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Net shorthand for In My Humble Opinion. For other variants insert words here and there - In My Not So Humble Opinion (IMNSHO), for example.

Of course, the use of such a tag implies that the author is not, in fact, humble.

Is humility actually a good thing?  Thinking about it, I actually enjoy best seeing people about me be sparky and confident, not low in confidence and self-esteem.  --DR
That's not the meaning of humility. dictionary.com says it means being humble (well, duh), and says humble means 'Marked by meekness or modesty in behavior, attitude, or spirit; not arrogant or prideful. Showing deferential or submissive respect: a humble apology. ' Modesty is not being low in confidence and self-esteem. In fact, I suspect only the most confident people can truly be modest, because they have no doubt of thir own abilities and thus no need to push themselves.
I think it's important here to recognise the difference between modesty and low self-esteem.  If you know you're good at something but don't brag about it, that's modesty, I would have thought.  If you just generally think you're rubbish, that's low self-esteem.  Personally, and being fairly candid, I think I oscillate between the two.  --FR
Some kinda award here for making that paragraph a MinorEdit?.  --Vitenka
In all honesty, it was an attempt not to clutter up RecentChanges.  Oh well.  --FR
Requiem attempts to practice humility by pathological attempts to avoid the SinOfPride?. It seems mostly to work, though occasionally coming over as self-deprecating.
In any case, 'in my humble opinion,' is a catchphrase that I interpret as meaning, 'this is what I have thought over, but it's only my opinion and not (necessarily) absolute truth,' which is only ever a good thing in a Usenet debate, which is where I usually see it - SunKitten
But when do you ever see anything else?  I mean, outside of sigs that say "I am the omniscient being, and all that I print above is Truth with a big T." ?  --Vitenka
One possible alternative is "this isn't just an opinion, it's a generally accepted fact" - possibly with an "..and XYZ backs me up when I say this", or "..because X, Y and Z, therefore this" - to various levels of explicitness. Another happens when a statement carries a subtext of something like "I'm right and you're wrong, and I think the reasons I'm right are so blindingly obvious to anyone who isn't an uneducated buffoon that I'm not going to bother going into any further detail. If you still want to ask me questions, you clearly lack some very basic knowledge, and since I haven't the patience to actually transfer my knowledge to you in any meaningful fashion you should go find someone who has before you speak to me again." Which is not a form to be dismissed lightly - it can be very appropriate in some contexts (eg. persistent trolls in sci.crypt who refuse to learn anything about crypto or read the FAQ but want the gurus to look at their new algorithm they made up over the weekend because "hey, Einstein flunked college too, didn't he?") - MoonShadow
What, and slapping 'imho' on the end makes all of that SubText? magically go away?  "I hate you and your family and wish you were all going to die you slapstick baboon of excremental vitriol, but really I like you."  --Vitenka
No, its purpose - as I see it - is to help provide the particular emotional subtext associated with "imho". Kind of like how a smiley provides subtext, or how writing in a particular style provides subtext. For that matter, how writing out the phrases they stand for in full would add subtext, or how "information-free" things like "please", "thank you" and :) carry subtext. OTOH, if such things do not convey the intended emotion / subtext when used to a particular group of people or in a particular context, there is indeed a good case for dropping them. Would people say such was the case on the wiki? - MoonShadow
No, I think the wiki is quite good about not overusing them.  Like all sugar, these things add taste - but you want the text to be the main flavour not to overwhelm it,  IMHO.  --Vitenka But I know  that I overuse smilies a lot ;)

MaintainMe: when it's cooled down, collect discussion from here and IMV onto page of its own and summarise
SyntacticSugar? is unclaimed, but not exactly an unbiased name for such a page.  SubPage? from TLA?  Can't think of a good one, I'm afraid.  I think I'm done with the discussion though, except to add that one thing I will agree is good about imho etc. is that the choice of which to use and where and how often to use them is personal - and that helps to add character and voice to a discussion.  Though I'm sure people would be able to convey such information without them it would be a lot harder for the average netizen or txt sp34kr.  --Vitenka
I'm happy with SyntacticSugar? - MoonShadow

See also: IMV


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