Which was exactly the tradeoff I made in a way you complained about.
The problem wasn't that you made a trade-off, the problem was that you failed at it -- you chose the "not wall'o'text" path, but did not make your point clearly and correctly.
But the fact that leaving any loophole is liable to result in a dismissive comment from you
It has nothing to do with loopholes. Express your meaning clearly and it will be fine. But if that meaning is a misshapen piece of jelly weakly flopping around, well, I will be tempted to poke it with a stick :-/
you failed at it
Perhaps. Or perhaps (as it seemed to me) there wasn't a way of making my point clearly and correctly without too much wall-o'-text.
if that meaning is a misshapen piece of jelly weakly flopping around
Which, it seems to me, it wasn't and you have given no reason to think it was. What you have (quite correctly but, in my view, pointlessly) complained about is that an uncharitably literal reading of what I wrote is very vague. True enough; I think the only way to avoid vagueness and wrongness was more wall-o'-text than I was prepared to ...
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