[karaterobot]

I kind of wish the answer would just be "no, we're not doing that". The lines in this website all strike me as a way to toy with people's expectations. If I had an idea, and presented it, and a PM told me "let’s keep this in mind for future consideration" or anything like that, I'd either take them at their word, or not. If I take them at their word, I'll either keep believing my input was considered valuable, and that we'll actually return to the idea later, then feel it all the harder when it never gets mentioned again. Or, I'll understand that the PM is lying to me, and I'll lose trust in them. I get that, at some level, this website is a joke, but I think you owe it to teammates to be polite but honest, friendly but frank.

[davidgerard]

Are you in the US? In UK companies, everything from that bot is somewhere between "no" and "no, fuck off". The more qualifiers you add, the ruder you're intending to be.

[sureIy]

I thought the British were overly polite.

[davidgerard]

Mostly as a combat sport.

[NortySpock]

It depends on the audience and context. If it's a stakeholder or key person, or you're in mixed company with people on various levels on the totem pole, then you need a few phrases grease the skids, placate feelings, and get the meeting participants' attention back to focusing on the most important issues.

You often still need people to feel like their ideas are being considered so they don't just shut down and contribute nothing in future meetings, or consider you to be railroading every meeting.

Granted, after the meeting, I'll often joking-but-only-serious point out "Look, our backlog is really long -- let's be honest, we're not going to revisit <that> for months at this rate, so I hope you realize it's not a priority and probably won't be unless the priority changes. If we need it on a shorter timeline, talk to <personName>."

I have very occasionally used hard-shutdowns of ideas or requests, but I think I have only used it when an idea was threatening to balloon the scope far beyond any hope of success. Maybe twice in the last few years.

("No, I'm not going to implement it that way -- it's needlessly complicated" or "I will not discuss timelines for phase 2 of this project until phase 1 is complete -- let's get back to closing out the outstanding issues with phase 1.")

There's a time to be frank, and other times you need to smile and gently redirect just to get things moving again before you waste an hour sparring or circling an endless unresolved debate.