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Comment by GGfpc | Hacker News Reader

I get the ones where you're suggesting alterations to the code, but having "praise: You did great here" or "chore: Could you run the tests" sounds weirdly robotic to me

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It reminds me of the Elcor from Mass Effect. The problem they face is similar to textual comments: Elcor cannot emote in a way that's detectable to non-Elcor, so when communicating with alien races such as humans, they have to prefix every utterance with an emotional descriptor. E.g., "Pleased greeting: Human, it is always good to see your kind."

Oddly, this has made me want to try Mass Effect.

Disclaimer: I am a coworker of the author.

I like Praise. We don’t give it often enough and if someone does something awesome like simplifying complicated tests, removing dependencies or works smart and not hard, it is due.

While the conventional comments give a nice framework, nothing stops someone from adding a cheerful gif to the body of that praise.

Even on larger reviews it is nice if you scroll through 10 nitpicks, 20 suggestions and 5 questions, if you see the occasional praise.

I would strongly dislike being a recipient of this "praise". The thought of all of my co-workers following this rule when reviewing my merge requests makes my skin crawl. You can see from the rest of the thread that other people have a negative reaction to it too. It's nice that you enjoy it but the same does not hold true for everybody. Is there a way for somebody working with you opting out from it or are they given no choice in the matter?

It's communication coming from other humans. I presume you could just tell them you would strongly dislike being a recipient of this "praise" and update documentation accordingly.

Yeah, those in particular fall flat. If you want to praise, you should do so, and it should be clear in your statement. If it needs the descriptor, the descriptor won't help. I'd suggest s/praise/note. And s/chore/request. Just because it sounds more polite.

I think those two examples are a bit over-the-top, but I wonder if there might be a benefit to having such a visible convention, partly just because it's such an obvious reminder to be explicit about tone. Seeing it communicates tone and communicates that the reader should also go through extra lengths to communicate their own tone.

Though specifically for "praise:", I'm a much bigger fan of the :+1: thumbs up emoji instead which accomplishes about the same thing.

Isn't that great to sound robotic?

The issue is that many people seem to take code review comments extremely personally and get very upset and defensive.

Meanwhile, we rarely get upset at automated eslint warnings, compiler errors or issues found by Google PageSpeed Insights.

Sounding robotic prevents you from sounding offensive.

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