D&D General Poll: Should a poster be expected to read (or at least skim) all posts before posting in a thread?

[J.Quondam]

Sounds like the ideal thread strategy is:

1. Devise misleading thread title.
2. Follow up with a vague and cryptically worded OP.
3. As thread is inevitably derailed, irately police it for a few pages to keep it properly stirred up.
4. When the habitual arguers are sufficiently distracted, surreptitiously start the thread you really wanted to post in the first place.
5. ???
6. Profit!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Sounds like the ideal thread strategy is:

1. Devise misleading thread title.
2. Follow up with a vague and cryptically worded OP.
3. As thread is inevitably derailed, irately police it for a few pages to keep it properly stirred up.
4. When the habitual arguers are sufficiently distracted, surreptitiously start the thread you really wanted to post in the first place.
5. ???
6. Profit!

4 really underestimates how many threads I can post in at once lol.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

TIL I don't actually know what "begging the question" really means lol. And the wikipedia page on it has not helped me a great deal lol. Growing up everyone I knew used it to mean "raising the question" (so back to the '80s in the UK), and I still see that, but it seems like it's not being used that way here and wasn't in the in the original Latin.

Random Ruin fact: I once got suspended from a forum for three days (not this one in any form) because I didn't know peculiar American-specific usage of a phrase lol. I can't remember what it was sadly, but the mod used this extreme colloquialism to tell people to stop discussing something (which is like, the third meaning of it when I looked it up later with like "American slang" and "C. 1940" or something on it, and one I'd never come across), and I just had no idea what they were talking about because one of the more conventional meanings made sense in context! The internet!!!!! Hooray!!!!

It's an internet thing. Having watched the (unfortunate) evolution, it sort of worked like this:

As I am sure you know, there are these things called "informal fallacies." A long time ago, back in the usenet days of the internet, people who vaguely remembered the informal fallacies from their Philosophy 101 class began to trot them out, often incorrectly, in order to WIN ALL THE POINTZZ!!11!!!! on the internet. From usenet, it spread to the nascent world wide web and then, in general.

So now we have the situation where the invocation of these informal fallacies is a meme unto itself. Where you get people dropping ad hominem, or strawman, or begging the question at a drop of a hat. And this is really annoying, because:

1. 85% of the time, the person who is doing it is doing it incorrectly.

2. Even if they are using it correctly, it doesn't matter. It's almost like the whole lesson of ethos, pathos, logos has been lost- sorry, never learned

There are numerous classic examples of this- if you have ever been in a courtroom, or watched a courtroom drama, you know that informal fallacies of relevance (such as ad hominem) are completely proper arguments. For example, if someone is shown to be a liar, then you can discount what they are saying.

This is because the heuristics that we use for discussion and decision are not the same as a structured and logical argument.

TLDR; the surest mark of a person that just wants to argue without knowing what they are talking about is the employment of informal fallacies. Because then they can just get to arguing without discussing the underlying substance.


Finally, America and the UK are two great countries separated by a common language. You should check out the different in "moot" sometime.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It's an internet thing. Having watched the (unfortunate) evolution, it sort of worked like this:

As I am sure you know, there are these things called "informal fallacies." A long time ago, back in the usenet days of the internet, people who vaguely remembered the informal fallacies from their Philosophy 101 class began to trot them out, often incorrectly, in order to WIN ALL THE POINTZZ!!11!!!! on the internet. From usenet, it spread to the nascent world wide web and then, in general.

So now we have the situation where the invocation of these informal fallacies is a meme unto itself. Where you get people dropping ad hominem, or strawman, or begging the question at a drop of a hat. And this is really annoying, because:

1. 85% of the time, the person who is doing it is doing it incorrectly.

2. Even if they are using it correctly, it doesn't matter. It's almost like the whole lesson of ethos, pathos, logos has been lost- sorry, never learned

There are numerous classic examples of this- if you have ever been in a courtroom, or watched a courtroom drama, you know that informal fallacies of relevance (such as ad hominem) are completely proper arguments. For example, if someone is shown to be a liar, then you can discount what they are saying.

This is because the heuristics that we use for discussion and decision are not the same as a structured and logical argument.

TLDR; the surest mark of a person that just wants to argue without knowing what they are talking about is the employment of informal fallacies. Because then they can just get to arguing without discussing the underlying substance.


Finally, America and the UK are two great countries separated by a common language. You should check out the different in "moot" sometime.

I have to admit I do use "strawman", because a lot of people do like to use strawman arguments, i.e. "an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument", though I guess one can always question intentionality on the internet, as I noted earlier lol, good luck to any of use reliably determining that.

