"Peter Duniho" writes:
Sounds like to me that most people have been a little harsh on Jay.
That may be, but IMHO also has nothing to do with whether or not the
criticism is constructive or not (and, BTW, even less with whether or
not the criticism is justified or not).
IMHO, you are wrong. For criticism to be constructive, it not only has to
offer advice as to how things can be done better, it has to do so without
insulting the person being criticized.

Then on this matter we disagree. As I have written in the part of my
posting you have clipped, I totally agree that it is most probably
counter-productive to dress criticism in words that offend the other
person, because that doesn't get you anywhere far. Yet, IMHO, that is
an entire different (yet not at all unimportant!) property of
criticism that has nothing to do with the property of being
constructive or destructive. These two qualities (constructiveness
and wordiness, or whatever you want to call it, I can't think of a
proper word here, sorry) are orthogonal, if you will. Criticism may
be nicely worded, but destructive; similarly, it may be harshly (or
offensively) worded, but constructive. Ideally, one would like nicely
worded _and_ constructive criticism.

And by "insulting" I don't mean just
saying that the person is doing it wrong. I mean things like calling the
person ignorant, and using words like "crap" to describe the product of
their efforts.

We are in agreement that such wording is offensive. (I would advise
everyone not to be insulted by it, though. Makes life a lot easier if
you don't get p-o-ed so quickly. ;-))

Martin's "advice" (to pick an example at "random") is FAR from insult-free
and as such, is FAR from being constructive, regardless of how factual it
might be.

I still think you are mixing up different and unrelated qualities of
criticism. (And, IMHO, factuality is yet another quality that is
orthogonal to the two other qualities I have mentioned above.)

In my opinion, it is a very helpful (and in some instances quite
necessary) virtue to be able to take criticism even if it is offensive
or insulting. In fact, even the most offensive criticism might (and
hopefully does!) contain insights that are valuable, and by
disregarding the entire criticism, you are throwing away that
insight. You may not like it, but it sometimes does pay to listen to
a person that is not as friendly as you'd like her to be.

But, as always, YMMV. I realize us German-speaking folks are
considered an unfriendly bunch, because we tend to be rather
unfriendly-sounding even when we don't mean it, so that probably
doesn't help the discussion at hand, either...

Cheers,
Toby.
--
You know you've landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi.