Warning: Personal Attacks and Invasion of Privacy

I think I know the specific poster you're mostly talking about.

 

Just to be clear, only "personal attacks" are off the table? Asshats can still attack whole groups with barely veiled racism, lie through their teeth, and otherwise make the conversation unbearable without repercussion, right?

 

I guess someone has to be the guardian of insane, racist opinions around here.

 

So if I say to you, "Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries", it will only be actionable IF in fact, your mother really WAS a hamster and your father DID smelt of elderberries?

 

Well, following the logic of the policy, it doesn't matter if they really are/smelt that way. Only if ASF volunteered that information, and then apparently [/i]only[/i] in the thread in which it was volunteered. Don't try to use that stuff in another thread, where such information might also be relevant. If you're looking for a place to stay, and ASF says "You can stay with my parents", I'm not allowed to reply "But didn't you once say that your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries?"

Many people on here make open personal details of their lives. Lawyers, teachers, referees, American Indians, are always quick to throw such information out there if they think that it helps their case. If a person I know to be a lawyer suddenly comes out against some form of tort reform, you can be sure I'm going to put out the possibility of his profession biasing his opinion.

In short, if you didn't want your shit to be used against you, you shouldn't have put your shit out there in the first place.

 

The point everyone is missing here is that attacking someone based on what they do for a living rather than the substance of their argument is just plain bad argumentation. Yes, it's good to know that Demo is a teacher in the Education thread. Or that nicephoras works in finance if he's talking about Wall Street reform. But if you dismiss their points out of hand simply because of the potential for bias (rather than the actual display of bias) then you're being a ass.

 

That doesn't bother me. If I bring up personal details from my life in order to make a point or bolster an argument, then I do think those details are fair game. I make an effort to use my personal experience and observations as evidence in support of an actual argument, rather than resorting to appeals to my own authority -- i.e., "I'm a teacher and therefore an expert on this, so what I say must be correct." When someone then responds with, basically, "You are a teacher and therefore what you say is incorrect," well that's just doing the same thing in reverse. It's asserting a bias in order to dismiss the person's argument whole cloth, and I agree with you that it's bad argumentation and makes a person look like an ass. But at the same time, being a sucky debater isn't infraction-worthy.

Now, all that said, I'm pretty careful about which details I bring up and which ones I hide. If someone were to bring up a detail from my life which I had not brought up myself, or which I had brought up in another context (maybe another forum), that could potentially be a problem. In that case the problem would not so much be the personal attack, as the revealing of private information.

I honestly think we go down a dangerous path when we start handing out infractions for the use of someone's personal information in an argument. I trust ASF's judgement, but I hope this policy is mostly concerning those cases in which a poster reveals someone's private, personal information without the other person's permission. That is certainly unacceptable.

EDIT - Okay, now that I think about it I will add one thing. Frequently danny has implied not only that I'm biased because of my job, but that I'm biased specifically because I'm bad at my job. That is at the very least skirting the line. He does the same thing to Jacen and presumably would to anyone who admits to being a public school teacher. Maybe he's just trying to needle people, or maybe he thinks it's clever or funny. But it definitely approaches the area of personal attack.

 

Question.

If I make an accurate description of a person's politics and worldview,and they don't like it,can I get carded?

 

Time to bump this thread. We've had a rash of these in the last couple of days. Cut it out, please.