Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4991280" data-attributes="member: 4937">And as I said, "So?"Now that is a quite different assertion altogether.  It is quite possible that Smeelbo is guilty of libel.  I however have no basis for judging whether Smeelbo's claims are true or not, as I'm no expert in the professional lives of various game developers and couldn't tell you what any of them were famous within the game development community for.  I presume that Smeelbo has (or believes he has) some sort of insider knowledge that I don't have (otherwise he wouldn't have made his assertion), and if he doesn't, then yes, he is guilty of libel.  If I really cared about the truth of Smeelbo's assertion, then I would ask him to produce his evidence or at least relate his hearsay.  However, I don't really care.  His comment I hold in the Limbo of, "Things I've heard someone assert, but which I have no evidence to believe anything about.", pending me actually getting evidence one way or the other.  My opinion of Sleebo is therefore held in the same Limbo, pending my conclusions about whether he spreads petty nasty lies or interesting insider information.I however certainly don't judge him for making personal attacks.  If someone said of me, "Celebrim is a pretentious, bombastic, highly competitive person who too lightly regards other peoples feelings until after the fact, and who thinks he's smarter than just about everyone else.", I'd be forced to say, "Oh, so you know me well then.", and perhaps if I thought them a friend, "If I'm being a jerk, do try to gently remind me of it."  I don't think I'd see such a statement as an attack at all, as it's a largely true one and I'd have to have a bigger ego than I do to get offended by the truth being plainly told.   I might possibly get offended by someone saying of me things that weren't true, particularly if the speaker knew them to be untrue, but that's a different matter.I suppose so.  One is a vague wishy washy cowardly attack that communicates no real information but leaves the reader to insinuate whatever they might imagine it means, while protecting the writer from accusations of libel and slander by leaving lots of wiggle room and the other is a bold statement that at least communicates what the writer honestly believes.  One statement can be defended against, and the other constitutes a accusation which if I tried to discredit it would be like trying to fight something made of smoke.What I do find more rude than Smeelbo's unvarnished statement of his opinion of Mr. Mearls is your repeated use of phrases like, "treading dangerously close" and "perilously close to".  I find it a nasty lawyerly weaselly habit, akin to, "I don't mean to be rude, but..." or "I don't mean to put myself forward, but...".  He didn't tread dangerously close to making a personal attack.  He made a personal attack.  He didn't tread dangerously close to libel.  He stated something that was either true or else - because it was false - it was libel.   It's quite one thing to make petty nasty attacks.  It's even worse IMO to make petty nasty attacks while pretending to not do so.  So, perhaps before you judge someone else for being overly frank, or petty, or nasty, or harsh or whatever, understand that that too is just someone's opinion about what constitutes being rude and other people might find other personal habits more difficult to live with.I assume that as a writer, Mr. Mearls has a pretty thick skin when it comes to critics.  Speaking as someone who has written a thing or two from time to time, and created something by the sweat of my brow and blood of my hands, I'd find it just as hard to accept criticism of my work as criticism of myself (and maybe more so) and would perceive criticism of my work on the same emotional level (it would hurt) as criticism of myself.  But I'd rather we all practiced at having a thicker hide and practiced less being outraged.</blockquote>

Verification