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Comment by ghostfoxgod | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for sharing your insights and information about PDI (will be looking more in depth about this), and I agree with what you mentioned how based on demographics and the relationship between the two person can totally change how you communicate with them.

The basic intent of the project was to curate a list of things what you might feel like saying vs how you can say it (more professionally I guess)

Would be happy to see how the data can be improved which can be better suited for majority of people.

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Idea: alter the repo to add a diplomacy dimension with a few notches in it, and invite contributions of alternate wordings appropriate for different scenarios. (The focus being on creating an obvious void in the hope people fill it with insight)

From there, I was originally imagining the site could use a slider to cycle back and forth through wordings, but the associative and comparative value of just displaying them all simultaneously in columns under each heading is probably worth the tight information density.

Maybe also alter the site (now, while trending!) to indicate you're looking for additional data (for both the situation and diplomacy-level dimensions) - the GitHub link at the bottom is a tiny bit... I have to go looking for it myself, which is very good, but you might be able to passively collect that bit more low hanging fruit by making it more of a (polite :D) call to action.

Thank you for the suggestion, definitely makes sense to me.

Oooh, I don't think the page looked quite like that before. Looks great!

Made the CTA changes based on your suggestions, would be looking into the other ones as well in the morning :)

Here in Finland, if you honestly think something sounds like a horrible idea, you're essentially duty bound to say "that sounds like a horrible idea". Be prepared to say why, but don't mince words.

Even I as a New Yorker had to acclimate to that level of bluntness.

(I hate nationalistic stereotyping, but all the same I did always love this joke/guide to workplace culture):

You've just finished your report, which happens to absolutely awful in every way. You send copies to each of your colleagues and later today, talk to each of them about their thoughts.

American colleague: Good job! Excellent! Great piece of work!

English colleague: Some great material in here. A few parts might benefit from a rewrite, but its a great start.

French colleague: I think we can probably use a lot of this, but there are substantial parts that really need rewriting.

German colleague: This is pretty terrible. A few parts are ok, perhaps, but it needs a complete rewrite.

Israeli colleague: This is shit. We'll get someone else to do it.

Finn: No.

(only said after a very long pause)

Haha, I wonder how this maps to the responses to the linked article in this very discussion forum ;-)

(There should be a 2nd part to your post, where you send a very good report to the colleagues, and note their reaction.)

Yes, but as vassanas points out, you are not achieving this - because it is different from culture to culture!

If you add the specific culture / region you are targeting this at, it could already mitigate that issue.

As vassanas points out, the phrases you suggest would work to your disadvantage in more confrontational cultures, because you will be perceived as bullshitting and beating around the bush, but not as a serious contributer one should listen to.

I think you should put this on GitHub and also make it available as a PDF.

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