[WikiEN-l] Re: Can we ban 172 now? And VV too!

Fri Jun 4 17:45:39 UTC 2004

Sheldon Rampton wrote:

> Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>> Because there's no possible excuse for personal attacks. It doesn't
>> matter how strongly you feel about the issue, your personal history,
>> nothing.
>
>
> The people who think that Abe *initiated* personal attacks should take 
> another look at the title of this thread. This entire discussion is 
> taking place in the context of an attack on Abe in which a proposal is 
> on the table to ban him. Moreover, the discussion here has been 
> mean-spirited and unfair. Abe posted the text of an article he wrote 
> about the failings of the Soviet economy. I read the article, and I 
> could see that it contained several clear, strong criticisms of 
> Stalinist policies that hurt the economy. Nevertheless, Fred and 
> others responded to the article by waxing nasty and sarcastic. They 
> cherry-picked phrases out of the article that made it sound like Abe 
> was blaming workers for poor productivity, and then threw in 
> gratuitous accusations of being an apologist for dictators because in 
> their opinion Fred's article didn't say enough about the Soviet 
> gulags. As far as I can see, Fred is the one who initiated this 
> attack, and he did it dishonestly. He has a different POV than Abe, 
> and he's trying to resolve it by having him banned and by warring 
> about the content of his article on this listserv.
>
Where does Fred ask for banning because of POV? And there's nothing
wrong with criticizing content - an attack on content, even blistering,
is still not a personal attack, by definition. Look at any book review
section in print; if the author says something stupid, the reviewer
relishes the opportunity to slash the book to shreds, using every
creative insult imaginable, but the author is pretty much off-limits.

> Sure, Abe shouldn't have called Fred "senile," but in the overall 
> context of nasty discourse that has characterized this thread, I don't 
> think Abe's comment stands out as being more egregious than the 
> insults that have been thrown his way.

If nothing else, calling someone senile as a way of damaging their
reputation is libel, and it does give Fred legal options, although
I don't expect he'll bother.

As I see it, 172 brings all this on himself by personalizing
criticism of his content and then using that as an excuse for
bad behavior. He has signed up for the Harmonious editing club
though, so that's a positive sign.

Stan