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I couldn't disagree more. This cultivated and mannered ideal that you espouse is rarely practiced on any real blog or forum with a passionate community, or an i

I couldn't disagree more. This cultivated and mannered ideal that you espouse is rarely practiced on any real blog or forum with a passionate community, or an intelligent community versed in the issues, and that's ok. And your effort to put this out here like the 10 Commandments is just a typical male, geeky bloggy power play. And there, that may be an intolerable insult; it may even be incorrect! but it's not an ad hominem attack, what would be an hominem is to say that your argument is discredited because your name is Paul or you are white. Geeks and males and bloggers need to be characterized, judged, and condemned where necessary, without fear of favour. It's all about trying to control other people when you put up one of these classic manipulative blog how-tos deliberately in a format to guarantee constant Google-fetching and repasting. These various Internet memes like "OMG don't have a flamewar!" OR "OMG don't feed the trolls" -- these are just tribalist imperatives that lead to horridly dull conformity and spread an awful pall over most social media. Argument is very, very important, and if it gets heated, and sparks fly, good! It's real! Times vs. Sullivan, the landmark Supreme Court case that is a keystone of a lot of media freedom in the US, says basically it is ok to call someone a name. It's ok. It is allowed speech. And that's the sort of robust speech that occurs in a democracy. It's very important to respond instantly to tone. Tone is what people think they can smuggle in, often, in the emotional medium of forums and blogs, and imagine they can get away with leaving these emotional trapdoors around for people to respond to instinctively, and it's good to bring it to light. They need to be called on it. Instantly. And fiercely sometimes. The tone you are taking here is preachy and hortatory. But one can only say, oh, stop it. Are you smug about all the fanboyz below, about all the people who will cut and paste your link like some latter-day Dear Abby? Neuralgic types often imagine there is an ad hominem attack, when in fact there's a quite unbiased report. And they often call "ad hominem" something that is a much needed judgement about a person that really needs to be made. Gregfjohnson is good to remember Aquinas here. But Aquinas also conceived of a number of ways for virtuous men to reach Heaven even if they were not believers or baptised or following the scriptures; had the different categories of those "saved" met each other and converse, the one might be astounded at the heresy and dissent of the other! Re-stating people's arguments often infuriates them precisely because they don't want to be summarized and fed back in stark form, or take consequence for the tone and the hidden agendas they try to smuggle into forums and blogs. So it's not a magic bullet. The surest way for a forums discussion to go downhill is for some smug nit to go and pull up some "rules of rhetoric" and beginning banging on somebody's head that they are breaking some arcane "law of logic". Oh, do stop it. People need to express themselves. They know exactly what they are hearing in tone and implication, and they are right to respond to it.

