I don't like seeing dismissiveness in responses.
Such as, "I can't see what your problem is," or "I don't know why this is bothering you so much."
Really?
Well, if you can't, don't reply and move over so someone else who can see the OPs POV objectively can reply.
I do think perspective helps, and is a very valuable part of this forum. However, I think replies that say
only, "I don't know why this is bothering you so much," can feel very dismissive, especially if they're very early on in the thread. To me this kind of reads as, "I can't imagine any legitimate reason for this to bother you, so you're being silly."
I would rather someone replied, "I don't understand why this bothers you. Can you elaborate on that? Do you think your mom [for example] is acting maliciously when she does this, or is she just clueless? Is this a pattern with her? I'm afraid I'm just not seeing why this single incident has upset you." To me this reads as, "I can believe you have a legitimate complaint and I want to help you with it, but you need to give me more information and context."
To me, the former is not very helpful or useful; whereas the latter is. I imagine someone who posts the former finding the entire thread silly, so they never come back and read it again, and then I have to ask--why did you bother to post in it?
Now granted, sometimes the OP will literally ask, "Would this bother anyone?" And then I think it's fine for someone to post, "No, it wouldn't bother me at all," and only that, because they're answering the OP's question, and often the OP in that case is trying to informally figure out whether the thing bothers "a lot" of people or not. But if someone says, "This bothers me, what can I do about it?" I don't think answering, "It shouldn't bother you," and only that, is very helpful.