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Comment by bdg | Hacker News Reader

It's a typical side-effect of writing anything online. I've had this experience with nearly everything I've ever posted (also: a lot of great comments too). Whenever you want to share knowledge about X: out of the woodwork crawl out the little pests who have nothing to do except hold you to the highest level of scrutiny they can imagine, and they'll word it like they want to crucify you for the slightest infraction.

It doesn't mean anything except that there's a lot of people who are situationally deficit of social skills and anxiously trying to prove they're even smarter than the original poster.

My pet theory is that these jeklers want acceptance and a sense of community, but don't know how to do it.

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I don't usually point out mistakes in non-native speakers' writing because I know most people will perceive it the way that you do. However, I always wish that people would correct me when I make a mistake in a foreign language. So part of me always wants to point things out to help people like me.

Like most complex interactions in life, it really comes down to just feeling when the time's more appropriate. Sometimes people explicitly ask you to correct what they just said ("was that right?"), sometimes they halt in the middle of a sentence and look at you expectantly so you just finish/reword it for them, etc. But generally speaking you shouldn't try to correct people too much unless it really impedes proper understanding, it can really undermine people's confidence in their speaking ability even when they are otherwise fluent. And when you do correct them, only do so with respect to grammar or improper choice of words; correcting pronunciation can be a minefield given how it can change widely within a native population, what with accents and suchlike. (Some people, especially in such a centralized language featuring very normative institutions, will argue that they don't have an accent and everyone else does, but they're wrong.) It should only be corrected when it would otherwise lead to misunderstandings.

I don’t fundamentally disagree - but there is another way to look at it. Sometimes someone spends a huge amount of time learning something as deeply as possible, and they can be genuinely excited to share that knowledge. It’s hard to find a situation that isn’t stigmatized so the choice is to never try to share this knowledge (disappointing) or just decide to power through it, understanding that sometimes people will take offense or think less of you because of it.

I think in this case, the point of the website the OP posted their passage to is to receive highly critical feedback to ensure 100% accuracy and learn from mistakes. I doubt the person correcting them was doing so with the spirit you describe here. Also, word choice is a bit subjective and perhaps the disagreement with the other poster you're replying to is regional or something else.

out of the woodwork crawl out the little pests who have nothing to do except hold you to the highest level of scrutiny they can imagine

You say, with derision and personal insults to those people who dared not meet your standards for perfect corrections and perfect judgement of feedback desirability.

When you quote something you are supposed to start with "> ". Took me a long time to understand it was a quote.

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