Honestly I think the biggest problem on the internet these days is the number of people who seem to think acting like a low budget version of Roman-era Stoic is "big and cool" (even though half of them couldn't spell stoic, and 95% of them have never heard of the Stoics).

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Honestly I think the biggest problem on the internet these days is the number of people who seem to think acting like a low budget version of Roman-era Stoic is "big and cool" (even though half of them couldn't spell stoic, and 95% of them have never heard of the Stoics).

I know!

The cool kids, like me, are all about the Greek stoics.

As Zeno said to the tortoise, "It's all Greek to me."

 

[Thomas Shey]

I have to admit I do use "strawman", because a lot of people do like to use strawman arguments, i.e. "an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument", though I guess one can always question intentionality on the internet, as I noted earlier lol, good luck to any of use reliably determining that.

Yeah, Internet Telepathy is always unreliable, but its really hard to see some arguments any other way.

 

[Orius]

Once a thread is past about the 8th page, it’s usually past its expiration date And devolved into bickering. A new voice at least distracts from the current argument, for at least two posts, before the loggerheads go back to what they were squabbling about.

Yes unfortunately that's true.

The problem with long threads is that after the first few pages usually all the important points have been discussed, and it ends up as little more than nitpicking over increasing meaningless minutia. It depends on the thread of course, some topics can handle lengthy discussions, and there's always those long-running threads that stay around for years.

I usually prefer to read as much of the topic as possible so I don't repeat something needlessly, but in a long and very active thread, eventually anything I was thinking of saying gets said, or the topic veers so off course that I lose interest. If there's a new thread that popped up overnight and then exploded into 50, 60 pages or more, I usually don't even bother to take a look. It takes too much time to read all the stuff in the first place, and my eyes start to glaze over by the time I reach page 20. And if most of the pages past that are empty wall of text nitpicking, the same people repeating the same crap over and over again, and more and more moderator red text, then the thread probably isn't worth it anymore.

It's not so much the actual number of posts, but the rate of posting, as well as the tone of the overall discussion.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I have to admit I do use "strawman", because a lot of people do like to use strawman arguments, i.e. "an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument", though I guess one can always question intentionality on the internet, as I noted earlier lol, good luck to any of use reliably determining that.

So, on this, I will proffer the following suggestion-

The next time you are about to use "strawman" (or any other informal fallacy) .... just ... don't. Don't use it. See what happens instead.

Here's the thing- understanding logic, understanding rhetoric, it can help you understand argument and discussion. It helps when you are reading what other people are saying. But it doesn't help when you use it. In fact, it hurts.

Let's use three classic examples- the strawman, ad hominem and circular reasoning (we will use 'begging the question' in the specifics):

A: 5e should have more advanced martial options.
B: Oh, so you want 5e to be exactly like 4e, eh? We all know what happened with 4e! Why do you want to kill D&D?

I am using an extreme example here so the point isn't missed. You have two choices- either go "strawman" or don't. Here's the thing- what is the value-add of strawman? If you go down that route, it is most likely that you will end up arguing over what, exactly, is a strawman, whether it's a strawman or not, etc.

You are arguing about arguing.

On the other hand, you can just not use the term strawman at all. In which case, you have two choices:
1. Disengage. If the person is truly intentionally misrepresenting you, then why discuss anything with them?
2. Try to de-escalate. "Hey, I appreciate that feedback, but that wasn't my point. I was thinking about some advanced martial options within the framework of 5e- not a comment about 4e one way or the other. Do you have any thoughts on that? Thanks!"

Same with ad hominem. If the person is directly insulting you, just tell them. "I don't appreciate that you insinuated that my mother plays bards. Moving back to Greyhawk ..."

And it's the same with circular reasoning as well. "5e is the best ever edition, because they surveyed people about the best things to put into 5e, and then they only put the best things into 5e." I mean .... great! Putting only the best things ever into something tends to make it pretty pretty pretty good. So, cool? But instead of yelling at the poster that they are supporting a claim with a premise that is the claim, maybe just inquire what they are really doing? "I am a little confused about this thread- is this for fans of 5e to talk about how great it is?"

I try to view discussion as fun; and arguing about arguing is never fun.

IMO, etc.


Note- edited because I forgot to include something.

 

[Stormonu]

Hey, look - page 9!

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Didn't read any of the discussion up to now, but to reply to OP I definitely think people should read the comments to the thread, or at least the last few pages, otherwise how will they meaningfully take part?
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Not reading the discussion can have the positive side effect of pulling a thread that's digressed badly back on track by dropping new seeds of discussion closer to the original topic into a thread that's drifted.