Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely

[JimC]

Perhaps that is an old fashioned reference - I'd forgotten that you're a young bloke...

"What's good for the goose (Seth) is good for the gander (rEv)"...

[rachelbean]

I was going to give you the reminder, Jim was quicker. You asked the moderators to point out when you were getting close to crossing that line, which Jim did. Dev's right about the arguments vs presence. One is the content of the posts, the other is the summation of the person. We can go round and round on this, but why not just attack the arguments and quality of the posts instead of seeing how far you can get to a personal attack and get away with it?

[pErvinalia]

Perhaps that is an old fashioned reference - I'd forgotten that you're a young bloke...

"What's good for the goose (Seth) is good for the gander (rEv)"...

I know what the saying means. It's just that your post seemed to be a non-sequitur to the one you quoted.

[pErvinalia]

I was going to give you the reminder, Jim was quicker. You asked the moderators to point out when you were getting close to crossing that line, which Jim did. Dev's right about the arguments vs presence. One is the content of the posts, the other is the summation of the person. We can go round and round on this, but why not just attack the arguments and quality of the posts instead of seeing how far you can get to a personal attack and get away with it?

Why did you have to reply? What's the point? None of you are going to change your view. Our presence here is our posts only. How can it be anything more? To claim our presence here is anything other than our posts is nonsensical. What, are our souls imprinting on the forum??!

[pErvinalia]

I've laid out the logical error of your thinkings. If you can't see the clear logic, then there's no point.

[rachelbean]

A personal attack is one directed at the user, we aren't drawing a line between who someone is here vs who they are in real life because that is impossible and pointless. Attacking someone's "presence" is not a clever way to get around the personal attack rule. You're right, there is probably no point.

And I replied because you seemed annoyed that Jim would do exactly what you asked the moderators to do, and because I wanted to say it wasn't Jim acting on his own.

[pErvinalia]

Just forget I said anything.

[tuco]

Damn. I can't afford any personnel to do the attacks for me.

You think? How is Germanization of Europe going? Not well in past couple of months

[NineBerry]

Indeed! Praise the refugees for having slowed down the Germanic expansion!

[tuco]

When they "integrate" they will make Germany even stronger. Time will tell.

[Forty Two]

Can you quote me on those alleged claims or not? What you quoted is not me claiming anything in need of evidence. I am not Seth (apologies Seth) who will quote sentence by sentence, babbling nonsense, pretending to have debate. You talk shit pure and simple from where I sit.

A reminder that this is getting close to becoming a personal attack.

I lot of people post stuff about others talking shit, and such. This may be difficult to enforce fairly.

[Forty Two]

To be honest, he's outright personally attacked a number of us in a number of threads (including previously in this thread), but this wasn't really a personal attack. I don't really care if he attacks me or not. His attacks are impotent as he has no intellectual credibility in his posts to back it up.

Don't go down this road please. It's very Ratskep to refer to what someone has supposedly done in a number of threads to a number of people. If he really has "personally attacked" folks to such a degree, then link to the personal attack(s).

Referring to him having no "intellectual credibility" does seem to be "close" to a personal attack, at a minimum. Hardly different than calling him stupid.

[Forty Two]

"Idiotic presence" means everything about you here is idiotic, ergo you are defined as an idiot. That's a personal attack.

No it's not. Someone could be an idiot here but non-idiotic in real life. If we follow your reasoning we can't say someone is lying as that suggests they are largely a liar. This is of course a silly line of reasoning.

Not really. The true distinction would be between saying someone is lying when they say X, as opposed to bemoaning their "lying presence."

However, saying someone is "lying" is a largely unproductive thing to say anyway. Lying involves a state of mind. It's usually more productive to just say "you're wrong," or "that's false." A false or incorrect statement is only a lie if the person speaking intends it to be false. It's normally very difficult to prove someone is actually intending to be untruthful, except in very very blatant cases where someone says X and then says the exact opposite. Even then, people forget or remember incorrectly, or narrate their story poorly, etc.

Being concerned with declaring people liars is another very Ratskep thing to do. The posse of enforcers over at Ratskep like to identify the undesirables and then follow them around declaring them to be liars.

Take me for example. If someone said to me online "you are argumentative and aggressive" they'd be absolutely right. But in real life I'm nothing of the sort. Well, I can be a bit argumentative if I know someone well enough to risk confrontation. But in general I'm pretty friendly and relaxed.

What does your argumentative or aggressive nature have to do with most topics of discussion?

[Forty Two]

To put it another way, what's the rationale for being able to say that 25% or 50% or 75% or 100% of someone's posts are stupid? If I said your presence here, minus one post, is idiotic, is that acceptable?

The reason why "your argument is idiotic" is allowed, but "you are an idiot" is not, is because the former is less inflammatory and is literally "directed toward the argument" rather than the person. It's that's literal difference that makes all the difference.

[Strontium Dog]

Maybe folk should strive to cut the personalisations out altogether, irrespective of whether they are technically within the rules or without. That's how I would always try to operate.