[mindcrime]

Meh... I used to feel that way, but over time I've realized that life is too short to stop and waste the time to put "I think" or "I feel" or "in my opinion" in front of everything I write. If I write something, it's implicit that it's my opinion. It may or may not also be a fact. In either case, if somebody disagrees or has a counter-claim or wants to present evidence to the contrary, then let them do it. But bitching because people don't load every paragraph with qualifiers, weasel-words and cop-outs is just silly.

[obviouslygreen]

Expecting people to say what they mean has absolutely nothing to do with weasel words or qualifiers. If you can't be bothered to communicate clearly, all you're doing is diluting your message. Hopefully you have nothing important to say, because if you do, everyone loses when you fail to say it clearly.

[mindcrime]

Right, but adding "in my opinion" and "I think" and "I feel" in front of every opinion has nothing to do with communicating clearly. There are lots of things in communication that are implicit and don't need to be stated explicitly.

vs

Right, but I think that adding "in my opinion" and "I think" and "I feel" in front of every opinion has nothing to do with communicating clearly. In my opinion, there are lots of things in communication that are implicit and don't need to be stated explicitly.

Now, would you really argue that the second version is any more clear, or that anyone's understanding would be changed by adding all those qualifiers? Personally I don't find it to be anything except unnecessarily verbose. shrug