I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

I subscribe to the thesis of Death of the Author, that just because someone came up with something, it doesn't necessarily given them a permanent special privilege in its interpretation. Everybody can understand the work as they prefer, and if anything, the work takes on a life of its own in greater society and evolves together with it. (Hence the limits on the duration of copyright.)

This is why many common idioms are now used in their opposite meaning, and we all understand, and it's fine. As a random example, "It's all downhill from here" can mean either "it gets easier" or "it gets worse". The meaning has changed over time. Also: "I could care less", etc...

> This article is focused too much on communication style and not enough on the subject of communication. The latter was the crux of it. Crocker’s Rules were about being able to rigorously discuss topics that society has deemed to be beyond discussion without taking offense at the fact it is being discussed.

That's a distinction that's not as clear cut as you think.

The problem in the workplace setting is that the subject is the code/system/product/organisation, which has no feelings and hence can't be offended, but many people feel compelled to use an overly verbose style in order to avoid offending the humans charged with the care of the unfeeling object.

There is a certain freedom in treating things as things and calling out their objective properties as is, instead of dancing around the facts.

This is the very same thing as talking plainly and directly about taboo or sensitive subjects. Just do it! It's fine!

Reading the article, I also feel that all of his examples are poor communication, both the "courteous" and the "direct" ones. You can communicate clearly and succinctly and also be considerate of the person you're talking to.

I'd love to say that I value directness, but I frankly just kinda don't, for the most part. I don't want people to overly obfuscate what they are saying or beat around the bush, but... I have feelings. Often my feelings aren't rational. Often I have feelings about things when I should be more detached. But that's just how I am.

I don't want someone to come up to me and say, "Your code is wrong; you should have done ABC". I want them to say "Hey, I ran into a problem with your code. I think here on line 123 you meant to do ABC but you did XYZ by accident. What do you think?"

I'm not a dispassionate, disinterested observer. I do have some attachment to the code I write. I know -- and admire -- people who don't, but I'm just not one of them. I like it when someone is polite when they point out my mistakes.

… I don't know what your incident reports look like, but if there's anywhere it's normal to optimise for communicative clarity rather than social wheel-greasing, it's an incident report!

“You are demonstrating that you do not trust the relationship enough”

This is entirely rational when a relationship is not strong, and a misstep could cause it to sour in a way not easily remedied. If I have to work with you, and can’t fire you, then I don’t want to foul the nest.

As my coworkers get to know me, they will drop the unnecessary politeness automatically, according to Zipf’s law. They will find I react well to straightforward communication once we have established trust.