Re: Summary of the debian-devel BoF at Debconf9

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> writes:

>          In all of these cases, the relevant question is not who makes
>  the argument, but whether the argument is valid.

Often, there are more-relevant questions: whether the argument belongs
at all in the specific forum where it was presented, or whether the form
of expression used to make the argument is an overall negative to the
forum.

I think those questions need to be considered, before pressing “send”,
more often than whether the argument is logically valid. Perhaps that's
the main point being made by some of the requests here.

However, once such an inappropriate message *has* been sent to a forum,
it's important that its flaws be countered (or its form be challenged)
*in the same forum*, otherwise an observer would be justified in
concluding from the silent assent that such messages are considered
appropriate.

-- 
 \      “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more |
  `\   to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a |
_o__)                                 sober one.” —George Bernard Shaw |
Ben Finney