> I think we're in agreement.

Ditto!

> The "why" behind that would be interesting to know.

I'm going to briefly noodle on about why I think astroturfing generally Sounds Like That, and then attempt to answer your implied question.

So my hunch about the tone of astroturfing is that it's _kind of_ like 419 scams. [0] Perhaps none of this is new to you, but I write it down anyway:

1) Creating detailed praise that withstands scrutiny is a lot of effort, whereas expressing positive sentiment in very broad strokes is extremely easy. If your strokes are broad enough, you can probably often reuse the praise, saving even more time and effort. Similarly, defending criticism of detailed praise is much harder than defending broad-strokes positive sentiment.

2) If you want to hire live people to astroturf on message boards, people able to effectively defend detailed praise are surely going to be much more expensive than those who can only handle the vague broad-strokes stuff.

3) The target of this astroturfing deliberately isn't someone who can scrutinize detailed praise... in part because of how much work it is to author that praise, and in part because the people with power and/or purchasing authority are the ones you want to target... and it's often but not always the case that those folks lack one or more of the time, background information, or horsepower required to perform that detailed scrutiny in the first place. So, why waste the time, effort, and money?

Now please excuse the dogshit writing style of the following attempt to address your question, I'm definitely having a "low-horsepower" day today...

But why do "low-horsepower" people tend to praise in that way? speaking as someone who definitely has "low-horsepower" days, and who has occasionally been an absolutely godawful teacher, it might have something to do with the whole "You can't effectively teach someone something if you don't have a solid understanding of it yourself." thing? Both detailed praise and good instruction require a detailed understanding of the thing in question.

So part of the reason might be that "low-horsepower" folks tend to have just a surface understanding of the thing they're praising, so they cannot really create detailed praise. [1]

Both praise and instruction invite questions from the folks who are around to hear it. Folks who are capable of feeling shame often feel shame when when they present themselves as someone who is far more knowledgable about something than they actually are and questioning reveals the deception.

So another part of the reason might be to avoid in-depth questioning -both to determine the justifications for their praise, as well as to gain an in-depth understanding of parts of the thing being praised that the praiser is entirely unequipped to provide-. If one gets a vague "IDK, it's just good, right? It makes my work so much faster! I just like it!" response to your request for praise then that's a signal that you're not likely to get much more information if you ask probing questions. _Maybe_. This paragraph I'm super not confident in.

I'm happy to chat more about this, and will spend some time over the next day or so trying to phrase the gunk that's in my head better... but I can't make any promises that I will succeed at that.

[0] ...AKA "Nigerian Prince" scams...

[1] To downvoters: There's absolutely nothing wrong with this! Knowing just enough about your work and how to do it to satisfy your boss and keep your paychecks flowing is a solid way to live one's life. Precious few people do work that they like, let alone work that they're interested in... and it's my bone-deep belief that the best future for all humanity is one in which no one has to work unless they either want to or if having a job of some kind truly makes their life far better than not having one. Work sucks for most folks and putting in just enough effort to get the work done to the standard required is a fine way to engage with it.

QGIS enacts moratorium on AI contributions