or making a difference?

Yelling at stupid people is easy and so satisfying. Debating with the clueless while staying calm and polite is frustrating, infuriating, and difficult. But if you choose the easy and satisfying path over the difficult one that actually works, you're just patting yourself on the back for being smart.

If someone really cares about the facts, and not just owning their interlocutor, they'll look for effective ways to communicate, instead of holding on as tightly as they can to a method of communication that has pretty conclusively been demonstrated to be ineffective.

It’s of course best to be polite, but we should not prioritize kindness over correctness. Not in fields of knowledge. You are either right, or you are wrong, there’s not much grey area in computing and STEM.

You might be willing to put up with the consequences of other people being mistaken, but most people aren't.

Take climate change - is your attitude "well, the tides will rise and swallow the cities and so on, but there's no point trying to convince people to minimise the damage, because at least I'll be proven right in the end..."?

Pragmatically speaking, it is often incredibly important to be able to convince other people of the truth, if you want to be able to cooperate with them. That really seems so obvious as to go without saying.

Which often takes time. And limits engagement. The maintainers of pacman have a limited amount of energy they're willing to spend on free support- I'm happy for then to save effort wherever they can.

I wont argue that if you can be kind while sacrificing absolutely nothing else- absolutely be kind.

But anybody who has ever played a competitive sport or even team lifted a couch knows that sometimes barking an order is the best way of doing things- and you just have to have somewhat thick skin.

To live in a world where the perfect message always exists would be great. We dont live in that world.

If you don't want to engage in discussion, fine. Then just don't say anything, or just state that you don't have time. That's fine. No need to not be nice.

I actually used Arch Linux for many years and switched to Void Linux last week. There were several reasons but really decided it for me was that I had an issue and found a thread on the Arch forums where a mod was chewing out a user trying to get help with the same issue in such an insufferably assholery way that it was painful to read; he almost went out of his way to belittle the other person. Most of the time this happens because it makes you feel smart and good about yourself. That's the real reason people are assholes like this. I wrote about this a while ago in the context of Stack Overflow, but the same ideas apply here too: https://arp242.net/stackoverflow.html

> sometimes barking an order is the best way of doing things- and you just have to have somewhat thick skin.

This is probably the most condensing and arrogant thing I've ever seen on HN, and that's saying something. Users aren't idiots who need to be "barked at" at when they do something wrong or misunderstand something. You can always say exactly the same without treating them like idiots.

I read these sorts of communications as passive-aggressive and patronizing 100% of the time. I'm certain I'm not the only one. And your assumption that your rewording was a constructive comment is unwarranted and condescending.

For those problems, it is also a priority to induce the clearest thinking, cognitive capability, and relevant memory possible from all parties.

Anything that adds cognitive load to the other parties will not help - and "clear, tell it like it is" speech with no awareness of social consequence is often rather ineffective as a way to access clear thinking from everyone in the room.

Brains just don't appear to work like that.

That's begging the question. You take it is a given that when solving a problem clarity and kindness are mutually exclusive, but you've provided no evidence to support that.

Human communication is impossible to get perfect. You have to strike a balance between a bunch of priorities. I could write an essay on this topic, but nobody would read it. Thus I sacrifice clarity for brevity, and make a comment that can be read in a minute.

If I highly prioritized kindness and told you how much I respected your viewpoint and appreciate your taking the time to engage with me- that would naturally require a number of words. Which means I either make my comment longer- which reduces engagement, or I shorten the meat of the argument- which reduces clarity.

So you can see how these different priorities can come at cost of one another. While I'd like to find the ideal sentence every time I communicate that sacrifices nothing- I just dont have the communication skills to do so.

... you would be patronizing me, not showing me kindness.