Re: Summary of the debian-devel BoF at Debconf9
"Bernhard R. Link" <brlink@debian.org>
> [1] And as you gave no facts and just called names, you are sure you
> are not meaning
> "I do not understand what you are talking about and cannot assess if it
> is something important" instead?
This is exactly the sort of personalisation of discussions which
should really not be done! I almost replied with a similar criticism
of style.
In case anyone else missed it, the fact I gave was that the succinct
label "ad-hominem"'s well-established meaning is different from "He is
an asshole, ignore him". So, I suggest that the claim posted on
2009-08-19 09:35:07 GMT isn't generally true and anyone who does not
see a difference maybe should be corrected.
For a slightly more formal evidence, web-search
ad-hominem "He is an asshole"
and one will quickly see that the latter is an instance of the former
and not a translation or synonym. Also compare with dict's output
for ad-hominem.
If anyone wishes to argue that any of the succinct labels are the same
as "he is an asshole" then please name which label you think means
that and provide some evidence at least as strong as the above weak
evidence.
Or if you'd like to argue that the misinterpretation is widespread and
so we should work around it, please provide some evidence. Even
knowing how many people at the BoF or otherwise actually believe that
the succinct terms were personal attacks or "name-calling" (rather
than thinking other people do) might be interesting.
Otherwise, I feel that I understand this aspect, but the problem is
rare enough that the simplest solution is educating the few who think
succinct terms are insults.
Hope that explains,
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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