Obviously tone is hard in text, and it's worse in multilingual teams. What's been very effective for my current team is adding explicit context as a comment prefix with standardised terms:
- Nit for "it doesn't actually matter"
- Suggestion for "this approach might be better, what do you think?"
- Question for "help me understand this"
- Requested Change for "this is actually a blocker"
We include this expectation in our working agreement, stick to it rigorously for reviews where reviewer and reviewee haven't established a strong rapport yet, and use it as appropriate beyond that. So far we've had no confusion about tone in reviews.
We include this expectation in our working agreement, stick to it rigorously for reviews where reviewer and reviewee haven't established a strong rapport yet, and use it as appropriate beyond that. So far we've had no confusion about tone in reviews.