Niall Pemberton wrote:
On 4/22/06, Jonathan Revusky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<snip>
Here is what I think someone would find by examining the archive.
Whenever certain pointed questions are posed, one of two things happens:
(1) The person being posed the question simply walks away from the
discussion. This has happened at least a couple of times in
conversations where I have asked you to clarify points you have made,
Ted. This is also the approach Niall Pemberton has used a couple of
times. You write something, and then when somebody brings up
counter-arguments are asks you to clarify one or more of your points,
you just walk away from the discussion.
</snip>
Well this goes both ways
Well, I beg to differ. In terms of discussions about why Struts 1.x
development stagnated, I see an onus on people such as yourself, you
being on the Struts PMC, to address the question.
There is no similar onus on me to clarify anything -- about my political
views, attitudes, or personality.
You're creating a false symmetry here.
- you never answered me when I asked you for
clarification...
http://www.mail-archive.com/user@struts.apache.org/msg43608.html
Niall, what question here did I leave unanswered? The only one I see is:
"Is it not a reasonable representation of your attitude then?"
That's the question I left unanswered? The "it" above, by the way, is my
alleged desire to see the demise of Apache....
I basically interpreted this as a rhetorical question. You weren't
asking me to clarify any point I made in a discussion or debate. You
were just making blanket statements about me not liking ASF, which is
really just irrelevant, isn't it? And, after all, I have no means of
bringing about the "demise of apache", do I?
I actually interpreted this as a sort of subtext like: "This guy doesn't
dig ASF (i.e. is an atheist and probably a freemason as well) so there
is not much need to argue with him." Something like that.... and that's
really just veering towards the ad-hominem fallacy.
After all, the basic reason that the ad-hominem fallacy is a fallacy is
that you have to address a person's arguments in a debate, not attack
the person. In the same way, just veering off into some blanket
statements about me not liking ASF seems irrelevant and fallacious.
Well, anyway, my "attitude", politics, or personality are not really the
legitimate subjects of debate. YOu can't put that on a par with the way
you or Ted Husted (the really major practitioner of this approach)
simply walk away from discussions about how Struts 1.x development
stagnated.
http://www.mail-archive.com/user@struts.apache.org/msg43583.html
This other one you link is rather odd because I don't see where you're
posing any questions or providing much basis for any constructive
discussion. To characterize things I say as "noise" without saying what
you're even referring to just strikes me as an attempt to get yourself
off the hook in terms of answering basic questions.
Now, by contrast, the questions that I have posed that you guys just
walk away from are things like:
"If the Struts developers have no interest in further development of
Struts 1.x, why not let people in, like Phil Zoio or Frank Zammetti, who
want to do something with that codebase?"
The basic pointed question, which is that, when you guys have done next
to nothing for years on the Struts 1.x codebase, and now are basically
abandoning it and bringing in Webwork -- how can you justify this
"closed club" attitude of not letting people who actually want to work
on modernizing that codebase?
The way Ted Husted answers such questions is that he points you to pages
about "How ASF works" and so on. Of course, the basic pretext of the
question is that, in this instance, ASF didn't actually work very well,
right? So it's just a huge "beg the question" fallacy. Then you point
this out and you get in response the sweet sound of silence.
I know from private correspondence that plenty of people see through the
illegitimate tactics that Ted uses to try to end a debate -- claim that
some irrelevant page somewhere actually answers the question when it
doesn't. And then, claim later, that he actually answered the question...
It's obvious enough. Your statement that this "goes both ways" is not
true. While my behavior is not always perfect, I don't think you'll ever
find any examples of me behaving like that -- here or elsewhere.
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org
FreeMarker blog, http://freemarker.blogspot.com/
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