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Comment by pmdulaney | Hacker News Reader

Are you suggesting that saying that a project is cool violates the HN guidelines? If so, please explain.

The ... can be read as sounding very dismissive.

But also, it really didn't add anything to the discussion even if that wasn't the intention. Hence the second point I added from the guidelines. So, I see two potential areas of improvement.

Getting all guideliney on fluffy positive comments mostly defeats the purpose of getting all guideliney - the billowing clouds of meta that tends to generate are worse (guideline-worse, no less!) than the fluffy comment itself.

Possibly, but "Cool..." is hardly adding any value, whatsoever. In this case the poster should've simply said nothing unless they had something of value to say. This is sort of the second point I was quoting. There are a number of points in the guidelines that try to get people to add value to the conversation.

> the billowing clouds of meta that tends to generate are worse (guideline-worse, no less!) than the fluffy comment itself.

Well, at the end of the day you contributed to that with your own comment.

is hardly adding any value, whatsoever.

Yes but they are explicitly accounted for in the site docs/design/intent, from waaaay back:

Empty comments can be ok if they're positive. There's nothing wrong with submitting a comment saying just "Thanks." What we especially discourage are comments that are empty and negative—comments that are mere name-calling.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

And pop up in moderation comments

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

> There's nothing wrong with submitting a comment saying just "Thanks."

I'm pretty sure they meant saying "Thanks." in response to another comment, not as a top-level comment reply to a Show HN.

Kind of like how you wouldn't bust into a restaurant and say a loud "Thanks." to the entire room, despite it being perfectly fine to say thanks in a restaurant.

You can see the this covered in the mod comments, toplevel positive fluff is fine. Most of it doesn't go anywhere (as in, it's not like these end up the top of the thread and collect fluffreplies) and are, at a minimum, not worth policing.

OP seems to be Japanese, so the ellipsis is unlikely to be meant as dismissive.

I don't know the original comment's intent, but adding "..." at the end of your message is now considered by some as rude:

https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/149145/is-the-...

Just because someone is confident about their own weird interpretation of something on the Internet does not make it true.

I (and lot of people I know) use elipsis in writing all the time... usually to indicate a pause or change of direction from the previous thought. If I am in a hurry to get technical details down in text and off to some team, worrying about 100% correct proper writing style is time and luxury that I almost NEVER have.

And besides, unless you work in a law office or something, email is NOT a formal communications method. Grammar and spelling should be within acceptable limits but not a deal-breaker. Otherwise you'd be skating near the principle of judging a book by its cover which would be very un-woke.

> Just because someone is confident about their own weird interpretation of something on the Internet does not make it true.

You seem confident about your interpretation...

Does that help you understand?

I see what you did there...

> Just because someone is confident about their own weird interpretation of something on the Internet does not make it true.

Agreed. Though in the case of “cool…” there is precedent. For example, John Oliver says it sarcastically¹ with some regularity. Well, he can’t say the ellipsis, but it’s how I’d have written it.

Either way, I’m agreeing with you. People also think that putting a period at the end of a text message is rude², which is bonkers to me³. Soon we won’t be able to use any punctuation without it being considered dismissive⁴.

¹ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8q8PXoJwVk

² https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/29/crosswords/texting-punctu...

³ I do it all the time. People get used to it and learn it’s just how I write.

⁴ Yes, that’s a slippery slope fallacy. I’m employing it for comedic effect, not as a real complaint of “kids these days”.

> People also think that putting a period at the end of a text message is rude

Yes, this is essentially the kind of thing that I was thinking of. It's nutty.

I submit that anyone who assuming malice on the part of the sender without ANY direct evidence to support it likely has some trust issues to work out with their therapist. I started out my adult life being deeply distrustful of basically everyone and it took a LONG time to learn that (lacking direct evidence) assuming the best in people's intentions makes you a lot happier and gets you a lot farther in life.

I'm also reminded of the saying, "offense is taken, not given."

A good rulem of thumb I've found is, if your comment doesn't bring any value and could be taken as rude or flippant, then there's no need to post it. IMO this "Cool..." fits that description pretty well. Nothing to do with "woke" etc. Just doesn't bring any value.

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