Because empathy is important to communicating effectively. You're looking at the words, but you're not looking at phrasing and tone, which are just as important.

Try this exercise: read the sentence out loud to yourself. Taking a line out of Myers-Briggs, does it sound more perceptive or judging, to you, when read aloud?

To me it sounds judging, as if Coraline already has pre-conceived notions about the person she is communicating with. At the very least, it sounds unnecessarily defensive. The wording is definite, with no room for discussion. In fact, all I see in that wording is a mini "well, actually" lecture.

The reality is that she doesn't know if this was an intentional or unintentional oversight. People leave things out, forget to finish sentences, paint in broad strokes and fine-tune later. From the description, this likely wasn't in its final stages. Maybe it was going to get changed, or maybe it wasn't, but you need to start from the idea that the person on the other end of the sentence also wants the best results.

It's a nice idea to think that people should say whatever they want as long as it's the objective truth, but humans are humans, which means they are subjective and have feelings. I find that people are much more effective workers when they are attentive to the feelings of others.

Another phrasing which is probably just as effective, much less aggressive, and only slightly more wordy:

"Have you considered how people of different gender identities might engage with this question? Transgender people might be confused if they identify as both male (or female) and trans. Perhaps we can find a way to make this question a little less ambiguous for this class of people?"

Sure, the proposed solution is not directly in that sentence-- but that's kind of the point. You have to get on the same page before you start throwing out answers at people. Maybe the data scientist already knows this but just didn't communicate effectively-- otherwise you end up dangerously close to "well actually"ing someone who already knows the thing you're telling them.

In fact, to me, the weirdest part of the article is how ironic it is to see Coraline be so obtusely unaware of how unempathetic this kind of phrasing is, since she is so vocal about it on Twitter. It definitely strikes me as slightly hypocritical to see people arguing that we should be allowed to get straight to the point of a technical argument without any fluff or nicety. I believe this was the exact opposite argument being made from the same camp when Code of Conduct discussions were being had.

Beyond that, even though I'm generally an asshole, I try to be nice in PR comments. Like it or not, most devs have some amount of ego tied up in their code. So removing the sting with some sugar coating makes for a better chance of them listening.

None of this applies once I have a longer work relationship with the author.

I disagree; mostly because of this last part.

> you need to explicitly ask that question.

This last part feels like a demand and is too forceful. Suggestion is more persuasive then demands. I agree with you the comment you replied too is a little too sugarcoated for my taste, but the basic structure seems good, suggesting an authoritative source to back up your concern is a good idea. Especially when you are commenting on something (the data scientist may not have known about her LGBT work) outside your field to someone who is in the field (making a survey).

With that said, I get like this too when I am deep in coding. This may not be an issue for technical topics where it can be proved that x would cause a crash. But, I would handle this differently for non-tech issues that are subjective.

But... the data scientist should have been used to this at a company full of programmers. Maybe she was the first to actually comment on the content of the work.

Still, the data scientist overreacted and should have handled it better. Assuming this is more or less the details we need to know.

> I find is that in some companies people are just scared of each other that they fail to communicate.

Keep in mind OP said she got hundreds of comments on her earlier work from all over the company. Maybe instead the female data scientist was very defensive because she got similar treatment in the past.

Back then, I found Schopenhauer's tone incredibly pompous and condescending, but over the years I have come to appreciate it as one of the best explanations of what function politeness plays in social interaction:

"It is a wise thing to be polite; consequently, it is a stupid thing to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. For politeness is like a counter--an avowedly false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy."

What Schopenhauer says is that all politeness carries with it at least a kernel of insincerity, but that this is not a bad thing, quite the opposite - once we get past the idea that politeness is "phony", we can throw it around generously, and discover how much easier we get along with people we may not like very much. Consider politeness a kind of WD-40 for social interactions.

> so much sugar-coating that we all get diabetes.

I love the way you phrased that!

I can't wait until we all start wearing thick, black, woollen coats in the summertime...