Re: Summary of the debian-devel BoF at Debconf9
"Bernhard R. Link" <brlink@debian.org>
> * Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au> [090819 00:42]:
> > Your distinction is lost on me; pointing out that someone has presented
> > a logical fallacy *is* saying what is wrong. That we have succinct
> > labels with well-established meanings serves to more quickly communicate
> > what is wrong, which I would think is pleasing to you.
>
> I fail to see what differentiates usage of well-established, succinct
> terms as you imagine from a "He is an asshole, ignore him."
I see pointing out a personal attack as more like someone posting "he
is primarily personally attacking the previous poster - ignore him".
So, I don't agree that the "he is an asshole" meaning is
well-established. However, if many DDs are buggy enough to think it
means that, then we should either fix it (educate DDs?) or workaround
it (not use the label).
[...]
> > As Manoj has pointed out (better than I did earlier), to *name* a
> > fallacious argument is merely to point out clearly that the discussion
> > has *already* gone off-topic, and is best interpreted as a request that
> > the off-topic digression be terminated quickly.
>
> And it is you deciding that the other side has gone too far or off-topic
> and it is you deciding the discussion no longer has any chance to lead
> anywhere. This means that if you were wrong, then you are escalating the
> discussion to an pure flame war and you are reguesting all on-topic
> discussion to stop my pulling it into a off-topic discussion.
As I've written before, I think that some of the bigger debian lists
would be better if *someone* decided when the discussion has gone too
far or off-topic and acted on it (putting a thread on mod-hold and
just slowing the discussion, for example). As a project group, we've
been poor at stopping the email incontinence of some contributors at
some times.
Any such decision mechanism should be open, transparent and
accountable to DDs.
Some other lists limit emails to two per person per day, to focus
contributors' minds on what are the important points. I doubt that
approach would work here: too many of us have ways to queue emails for
sending on a future date.
Hope that helps,
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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