That much is all so true, yes! Like someone who works a job as a teacher and who goes through the motions all day long every day, may not be a “teacher” actually, despite their career. Or speaking of things like nepotism, the bosses nephew may be the “manager”, who nonetheless never manages to get around to actually managing anything at all… Those who do not seek to perfect their craft - they are in it for the rewards they can extract from such, while someone who seeks to do it regardless (although I mean… you do gotta eat, and pay rent:-D), that to me seems a true “craftsman”. Talent is a whole other dimension (you can do something a lot and yet not be good at it, yet), as is enjoyment (you can do a really good job despite not having fun with it), but ultimately we came down to the same underlying point: if you don’t actually put in the effort to DO something, then how can someone say that they ARE such? Effort is what makes the dream turn into reality.

I had never heard the guy’s name, but yes I am familiar with the principle. Ironically in the example you showed, there are no error bars, plus how could there be a “graph” in a peer-reviewed statistical journal that lacked any sort of axis markers such as the 1st and 3rd ones did? I think the principle is actually quite solid, at least as it was explained to me: take out whatever UNNECCESSARRY elements that you can (hehe, see what I did there? oh uh, I mean ah, yeah, on purpose, totally… :-P), when they do not add to the end product. On the other hand, if the difference between like 16% vs. 18% is crucial, then yes you should have a horizontal line or even better some major highlighting of that fact. Ultimately, the graph should convey the readers’ intention, and the intention should not be “my teacher told me to do it or I’d fail the class”:-P So if normally the difference b/t 16% vs. 18% is merely within the margin of error, then it becomes preferable actually to remove the horizontal lines, b/c in that case what do they add? Even the difference b/t 14% vs. 16% in that example would show up b/c of the white line, but that would be a side-effect whereas the real intention would be to make it more obvious that they occur in “blocks” of 5 - so like 9% is a block and most of another block, while 12% is two blocks plus a bit, and so on. At that point, the fewer “distracting elements”, maybe the better, b/c the average reader gets easily … ah… what was I saying again? :-D

But yes, you do have to apply the principles, not just “me likey so me do”, but like, THINK about what it is that you are doing, and what you are trying to accomplish by adding it. So in my earlier example, why did I have TWO horizontal lines separating the header from the lower portion? It was b/c “it just looked better”, although if I had to articulate why I would say it was that the horizontal error bars off to the right looked similar, so having the separator bar be double-lined helped distinguish it. And yet I did like having the bar to distinguish the above as a “header” describing the text blocks below it - as opposed to simply leaving the space entirely blank. Along similar lines, I said the full three words “generic damage type” in it instead of merely “damage type” that naively seems like that could have worked just as well if not better? However, I chose to attempt to convey that some characters use “nonstandard damage”, e.g. Violet’s Combo Attack and Sword Dance both have non-generic mechanics to think about, but those S/M/L/XL were just the beginning, and even then not always followed, e.g. 4★ Tsubame’s “Twin Snakes” attack does a whopping 300% damage, despite it saying “x2 (S)” and normally an S attack would be 150%, so like 75% per each of the two hits. Eventually I wrote the latter examples into a text-only guide, a year later, but I was already thinking along those lines with that graphic.

So I like what you said about it being a form of storytelling - yeah, that’s it. If the story is better without that fluff, then remove it, but ofc if it is somehow relevant, then by all means keep it. Just be intentional about it either way - show some loving “craftsmanship” either way:-).

About those responses: I went onto the Discord to try to find the root of the issue and perhaps explain myself better. What I found there… convinced me that it was a futile undertaking. There are certain individuals who enjoy showing screenshots of my words, but they “artfully” position the cropping so that it (conveniently?) leaves out certain portions that are CRUCIAL to understanding the whole. And in the one case that they could not do that - b/c what I said was sandwiched b/t two texts that if anyone had so much as glanced at either of them, would make the entire thing make sense - they simply put false words into my mouth entirely. Then there are others who are eager to become “triggered” by that, and so they came to Reddit all full of bluster and bluff to defend what they considered righteous and good - and in that sense, they even mean well? Though they never did bother to read my ACTUAL wording - which they claimed was too long & boring - and yet with the echo chamber in full blast, they felt 100% confident in declaring to me that I had said such & such (which I never did), and that I was so and so (hrm… maybe?), and I was a threat to the community’s existence somehow - all the while entirely ignoring how I would repeatedly put out calls for other moderators to PULEASE take over, but nobody would step up to take on the job (when I started, I assumed that I would be working underneath Bamiji even?), and true to my word, the SAME WEEK that we got a reliable second one (so as to not abandon someweirdo237 all on his lonesome), I left the job. Some might argue that proves that I was not power-hungry after all… but only if facts are relevant to the conversation?

Anyway, I think there’s no point digging into that well of desperation & sadness (but in case you really wanted to, here is a recent example, where they accused me of having removed grasta tiers from the entire wiki, despite the fact that if they had clicked the link I shared it is in the VERY FIRST COLUMN, as in the number right after the colored text, prefaced with a T!? as it still was back then too e.g. see this screenshot shared in a comment from the same post) - one may as well ask why the USA had a coup attempt on January 6 a couple years ago (the backstory is eerily similar - people trying to “defend the constitution”, meanwhile also admitting that they had never, in fact, so much as read the actual thing, despite it being a remarkably short document).

The TLDR is easy enough to grasp: some people like drama, period. They do not fall to it as a last resort when all else has failed, but rather seek it out as it is their goal. I do not choose to visit “those places”, b/c they are not enjoyable to me. Although the people there seem not content to remain there, and instead come out to find me, as a result of conversations that occur there. I cannot help them find enlightenment merely by offering the TRUE FACTS of the situation - no amount of evidence will sway their already-made-up minds - they are too far gone.

such a strong response to some of those discussion topics is a little perplexing to me, honestly

This just goes to show how blessedly innocent you are! You cannot understand the mindset of that filth, b/c you are so far removed from it that it makes zero sense to you. If you visited the dick-sword community though, then you would understand… personally I do not think it worth the price of admission, but if you really wanted to, you could do it? :-P As for myself, I will just move on (or at least try to, but it keeps coming back to me - the more so that I try to help the community by offering guides & template encoding & such, the more attention it draws, and suddenly I now understand why there are no good politicians, b/c the good ones are literally killed off, leaving us with what’s left, sadly).