My proposal to all of us regarding discussing sensitive topics:
I have no problem discussing current Iraq situation, however if we are going to do so, we should apply a few restrictions.
My proposal:
1. Whoever posts such thread should define the scope the thread covers. All subsequent posters in the thread should post only about issues regarding defined scope of the topic.
For instance one thread is discussing POW's and violation / nonviolation of Geneva convention and double / nondouble standards of sides in conflict. Reasons for war and morality of starting or nonstarting the war is off topic of that thread.
It's similar to hardware thread. If someone for example posts a thread asking about network cards and person B posts that Intel Pentium 4 CPUs suck and therefore Intel NICs suck as well and person C comes and starts deffending Intel CPUs, person D starts talking about AMD CPUs and then person E about VIA chipsets, such thread will derail and it will not contribute much to original topic.
2. All posters should debate and attack or deffend only ideas put forth by other posters. Personal attacks and name calling should be avoided.
It's akin to calling someone nVidiot, fanATIc or MAven in graphic board thread.
3. All arguments should be derived either from facts (a fact is something that can be objectively detected by any person without impairments in same circumstances) and credible news sources.
To continue hardware example: If someone says that AMD or Intel (open source or closed source) sucks, some will agree and others will disagree.
However If someone says that he has benchmarked in scientific and documented manner, that can be independantly repeated, CPU A and CPU B in config C, using application D and that CPU A performed better, that's a fact. Also if someone says that benchmarks published by say www.aceshardware.com claim that Intel Pentium 4 processor performs better in Lightwave than say AMD AthlonXP processor (credible news source), we can all agree that when building system for Lightwave rendering, where perfomance matters over price, Pentium 4 is more suited to the task.
4. We should avoid generalizations and other sophisms, and be clear about our arguments.
Examples: All mac owners are elitist basdards, real men own a PC.
You are artistic pot smoking mac owner and don't know even what HAL is, therefore, all your computer opinions are wrong.
5. Also I belive we should avoid pasting or linking news and no discussion in first post thread. It would be better to post / paste / link news and then define scope of discussion as well as state some arguments for our opinion.
Another optional proposal:
We could have one thread regarding posting breaking news, which should be mainly limited to that. However I believe we should simply post news, source and not link poster to the news.
And we could open a few threads discussing issues. However such threads should be limited to certain topic: For instance if we're discussing POW's, rasons for war, ICC, president's legality (I posted those two and have pulled back from discussing them.) are clearly of topic and should be keept out.
Comment: Most of us live in parliamentary democracies or other forms of representative democracy. As we all know representatives do discuss issues and they do dissagree, however they have clear rules, which they have imposed on themselves and they try to not to go of topic and not exercise insults and personal attacks and they don't back their claims by sophisms and they do bring facts, documents and testimonials to be credible.
Think about level of discussion in British House of commons when discussing such issues.
We should be aware of the fact that some people might have different opinion and we should respect that.
I have no problem discussing current Iraq situation, however if we are going to do so, we should apply a few restrictions.
My proposal:
1. Whoever posts such thread should define the scope the thread covers. All subsequent posters in the thread should post only about issues regarding defined scope of the topic.
For instance one thread is discussing POW's and violation / nonviolation of Geneva convention and double / nondouble standards of sides in conflict. Reasons for war and morality of starting or nonstarting the war is off topic of that thread.
It's similar to hardware thread. If someone for example posts a thread asking about network cards and person B posts that Intel Pentium 4 CPUs suck and therefore Intel NICs suck as well and person C comes and starts deffending Intel CPUs, person D starts talking about AMD CPUs and then person E about VIA chipsets, such thread will derail and it will not contribute much to original topic.
2. All posters should debate and attack or deffend only ideas put forth by other posters. Personal attacks and name calling should be avoided.
It's akin to calling someone nVidiot, fanATIc or MAven in graphic board thread.
3. All arguments should be derived either from facts (a fact is something that can be objectively detected by any person without impairments in same circumstances) and credible news sources.
To continue hardware example: If someone says that AMD or Intel (open source or closed source) sucks, some will agree and others will disagree.
However If someone says that he has benchmarked in scientific and documented manner, that can be independantly repeated, CPU A and CPU B in config C, using application D and that CPU A performed better, that's a fact. Also if someone says that benchmarks published by say www.aceshardware.com claim that Intel Pentium 4 processor performs better in Lightwave than say AMD AthlonXP processor (credible news source), we can all agree that when building system for Lightwave rendering, where perfomance matters over price, Pentium 4 is more suited to the task.
4. We should avoid generalizations and other sophisms, and be clear about our arguments.
Examples: All mac owners are elitist basdards, real men own a PC.
You are artistic pot smoking mac owner and don't know even what HAL is, therefore, all your computer opinions are wrong.
5. Also I belive we should avoid pasting or linking news and no discussion in first post thread. It would be better to post / paste / link news and then define scope of discussion as well as state some arguments for our opinion.
Another optional proposal:
We could have one thread regarding posting breaking news, which should be mainly limited to that. However I believe we should simply post news, source and not link poster to the news.
And we could open a few threads discussing issues. However such threads should be limited to certain topic: For instance if we're discussing POW's, rasons for war, ICC, president's legality (I posted those two and have pulled back from discussing them.) are clearly of topic and should be keept out.
Comment: Most of us live in parliamentary democracies or other forms of representative democracy. As we all know representatives do discuss issues and they do dissagree, however they have clear rules, which they have imposed on themselves and they try to not to go of topic and not exercise insults and personal attacks and they don't back their claims by sophisms and they do bring facts, documents and testimonials to be credible.
Think about level of discussion in British House of commons when discussing such issues.
We should be aware of the fact that some people might have different opinion and we should respect that.
Comment