[ethmarks]

Putting aside both my age and the latency of my initial response, all that I was trying to do was correct godelski's erroneous attempted correction of sweetjuly's lighthearted joke. The "colloquial usage of zip" that godelski was chiding sweetjuly for "hyperfixating" on is exactly the usage that godelski was using in their original reply. I did not misunderstand godelski's intended use: they were using "zip" to refer to "any compression format whatsoever, be it lossy or lossless". This is a technically incorrect usage, which would be fine if not for the snarky chiding. I think that misusing a term and then accusing people of "hyperfixating" when they lightheartedly correct you isn't a particularly nice thing to do.

[defrost]

\1 godelski colloquially used the term zip (Not referring to formal ZIP files)

\2 sweetjuly made reference to ZIP files not having lossy methods

\3 godelski indicated they had use zip colloquially, not with the intention of referencing the precise ZIP specification.

\4 ethmarks stepped in and doubled down on the precise ZIP specification, despite that not being what godelski initially referred to.

Here's the thing, people make casual remarks, they use imprecise non technical colloquillisms.

How would you describe the actions in \4 ? Do you believe it served a useful purpose to double down and restate something that was very likely well known to both parties over a week ago?

[ethmarks]

> Here's the thing, people make casual remarks, they use imprecise non technical colloquillisms.

I think that you're completely misunderstanding my objection here. I'm not in the least bit upset by people using "zip" casually to mean something other than formal ZIP files. I personally use "zip" as a verb to describe compressing to a tarball, for example. This is a technically incorrect usage, but it's okay for things not to be absolutely technically correct.

My objection is to \3, both to your summary of it and to the actual message content. godelski did not "indicate that they had used zip colloquially"; they accused sweetjuly (who fully understood that godelski was using the term colloquially and was simply making a humorous, playful, and lighthearted correction that didn't warrant further reply) of hyperfixating on the colloquial usage of zip. This is not only technically wrong (sweetjuly was "hyperfixated" on the technical definition, not the colloquial usage), but it's also accusatory and mean-spirited.

> Do you believe it served a useful purpose to double down and restate something that was very likely well known to both parties over a week ago?

Not in a strictly pragmatic sense, no. I intended to set the record straight by clarifying the factually accurate statement that ZIP is not a lossy format, which seemed to be contested. I didn't expect anybody to read my comment to an 8-day-old threat, nor did I expect anyone to reply to it barely 3 minutes later, nor did I expect to be drawn into a 7-reply-long debate about this.

Isn't it delightful how well we've proved godelski's original point about how fraught natural language is?

[defrost]

> Isn't it delightful ..

That is very much the intent of:

  Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

  Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. 

in: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> they accused sweetjuly ...

Strong wording there, from you .. do you suppose that was a vicuous stabbing accusation, or a playful rejoiner questioning the zip V ZIP ambiguity? People do get a bit playful.

> nor did I expect anyone to reply to it barely 3 minutes later,

There are a number of people, myself included, who watch https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments scroll by.

Not all the time, not obsessively, we overlap a lot and tend to catch and flag the worst of the worst .. bit like weeding the garden.