To be direct - yesterday I spotted what seemed like an Internet-wide issue that was also impacting Cloudflare. You told me yesterday that no in fact, there was no impact on Cloudflare. Today there is a post about a separate issue where there is an impact on Cloudflare. In my mind I make the connection between these two events, and on the one hand the quick and direct denial of the issue being that of Cloudflare on the first day, but today an acknowldgement of issues, even if they were a different set of problems.

It would be helpful on outages where Cloudflare is showing an outage when the problem doesn't originate with Cloudflare to put on your own error page an indication of where the error might be. I know this might be touchy to do so, but you should feel free to point fingers when you know that an outage to your client is caused by another party.

For example:

"Error. Cloudflare reports this site is down. Issues point to an outage with [AWS, Google, Azure, Oracle <-- just kidding] as being the source of that outage"

That would help make it clear that yes, there is an outage, and no, Cloudlfare is not the proximal cause.

All this chatter about your use of words and my use of words kinda misses the main point of what I was trying to communicate.

It can wrap around to extremes sometimes, too.

https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication/

I'm also sometimes surprised by how effectively a simple statement like "I don't want to spend money on that" can shut down even a pushy salesman. Or even the simple "No." can work wonders.

I've never seen any comments regarding a single period, but I've seen comments (and sometimes agree with them) regarding the perceived rudeness when ending messages in ellipses.

"Good job..." seems almost sarcastic compared to "Good job.".

    Good job.

    good job

Edit: Reading your link: First, that's well-written and insightful; thank you.

However, it seems like a common (young, if I dare guess) frustration with human communication, especially among geeks (if I dare guess, here on HN, and including myself as one): Communication is not transmission of information, but a social interaction. You have to think about all these other things (where many geeks feel out of their depth), and in fact those other things are more consequential than the information (with which many geeks feel very confident). In other words, it sucks to have all the information, to be a master at it, and find that it doesn't matter so much.

Tip: Don't try to dismiss it; it's human nature and won't change; learn the skills. 'Skill' #1: learn to not objectify the other party (they aren't an endpoint device in your communication network), and the best tools for that: curiosity about them - about their unique universe in their mind, their own wants and perspectives, completely unrelated to yours - and compassion: they have a difficult life too. (Of course, that's just my perspective! :) )

I think this can be said of the British too. Though we would probably make the mistake of interpreting it as rude rather than aggressive. As someone who doesn't communicate particularly directly, I often make this mistake myself.

Though I'm not sure which side of "the pond" is worse in this respect.

Especially when discussing politics it can be confusing as hell trying to figure out what somebody really believes/wants because the tip toeing around egg shells can make the words impossible to decode.

As one Gen Y/Zer once commented: Those trophies weren't handing out themselves, and they weren't the kids' idea. Whose idea were they?

You should remove the plank from your own eye, first.

You don't get to blame others for your voluntarily chosen courses of action.