[bcoughlan]

I have been the pedantic reviewer. It took time to learn good code review practices and grow them into the work culture, to let go of matter-of-style issues (where I can't argue an objective benefit for the change).

Asynchronous text-based code reviews suffer from an empathy problem also. A lot of the pedantic or ego attitudes drop away when you have to discuss it face to face. Nowadays I'll often opt for a call with the team member if I think there will be a lot of comments. Better yet is to do some pair programming in advance of the code review to avoid major disagreements and discarded work.