I agree that regarding the other poster as an 'opponent' is bad. This is meant to be a consensus based organization, not a debating society where form is more important than substance and the objective is to score points. That is kinda what I was trying to get at.
Line by line comments certainly have their use, but maybe someone occasionally needs to call a time out on that approach when people are using it to talk past each other. On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 6:07 PM, Dave Cridland <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon Sep 20 19:20:03 2010, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote: > >> Traditionally, top-posting (or bottom posting) has been discouraged in >> favor >> of responding line by line. I think it is time to reverse that preference. >> >> >> The primary argument in favour of inline responses is that they allow > context to be retained. I certainly agree that if the responder doesn't > actually take that context into account when responding then this advantage > is quite obviously lost, but throwing away that advantage does not strike me > as a particularly useful tactic. > > > > In particular I find that arguments are often less combative and somewhat >> shorter in mediums where people are forced to restate the issue they are >> objecting to in their own words. >> > > One thing I noted in your post was the use of the term "opponent". Now, > this is itself a combative term, but I suspect you meant it in the sense of > a debating opponent, and you're implying by that usage, and quite clearly > expressing in the above, a call to rhetoric. In other words, you're not > actually criticising the *content*, or technical merit, of the arguments but > the way they're expressed. Given the large porportion of IETF participants > who somehow failed to join debating clubs at exclusive universities, this > disquiets me somewhat. > > Now, I'm all in favour of people avoiding being combative. But I would far > rather be shot down in flames than have my crazier ideas accepted politely > for fear of offense. > > Secondly, an argument to ignore the benefits of a medium that the > participants here created seems entirely odd - surely we should simply > strive to use it *better*, rather than abandoning it? > > Dave. > -- > Dave Cridland - mailto:[email protected] - > xmpp:[email protected]<xmpp%[email protected]> > - acap://acap.dave.cridland.net/byowner/user/dwd/bookmarks/ > - http://dave.cridland.net/ > Infotrope Polymer - ACAP, IMAP, ESMTP, and Lemonade > -- Website: http://hallambaker.com/
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