[C Elegans]

Originally Posted by thantor3

It doesn?t refer to anything. It was simply any attempt to preclude what I felt could be a distracting foray away from the topic at hand.

How strange. I obviously misunderstood it since I found to be very out-of-context, ie to me it seemed like a sudden off topic comment in the middle of a coherent reasoning about something else.

I?m sorry. Do you often feel that comments made to the community at large refer specifically to you?

I have not read the totality of the Reagan thread and my comments on censorship were not referring to that thread, as I referenced above.

Do you often make off-topic comments that do not refer to anything?
Seriously though, no, I rarely believe things posted at public forums are directed to me unless they are direct replies or referrals to something specific I posted. However, I thought you had read the Reagan-thread since you referred to it, and in that thread and the following one, there was some strawman discussion about censorship going on, so I wanted to make sure that you didn't read only a few posts and then assumed that censorship and free speach had been used in order to defend the position that critisism of Reagan could be posted. You comment "please, spare me the righteous invectives about censorship" sounded to me as if it referred to something specific, as you were expecting something specific, and the Reagan thread was the only mentioning I could found about censorship. Now, my English is obviously not as nuanced as the native speakers, but I thought the use of the article "the" such as in "spare me the righteous invectives..." implicated it was a specific referral, whereas the wording "spare me righeous invectives..." or "spare me any righteous invectives" would not refer to anything specific. If some native English speaker would enlighten me I'd appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Thantor3

Yes, I can see that you are quite upset about this issue but I assure you that the focus of the comments in my original post were not specifically centered on you.

Don't worry, I'm not so upset so you need to take my personal feelings into account It may seem overly picky to want to clarify those simply mistakes, but misunderstandings early on in discussions can often lead to people ending up not discussing the same topic, which of course ruins the discussion.

Are you implying that DW and I colluded to create this thread in order to somehow persecute you? If so, let me again assure you that this was certainly not the case. As to strawmen and personal attacks, I believe that all of my posts in this thread have been respectful and on-topic. If you feel otherwise, please let me know so that I can address this publicly.

What? No, certainly not, it is confusing and surprising to me that you suggest the possibility of interpreting this thread that way. I mentioned you and DW in the same sentence, "You and DW have mentioned some things you view negatively in discussions here at SYM because you had both in your posts mentioned some things that you viewed negatively. Then, in turn, I wanted to mentions some things I view negatively.

Strawmen and ad hominems have been frequent in serious discussions here at SYM, and let me in turn assure you that my mentioning of factors I find negative and destructive for communication, was not in any way directed to you. Instead, let me illustrate with some examples:

Not fully in the only country that counts. To summarize things as they apply to the US...

Oh please, are you trying to p*ss me off? Are you trying to get me to post stuff that will get me banned? You're heading in the right direction. That is the only reason I see for posting this provocative material.

You tell everyone why middle eastern cultures are as good as the west so we can all have a look or a laugh. Lets just see how many people will agree with you.

NN...I had you pegged as smarter than this...

The above examples illustrates ad hominems, discriminating statements and mind-reading in the form of "begging the question". I have choosen very old examples so that no current user will feel personally accused. However, they all illustrate types of discussion behaviours that I find very destrucive and negative to communication. I believe the factors I find negative, has little or no association the issue of whether a group is a community or not, instead it is an issue of discussion methods. So my point is: as long as communication can flow in a way that people find interesting, I dont' think it matters whether SYM is a community or not. Here at SYM, I personally think this should be the only common goal, and if somebody would want a more community-like atmosphere with extended shared goals to work for, I think they either can choose to create one such subgroup (maybe the DF:s is an already existing group with those characteristics?) or discuss the issue with Buck since GB is his site and it is ultimately he who must decide what SYM should be and not be and what rules we all should follow.