[JimDabell]

Unfortunately, it’s extremely common for less senior people to interpret suggestions from more senior people as instructions to be followed even if they aren’t worded as such. Having a consistent, explicit, and unambiguous way of distinguishing between these scenarios that everybody on the team can follow easily is valuable. You can’t rely upon all developers to be good writers or even good readers, especially across language barriers.

[treis]

Eh, suggestions from more senior people are in practice instructions. The risk in ignoring them is that something comes back to bite you and you look like an idiot for not following the suggestion of the senior.

[IIsi50MHz]

Not necessarily. It depends on culture (local or otherwise). A senior needs to carefully instill an understanding of when a suggestion is optional; for some seniors, this may be "never". I personally prefer when direct instructions are mandatory but anything framed as a suggestion allows personal discretion (and requires willingness to defend having not followed the suggestion).

[Cthulhu_]

As a senior, you should be aware of the authority you have or that others perceive you have. Your comments will be perceived as authoritative and coming from experience.

And they might very well be! But just make sure you get a rapport with the reviewed party, and prefix or suffix the comment with a "just a suggestion" or an explicit "I'm not asking you to act on this remark". With a semantic review, you can shorten it to "nit:".

[cantSpellSober]

> prefix or suffix the comment with a "just a suggestion"

That's what the article suggests, using "Suggestion:" as a prefix.

> or an explicit "I'm not asking you to act on this remark"

Same, the article suggests the "Remark:" prefix. Both are more terse than what you suggest here.

[ahoka]

This is the real problem. Sometimes questions are also taken as instructions.