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"You're not arguing with Grellas so much as cherry picking sentences out of his comment and howling at them in isolation." That's certaintly a creative way to
by larrys 15y ago
"You're not arguing with Grellas so much as cherry picking sentences out of his comment and howling at them in isolation."
That's certaintly a creative way to put it. But that is what everyone does when they make comments. They respond to things they don't agree with. The use of "cherry picking" in your context seems to indicate taking unfair pot shots. The use of "howling in isolation" brings up an image of a lonely dog in the dead of night. Why is that necessary exactly?
"I think I speak for a lot of people on HN when I ask that you not berate one of the more uniquely valuable contributors to HN for writing "walls of text"."
Then why do you need to say this? If there are people that think that they will downvote, right?
By the way this is not to say I agree with his language. I think it's great that grellas takes the time to write a "wall of text".
- scott_s 15y agoIf you focus on individual points, then the discussion will degrade. Take the time to synthesize what the overall message from the post is, then respond to that. The danger of responding to individual points, instead of the message, is you start arguing about the trees, not the forest. It's the difference between an honest discussion and a game of "Gotcha!" I admit it's a difficult balance. I will sometimes pull out individual sentences from a person's post, but only if I feel that sentence is representative of their overall point, or it is a mistaken premise that when corrected, the rest of the post is moot.
- tel 15y agoBecause historically HN favors extended discussion of entire points. Not doing what "everyone does" is the name of the game. In particular, the rebuttal was not on argumentative parity with Grellas' well-tempered text, mere downvotes don't explain that. So, I agree with Thomas here.