Re: Summary of the debian-devel BoF at Debconf9
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 03:25:30PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> > And really, if some logical conclusion is so broken that this brokeness
> > has its own name, then everybody should be able to see it.
> This is a nice theory, but in reality one does see people arging
> against the person, or their perceived personality, or their
> traits, or ascribing motives to them all the time.
Except that this is *not* the definition of the ad hominem fallacy. The ad
hominem fallacy is claiming that a person is bad, *and therefore their
arguments are wrong*.
Pointing out that someone is being a jerk on the mailing list is *not* an ad
hominem fallacy.
> These attacks on people, as opposed to discussion of what they
> said, is one of the major reasons discussion threads devolve into
> unproductive chaos. We should be managing to police discussion better,
> and the first step is identifying that such a post has been made.
Given the sorts of things you've objected to as "ad hominem attacks" in the
past, I definitely don't agree. A number of these have been legitimate
complaints about behaviors that distract from or derail technical
discussions.
Sometimes heated complaints - but no less legitimate for all that.
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
Reply to: