[roc]

> "But he's not adding any value for anyone the way he points it out."

It's a curious community we have. Pointing out problems or reporting visceral reaction is considered not constructive. Yet speculative re-designs to illustrate what the critic might have done differently are also considered not constructive.

It seems to me that when nothing short of actually competing against a product is considered useful or valid, the real argument is that criticism shouldn't exist and isn't useful in and of itself.

[rick_2047]

If you think about it carefully the emphasis here is not on if he should complain or not, the emphasis is on the way he should complain.

[blasdel]

So the people complaining about complaints over UI being about style instead of substance are themselves complaining about argumentative style instead of substance.

[rick_2047]

You still do not get the point here. His arguments may be valid, I don't know I never read the HIG nor am I a designer. But there is a way to do constructive criticism without belittling the efforts of other developers. He is acting like a "Chinese mom".

This line from HN guidelines illustrate my point:

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

I know that showing "attitude" and being cool is all the rage these days, but I still thinking politeness works like a charm.

[roc]

But even 'constructive' criticism is frequently derided here. That's why I made the point about speculative redesigns. No matter how polite or constructive you try to get, it seems a large chunk of this site will wave it off as being only as useful as reporting your gut feeling on whether something 'works' or 'doesn't'. (As only the designer facing actual decisions knows why they made certain compromises and has to deal with all the real permutations, etc)

You can narrow your argument to just "can't we all just be polite" and have a nice, if naive, point. But I disagree that the core complaints in the article or this thread are restricted to, or even primarily about, the tone.

[blasdel]

You're belittling RTFHIG like a "WASP mom" for belittling app authors like a "Chinese mom".

There's more than one way to show attitude, and politeness is one of them. It's an affectation, no different from RTFHIG's all-lowercase ironic outrage.