I wasn't one of the ones who downvoted you (I didn't land on this thread until after all of this discussion about downvotes had happened), but I also don't really understand what you think is valuable about the idea you presented. At best, it comes across like semantics about what the correct definition for something is (which seems to come from a prescriptivist take that disagrees with the overwhelmingly common usage of the word, so it's not surprising that it's not being received well).

If the intent was to share an interesting fact about the origin of the word, then that would be something I'd find interesting, but quite often tone ends up mattering as much as content, and the way you've phrased it doesn't make it clear at all that's what your intent is rather than sounding like you're saying that everyone here is ignorant except you. Whether or not that's accurate (and for the record I don't think it is, since I tend to consider a definition that doesn't fit what people actually mean as irrelevant), generally convincing people that they're wrong requires a lot of careful communication. At the end of the day, you have to decide whether you're commenting because you genuinely want to convince people of something or just because you want to say it regardless of the outcome; if you're motivated by the former, then how people react to your tone is tautologically the measure of whether you need to change it or not, and if you're motivated by the latter, you're going to have to accept that downvotes are an inevitable consequence when you're saying things that people don't agree with in a way that they don't like.

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card_zero 28 minutes ago | parent [-]

Oh, so people are annoyed at me because they aren't getting the point, maybe? The commenter who mentioned Steven Covey knew what I was talking about. It's not just semantics ... or, wait a minute, are you saying everybody secretly knows that what they call compromises ought ideally to be creative mutual preferences, and not involve either or both of the parties having to put up with things and having their goals degraded? Maybe you all know that already. That would be excellent, if it's commonly understood.

It's a valuable idea, because otherwise what you get is an established habit of bad resolutions to disputes, where it becomes normal and is seen as virtuous for everybody to settle for half-measures. The article, which is very short, might be promoting that mindset, for all I can tell. In fact it clearly states it:

> The more you tip the scale on one side, the weaker something else will be. That’s okay!

No, it isn't okay, and that's a shitty zero-sum uncreative way to view the world.

	▲	saghm 2 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Oh, so people are annoyed at me because they aren't getting the point, maybe? The commenter who mentioned Steven Covey knew what I was talking about I mean, sure, if you think that there's literally no way for you to improve how you communicate to more effectively convey your ideas, then yes it's because of the other people and not something you can address. One person getting the point isn't a sign that everyone else is going to though. If your goal is to be persuasive to enough people that you don't need to risk downvotes though, you might find more success from looking closer at why you failed to get the outcome you want than from trying to justify it as not your fault. As I said though, I don't have any agenda here; I didn't downvote you, and if you're happier with the outcomes you're getting rather than being open to trying to communicate differently, it doesn't bother me! Given that you seemed upset about the downvotes though, it seemed like maybe you genuinely wanted to learn what might have caused them so you could try to avoid it in the future, so I was offering what seemed like the reason to me. > Everybody secretly knows that what they call compromises ought ideally to be creative mutual preferences, and not involve either or both of the parties having to put up with things and having their goals degraded Not quite, I'm saying that it's not really a secret (at least not intentionally); it's just that common definition that most people understand the word to mean includes both win/win and lose/lose. It's totally understandable that this might not be your understanding of the word, since there's no way to really find out which words you might not understand the same way everyone else does, short of looking up every single word in a recent dictionary, which isn't a particularly fun way to spend time.
	▲	necovek 3 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You are obviously using a newly defined phrase "mutual preference" which does not seem to be familiar to most people and a quick search does not bring anything of value for me (there is "mutual preference method", but that's about matching people to one another). I — among others — believe that "sweet spot", "balanced", "trade-off" and even "compromise" are good enough words to describe a solution that achieves good outcomes for multiple competing goals (not just people), and I really believe that whether any of those is negative is in the eye (ear) of the beholder. If you are instead claiming that there are no competing goals when you are eg. building a product, you might be looking only at very simple products (though I have a hard time imagining a product so simple there are at least not two goals in tension — eg. a knife and toothpick both need to balance sharpness and safety).