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Comment by jonathansampson | Hacker News Reader

I do believe I've been quite respectful with you. If at any time I was caustic, abrasive, or offensive, I apologize. It is certainly not my intention.

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From my read through the thread, you're being very nice, but also very dismissive. That's not actually respectful, even if it's not the harsh things you describe. And it's not kind. If you disagree with someone's experience that you feel passionately about defending, you might have better luck defending it by taking a moment to think about what they experienced differently from your own experience, how much you care about that different experience, and how you might incorporate that into future action. Not everything needs public relations, and it can definitely feel uncaring if it's mostly public explainings.

People are too sensitive nowadays. Everything needs to be wrapped silk and the actual information gets shrouded by fluff.

It’s not clear who you’re saying is being too sensitive, or why you think so.

People who think it's disrespectful when a company representative do not preface every response with "I deeply apologize that you feel this way" or some equivalent nonsense. You even claim responding to something inaccurate is user hostile.

Huh? I wasn’t suggesting the person should apologize. I was suggesting they should ask about the user’s experience rather than telling it.

Or they can just tell them facts instead of pretending to care what a random hater thinks. Just like they did. They also asked what bad UX they referred to, so they did what you wanted but it was still disrespectful apparently. If genuine feedback was met with "go fuck yourself" we could maybe call it user hostility but this was not.

I feel like pretending to listen, which is what he is doing, is worse than saying "go fuck yourself" because then it would be honest. I find it bizarre you find his feedback genuine, as to me it's the same thing as "go fuck yourself" but neatly wrapped up in a "I pretend to care what you say" format.

If he came straight out and said "I don't care about your opinion and here's why" I would respect him. Instead he just talks over the people he's pretending to listen to.

His job should be to solicit feedback, not dictate it. And if he's going to dictate it I wish he would at least be upfront about it.

You put it better than I could have before I got back to this. It doesn’t really count as “asking” if you’re preemptively dismissing the answer in the same comment.

I respect the candid comments from the Brave Dev. I wish all "PR departments" acted like this to be honest.

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