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Why can't we be capable here of reading past the tone (whether monotone, "offensive", nagging, trying to sell us something, or whatever else)? If you're trying to get votes (or upvotes) then sure, worry about your tone. If you're trying to win friends and influence people, fine, worry about your tone. I know I've sometimes intentionally phrased things in different ways than I normally would to head off certain snarky remarks (whether that snark is a "don't be offensive!" comment or a "hey that's just your opinion, man" comment or something else unhelpfully meta), but it's very nice not to have to worry about such things in general.



I dunno, I find the people who don't care about tone and think themselves above considering feelings are the most overly sensitive and easily outraged when criticized.

Its easy to disregard tone when its somebody else's feelings at stake, much harder to look past tone when its your feelings on the line. Nobody is above the fray.

Maybe we need a robustness principle[1] for human communication. Be conservative in tone you send out, liberal in what you accept.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle


Some of us operate by Crocker's Rules: http://sl4.org/crocker.html As the page says, Crocker's Rules don't magically allow you to insult others, but they don't magically forbid it either. They're purely a signal for others when they communicate to you.


General standards of conversation (aka not being a dick) forbid you from insulting others. Your adoption of Crocker's rules do not change that, as clearly communicated by the linked page.

> Note that Crocker's Rules does not mean you can insult people; it means that other people don't have to worry about whether they are insulting you.

Your tone still matters unless you are communicating with someone else who is operating under Crocker's Rules.


Two people using Crocker's Rules should be able to communicate all relevant information in the minimum amount of time, without paraphrasing or social formatting.

While I like the idea of that in theory, I have to say I think it's operating on the somewhat flawed premise that tone and other flourishes offer no informational benefit. I view tone as a "hint" for the context of the surrounding statements, and as such, it can alter the interpretation of them. This is useful for efficient communication.

I think Crocker's Rules will help people will communicate the correct information efficiently, but I don't think it's necessarily in the minimum amount of time, just a better average case time. It's probably very useful in situations where the shared social context of the communicating parties are distinct enough that the hinting provided by tone is misinterpreted, which can be common on the internet, where disparate cultures clash and there's no visual channel to additionally help communication.


Also noise creeps in. Social communication has redundancy that can serve to error-correct.


The thing is, name calling the author provides no useful information (being nice and being mean can be equally useless if you discount interpersonal dynamics). It's just injecting noise into the post. And it's how the post opens so it does set the tone for the rest of the post, and people will be less inclined to read beyond it because the only signal provided in the first sentence suggests that the rest of the content is likely to be an emotionally inspired rant.


Surprisingly, tone on Hacker News matters as much as content. I write very (too) concisely. It comes off as cold and is read as snarky or boasting quite often. Then I just get critical replies about tone, which drives the conversation off the point.


Because tone is a another channel of information, and one we've been trained to acknowledge as part of the message, even if subconsciously, all our lives.

For a very simple example, tone may convey confidence. If that confidence is in a statement that people find reasons to doubt or disagree with, depending on their own confidence they may feel more or less compelled to disagree.


Yes. And then they project their disagreement into some negative emotion on my part; I'm being arrogant, or dismissive, or cold.




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