Re: Endless arguing

On 2010-04-12, Tim Rentsch <txr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Step 4: Refrain from making any kind of ad hominem remark,
against anyone, in any posting. Assuming the choice has
been made to write a response/followup, write about what
was written, not about the person who wrote it. Calling
someone a "troll" (or any other such appellation) is just
as much part of the problem as whatever it was the "troll"
did in the first place.

I'm not convinced of that. Overall, DNFTT seems to rely to
some extent on convincing people that a given person is, in
fact, a troll. People who don't believe that are unlikely to
participate in avoiding/ignoring the troll.

Sometimes, it really *does* matter what you think of the person,
not just what you think of the post. As an example, look at
Bill Cunningham's endless series of combinations of newbie
questions. A reasonable response to those from someone who has
never seen one before is *very* different from a resaonable response
to them from someone who's seen his last decade or so of asking
questions and then ignoring the answers, or "learning" something
only to have no idea even what the words used to describe it are
a few months later.

-s
--
Copyright 2010, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-nospam@xxxxxxxxx
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
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.

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