Re: Social Committee proposal
* Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> [070127 16:49]:
> * Argumentum ad hominem is never acceptable, please respond to the
> issue at hand.
I think one should be careful with such a rule, as "ad hominem" is quite
overused. Especially if it's about people's behaviour speaking about
what that people just did it is often misused to just meaning speaking
to your opponent.
This gets especially exhausting if some discusions went into
meta-discussions, as when the discussion is about what people just wrote
in the discussion, where the issue at hand is the people discussing.
Though perhaps it can be useful together with an other rule, forbidding
meta-discussion, especially forbidding to accuse people on the same list
to discuss improperly. (And I think all terms like "ad hominem",
"strawman", "godwin", "hypocrisis" and "fallacy" can easily be
treated like swear words are treated elsewhere. When they are used they are
almost always just escalating the situation, I've never seen them help...)
Bernhard R. Link
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