> I see this for every post, e.g., when I talked about how latency hadn't improved, one of the most common responses I got was about how I don't understand the good reasons for complexity.
> I literally said there are good reasons for complexity in the post
It feels like this kind of half baked point scoring reply is just a risk of posting on the internet. I'm sure I've been guilty of it at times too, and I think forums like HN or Reddit encourage it.
So you end up having to be overclear in a way that hurts your message.
For example, in just my previous post in another thread, I was talking about how I felt IMAP and SMTP support was important for a mail provider. However, I felt that if I just left it at that, some pedant would come yell at me about how IMAP and SMTP are not secure protocols since they're plaintext. So I wrote out IMAPS and SMTPS to ward off that kind of pedantry.
But I'm still at risk of someone else wanting to score points indicating that actually, IMAPS and SMTPS isn't a thing. And they'd be sort of right, IMAPS and SMTPS are colloqial terms for their corresponding protocols over TLS, but you won't find an IMAPS spec, and if you look in the IMAP RFC, IMAPS is not something that is mentioned.
I don't know how you fix this.
> "But let us return to Calvus whom we have just mentioned,—an Orator who had received more literary improvements than Curio, and had a more accurate and delicate manner of speaking, which he conducted with great taste and elegance; but, (by being too minute and nice a critic upon himself,) while he was labouring to correct and refine his language, he suffered all the force and spirit of it to evaporate. In short, it was so exquisitely polished, as to charm the eye of every skilful observer; but it was little noticed by the common people in a crowded Forum, which is the proper theatre of Eloquence."
Cicero tells you that you ought not worry for the pedant, and instead appeal to simpler messaging if your aim is to target larger publics, the fact that you are saying something which could be taken as "conflictive" is itself a benefit if you foreshadow the conflict "there are some whom would say not so! To them I say begone!" and so on, etcetcetc
Wait am I the pedant in this situation? Ah well.