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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4092257" data-attributes="member: 2067">Take it in context with my next sentence. I wasn't refering to a specific example, I was refering to the argument itself. When you claim that someone has an opinion because they are (for example) unwilling to change, you're speculating on someone's motives.Right. So you agree. You are speculating on someone's motives.Now, I say that when you do that, it isn't very useful to the discussion of 4e, and it is furthermore insulting to those with the claims. It's dismissive of those claims.Here's an example. Someone posts saying "I don't like 1-1-1 Diagonals! It ruins believability for me! 3e's 1-2-1 Diagonals were better!" If you were to make a post saying something like "3e wasn't very realistic, so the issue isn't 4e's diagonals. You're just being reactionary." It sounds insulting, dismissive, and really does nothing to address the actual content of their post, which is "I don't like 1-1-1 Diagonals, and I prefer 3e's 1-2-1 Diagonals."Instead, something like "I like 4e's 1-1-1 diagonals because they make it easier and I don't really have a problem with the abstraction" keeps the discussion basically on-track, doesn't insult them or tell them what they are thinking. You're right, it wasn't about me. None of this is really personal. Truth be told, a lot of my position in this thread belongs in Meta. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> I'm just saying that when you speculate on someone's motives, it's usually insulting to them, and it usually doesn't address the actual point the person is trying to make.So it's not really conducive to actual discussion about 4e. Well, if 4e added a color trail and 3e didn't have a color trail and the poster is upset about the chage in 4e, and likes where it is in 3e, the most useful conversation would be about what that color trail gives you and what that color trail takes away. I guess I don't really think anyone on an internet message board is really in a place to tell people why they are behaving rationally about one thing and irrationally about another.People do that, sometimes.That's generally when you agree to disagree and move on.The repeat is going to be caused by multiple people having the same problem.If you tell people they're behaving irrationally, they're going to probably be insulted. It's generally not seen as a positive trait. Furthermore, it dismisses their point: I don't have to listen to you because you're irrational.If you think someone's being irrational, ignore the post. If they're ALWAYS being irrational, slap 'em on the Ignore list. If it's disruptively irrational, report the post. If you call them on it, people get defensive and threads get shut down, or at least WILDLY diverted from talking about actual 4e rules. Call them on the rules. Disagree with them about the rules. But if you speculate on their motives, it's going to kind of threadcrap.This does go both ways, with the haters dismissing 4e enthusiasm for overzealous rabid fanboy idiocy. That's the same thing, and it's similarly useless.If they have nothing to add to the conversation beacuse they're just hating instinctively on the new edition, then you don't really gain anything by calling that out. It's not going to change their opinion, and it's probably going to just torque them off. Ignoring the elephant in the room (and the posts by those you can see have monkeys on their backs) makes the convo productive because people actually have to either address the actual content of the post, or be ignored.And even those WITH agendas can make some good points. Because you don't want a repeat of the same obvious points?It's a natural consequence of debate and discussion. I don't know of any debate, online or in the world, that involves normal people, that doesn't repeat the same arguments over and over again. Choose any major political issue of your nation of choice in the last 5 years, chances are people are STILL debating it, and probably using some of the SAME arguments they were 5 years ago. Regardless of which side you think is right, regardless of which side is winning or has won or will win, they are the same obvious points that everyone is making. I'm not sure why this forum would be exempted from that general problem of discussion.I also don't think that pointing at the elephant in the room does anything to make it go away. People are going to be irrational and emotional and reactionary. Pionting that out only makes them DEFENSIVE, irrational, emotional, and reactionary. It doesn't change their minds, and it doesn't stop their complaining. Debate the points you feel have merit, ignore the ones you don't. Ascribing motives, here, doesn't do much to stop the problem of round-and-round debate.</blockquote>

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