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   Julia Evans (b0rk@social.jvns.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Nov-2023 01:40:28 JST Julia Evans

   started asking people to follow some very basic rules in the replies to my posts on here (like “no starting arguments" and “no unsolicited advice/explanations”) and it's going really well so far, everyone is really nice about it

   Mastodon started off being *much* worse than twitter for me (at first I got a LOT of unsolicited advice that was not helpful to me). It's gotten way better and I really like it here now, but I think it could be even better

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   • Embed this notice
     Kit Rhett Aultman (roadriverrail@signs.codes)'s status on Saturday, 04-Nov-2023 01:40:26 JST Kit Rhett Aultman

     in reply to

     @b0rk This schema plays out in so many places, especially at work. Typically the person giving that advice thinks they've got a very clever and simple hack solution to my problem, but doesn't understand my needs (or didn't listen in the first place, or was a drive-by to the conversation), and formats their advice with the phrase "Why don't you just...."

   • Embed this notice
     Julia Evans (b0rk@social.jvns.ca)'s status on Saturday, 04-Nov-2023 01:40:27 JST Julia Evans

     in reply to

     to explain the "no unsolicited advice" thing, I see a lot of:

     * I ask what people find confusing about THING
     * person 1 says they're confused about X (hooray!!)
     * person 2 tries to explain / offer advice to person 1 (well intentioned BUT)
     * the advice/explanation is not actually useful because they didn't understand person 1's problem

     I understand the urge to help but personally I try to avoid giving unsolicited advice when someone mentions a problem because it goes wrong SO often.

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     ericjmorey (ericjmorey@fosstodon.org)'s status on Saturday, 04-Nov-2023 02:36:26 JST ericjmorey

     in reply to

     • Kit Rhett Aultman

     @roadriverrail

     Is it possible that the person asking has assumed that there's a reason why "you didn't just..." and is attempting to find out what that reason is (possibly because they didn't listen to what was said previously that might explain why)? Communication is rarely perfect and often needs a lot of error correcting.

     Nonetheless, still annoying to deal with.

     @b0rk

   • Embed this notice
     Kit Rhett Aultman (roadriverrail@signs.codes)'s status on Saturday, 04-Nov-2023 02:36:26 JST Kit Rhett Aultman

     in reply to

     • ericjmorey

     @ericjmorey @b0rk It's possible, but this is actually an extremely chronic and common pattern, spanning in-person and remote methods of communication, and so I'm not likely to consider it the common case. And it has certain clusters around demographics and personality traits.

     Given that the "solution" in "why don't you just..." is often a simple one, the entire construction is trivializing. "Has <x> worked for you?" or "What about <x>?" or "Did you find <x> didn't work?" are better questions.