[mthoms]

Got it. Maybe your post should be more substantial then? Then people don’t have to guess what you’re trying to say.

You literally just echoed back something to someone that they already said. That’s more than a little confusing to a reader.

[smcin]

I didn't "just echo back the same case law". They only provided an (incomplete) citation, and no link.

I provided the full link to Wikipedia, the summary of what R v Sinclair actually established (from which readers can immediately see that Canadian right to a lawyer during questioning differs sharply from the US right), and then the Wikipedia link which discusses the history and background of the case, the ruling, and further links to the text of the decision on CanLII, etc.

That's genuinely useful missing information, which many HN readers will not bother to search for, but if you provide the links some of them may actually click through, then we collectively get a less-misinformed discussion. If instead of suggesting I intended to respond to the wrong person, you had directly asked me why I thought it useful to post this, I'd have told you that it was so other posters would inform their discussion better; it's very tiring constantly seeing discussions where posters assume any legal question is asked about US law and only US law, or worse still, simply assume that US legal principles or rule of law apply all over the world (such as anything on Canadian law, or all the discussions on privacy law).

And one extra thing: you might be assuming that merely saying "R v Sinclair" is unambiguous without including the "(2010 SCC 35)" part of the citation, but when I personally google "R v Sinclair", most hits are relevant, but #7 hit is "People v. Sinclair, 131 A.D.3d 492" and #10 hit is "Sinclair v. Sinclair :: 1969 :: Kansas Supreme Court Decisions". As we've commented ongoing in HN, google search relevance is degrading these days, so don't assume incomplete citations lead users to the right article.

Posting a link (or archive reference) is a substantial contribution to a discussion, esp. when many of the posters haven't read the topic they're discussing.

[mthoms]

Sure, but without context is difficult for the reader to understand if you are posting (a) because it contradicts, or (b) supports the argument being made. Both of those would be interesting to me, and it wasn't clear, so I asked.

I mean, you just wrote 4+ paragraphs on the topic(!) so writing "Here's the relevant bit for anyone interested..." is not a big ask.

I've been here for well over a decade and online for three decades - I was confused by the comment (and following the topic closely) so I asked. Take my feedback or don't. I don't care. But understand that it's slightly ambiguous and confusing for the reader. There are lots of trolls here and lots of genuinely well intentioned people (you included) but it's not always obvious which is which.

There's no reason to be so upset.

[smcin]

There was context, it was the post that I replied to with supporting detail. I intentionally responded specifically to that, and my post was the citation (the actual full citation with URL, not a partial name of the case).

I'm not "upset", I'm merely ongoing perplexed that you believe that HN posts in general will necessarily disagree with the post they respond to. (This ain't Twitter, it's a fairly civilized fact-based discussion board). You can trivially infer whether I agree/disagree/partially agree simply by seeing my post interacts with the parent, GP and ancestor posts it's responding to).

> It wasn't clear to me ... [whether my post]... (a) contradicts, or (b) supports the argument being made.

?!? You had already actually said about my post "You seem to be in agreement. Perhaps you responded to the wrong person?".

So you, me and user @itsnotafight all figured my post was in support of naasking. And itsnotafight told you "[can...] even provide additional bolstering evidence — like a direct quote." Then you tried to disagree that my post provided additional bolstering evidence, although it did (for the reasons I've explained above).

You can instantly tell I'm a bona-fide commentator and not a troll from looking at my post history (just like I could tell from yours). In my fact my post history shows I often post explanatory/clarifying/supporting/disagreeing links.

My feedback to your feedback is you could have simply said "I'm confused by this post, can't tell if it's agreeing or disagreeing with the post it's responding to." That would have made it clearer, that it was only your confusion, the rest of us weren't confused by my intent. There was no wider confusion and you weren't speaking on behalf of anyone else.

> writing "Here's the relevant bit for anyone interested..." is not a big ask.

It totally is a big ask when requiring me to post a good-faith preamble of my bona fides, and moreover a context that notes that this is the umpteenth discussion where posters assumed US constitutional/legal principles apply in Canada (or elsewhere), or at minimum threw around undefined phrases and assumed they were universal. If we ever need to post a good-faith preamble plus a context to even a fairly self-evident short post, this discussion board has already been irredeemably overrun by trolls, and the good-faith posters will all simply leave.

> here are lots of trolls here and lots of genuinely well intentioned people...

I'm not going to armor-proof my posts purely to minimize some tiny Type-II error probability of users who misunderstand the context on my post and wrongly flag it. (I see tons of other posts daily on HN where I personally can't discern whether a response or a discussion is in good-faith, I usually refrain from judging and flagging if I can't determine that; most of those go way beyond being arguably slightly ambiguous and confusing for the reader).

I don't think it's constructive for us to prolong discussing this anymore. Other people are disagreeing that you had any reason to be confused about my intent. At absolute minimum I expect you would have posted "I'm confused by this post, can't tell if it's agreeing or disagreeing with the post it's responding to." Or, don't take my word for it, show this to ten people you know and trust and see how many of them say my comment was not a troll.

Look at all this energy that's been wasted when could have more productively been spent on Canadian vs US vs non-US principles on the right to silence. Oh well.