[icambron]

> If your "opinion" is stated in the form "x is y," then maybe you are the one who should be more conscious of the way people communicate.

I don't think that's true. Some examples:

"That place smells bad."

"Red is too bright a color for a car."

"Lost is a terrible TV show."

Those are all opinions and it's obvious that they're opinions. You could prepend "In my opinion" to each one and no one would complain, but it's unnecessary, and people say stuff like this all the time with full knowledge that they're opinions. Their status as opinions isn't contingent on anyone stating that they are; they're just opinions because they're value judgements or statements of preference.

I've found that it's generally easy to separate opinions from statements of fact, and so it's not required that anyone be the "that's just your opinion!" police. Of course it's their opinion; that's why they said it. The weird thing about complaining that opinions should be explicitly demarcated is that is suggests that either a) you have trouble telling the difference between fact and opinion or b) you assume the person saying them doesn't know the difference. Both of those are bad.