Rcomian 19y ago
I think you might be on to something, if you're saying that a personal or tonal response might be necessary to certain articles. Someone earlier mentioned the Ethos, Pathos and Logos vectors for disagreement, which I love. I read what you're saying as that just because an attack is on the person, doesn't mean it's irrelevant, which I think might be true. This means that there's different targets here and qualities of argument on each target. I've got a comment somewhere on adding dimensions to these levels and splitting them out, although the examples I gave can be improved on I'm sure. I think it's fair to say that most name calling on the internet is of a low level variety, hence why it might get munged into a single list like this and placed at a low level, however a personal attack may take a higher and more-legitimate form, although I've not come to any examples of that. There is a question on the legitimacy of arguing against anything other than the actual logic of the argument - I'll leave that to others to work out, I'm happy to say that there are different lines to attack on, and different qualities of attack on each level. I'll assume that the relevant line is dependant on the post and the respondent. What I think is worth taking away from this is that the level of argument raised in the response should be as high as possible.
- scrathberry 19y ago
  u r a fag
tstorer 19y ago
"Geeks and males and bloggers need to be characterized, judged and condemned where necessary." Here is where I believe you're wrong. There is no need to judge and condemn individuals in a web discussion, in fact it's counterproductive. When an argument becomes heated and sparks fly, that heat and fire should be directed at the content of the argument. Otherwise you're just insulting someone, who will then insult you back, and bingo, a typical message-board or blog-comment back-and-forth name-calling session has begun. I agree that it can be necessary to point it out when someone is using tone to leave "emotional trapdoors for people to respond to," but if the way you do it is to attack the person's character rather than by showing that the appeal to emotion is a poor argument, then you're just heading towards a flame war. You say that attitudes such as "don't feed the trolls" lead to dull conformity. Don't you think that the dismal sameness of all troll-provoked flame wars is far more dull than an atmosphere of simple courtesy in which people actually listen to each other? I would go further than "don't feed the trolls"--in any web discussion that has descended into acrimonious personal attacks, one should unilaterally withdraw. You cannot have the last word on the Internet and the smart way to avoid flame wars is to leave them. It's trolls and flamers that are the surest way for a forum discussion to go downhill. The best way to help a forum be interesting and lively is not to remind everyone of "rules of rhetoric" or of conduct but to follow them oneself. But many people haven't thought about it in a systematic way, so it can be helpful to read a set of recommendations and apply whichever of them you wish. Publishing such things is not an attempt to control, but to persuade. You may have a beef with the attitude of "smug nits" who tell you what to do, but that doesn't mean that their recommendations aren't good ones.

Rcomian 19y ago

I think you might be on to something, if you're saying that a personal or tonal response might be necessary to certain articles. Someone earlier mentioned the Ethos, Pathos and Logos vectors for disagreement, which I love. I read what you're saying as that just because an attack is on the person, doesn't mean it's irrelevant, which I think might be true. This means that there's different targets here and qualities of argument on each target. I've got a comment somewhere on adding dimensions to these levels and splitting them out, although the examples I gave can be improved on I'm sure. I think it's fair to say that most name calling on the internet is of a low level variety, hence why it might get munged into a single list like this and placed at a low level, however a personal attack may take a higher and more-legitimate form, although I've not come to any examples of that. There is a question on the legitimacy of arguing against anything other than the actual logic of the argument - I'll leave that to others to work out, I'm happy to say that there are different lines to attack on, and different qualities of attack on each level. I'll assume that the relevant line is dependant on the post and the respondent. What I think is worth taking away from this is that the level of argument raised in the response should be as high as possible.

scrathberry 19y ago
u r a fag

tstorer 19y ago

"Geeks and males and bloggers need to be characterized, judged and condemned where necessary." Here is where I believe you're wrong. There is no need to judge and condemn individuals in a web discussion, in fact it's counterproductive. When an argument becomes heated and sparks fly, that heat and fire should be directed at the content of the argument. Otherwise you're just insulting someone, who will then insult you back, and bingo, a typical message-board or blog-comment back-and-forth name-calling session has begun. I agree that it can be necessary to point it out when someone is using tone to leave "emotional trapdoors for people to respond to," but if the way you do it is to attack the person's character rather than by showing that the appeal to emotion is a poor argument, then you're just heading towards a flame war. You say that attitudes such as "don't feed the trolls" lead to dull conformity. Don't you think that the dismal sameness of all troll-provoked flame wars is far more dull than an atmosphere of simple courtesy in which people actually listen to each other? I would go further than "don't feed the trolls"--in any web discussion that has descended into acrimonious personal attacks, one should unilaterally withdraw. You cannot have the last word on the Internet and the smart way to avoid flame wars is to leave them. It's trolls and flamers that are the surest way for a forum discussion to go downhill. The best way to help a forum be interesting and lively is not to remind everyone of "rules of rhetoric" or of conduct but to follow them oneself. But many people haven't thought about it in a systematic way, so it can be helpful to read a set of recommendations and apply whichever of them you wish. Publishing such things is not an attempt to control, but to persuade. You may have a beef with the attitude of "smug nits" who tell you what to do, but that doesn't mean that their recommendations aren't good ones.