Stranger on a Train got a mild rebuke from tomndebb:
While this is not a hill I really want to defend to my last breath I will say that I think an accusation of JAQing off against the OP is very fair. I do not think the accused (in this case) needs to be consistently ignoring evidence for this to apply.
Indeed, often the point of JAQing off is to sow doubt in people’s minds by merely posing the question. It is there to suggest there is doubt where none (or very little) exists.
I think the OP, in this case, was engaging in JAQing off and being called on it is fair comment.
I don’t know exactly what the rules are about whether calling this out is acceptable in GD, but I agree that it fits the definition. My understanding of JAQing means to implicitly advocate a position by stating it in the guise of a question rather than an explicit claim. The intent of framing it as a question is to influence opinion without having to provide arguments or evidence, as would usually be expected if you made an explicit claim.
A vast amount of damning factual information had already been discussed extensively in the other thread, and has been widely publicized in the press. But OP chose to ignore that, and in starting a new thread OP was pushing false equivalence through JAQing, claiming that “everything online is either filled with vitriol or otherwise biased” so he feels he can’t trust all these reports, and ostensibly “asking” what really happened - but clearly pushing a narrative that the truth cannot be so damning and must lie somewhere in the middle.
Interesting - yesterday a poster made a complaint/question in ATMB about the exact same thread. From the exact opposite POV :). Basically that the hostility and accusation of JAQing off were rude, unwarranted and from that poster’s POV sanctionable as threadshitting.
I honestly not 100% decided if that OP was JAQing off or not. I do know that in a quick glance at the Pit thread about Arbury that that poster was not a participant and assuming that any given poster will have read any given thread is a mistake. I don’t read half of the stuff on this board, a lot less than that probably.
MHO I guess is that the default presumption, outside the Pit anyway, should be that folks are being genuine. If you think someone is being disingenuous then Pit them, report them or ignore them, or some combination of those*.
But to be fair I’ll note that I’m probably being a hypocrite with this advice, as I’m pretty sure I’ve snarked at more obvious trolls right off the bat in GD myself.
I agree with Tamerlane: these accusations are accusations of debating in bad faith, and don’t actually lead to good debate.
In that thread, although I think Ultravires might be getting at some super-wrong shit, he’s probably also getting at the super-wrong shit that the murderers will use for their defense. I find this kind of thread pretty helpful, when informed people take it seriously: it helps me understand either why the law is profoundly jacked and allows this kind of racist violence, or how the law does not include loopholes for racist killings like this.
So I appreciate people who take these threads seriously.
I agree with tomndebb. Accusing people of JAQing in the second post of a thread would undermine anyone asking a question in an OP. If it’s more clear throughout the thread that something else is going on, that’s a different question. Then it’s a matter of degree. But tomndebb’s note was about posting that in the second post, before much else happened in the thread.
Just speaking for myself, I’d prefer to see accusations of JAQing off made via Report this Post.
When posters do it in clear it is extremely destructive to debate and discussion. And all love to our debate but, as a whole, they are extremely likely - based on the reports that come in - to consider opposition to be trolling even when it looks pretty reasonable from the outside.
This always seems backwards to me. Debating in bad faith is what prevents good debate. You can’t have a good debate if one side is using all the tricks rather than arguing with claim, evidence, reasoning, and a conclusion.
When someone avoids making a claim, that is bad faith arguing. They are attempting to avoid having to say straight up what they are arguing, making it deliberately difficult to argue against their claim.
If the mods won’t moderate it so we can have a good debate, then the participants need to be able to point it out.
That said, there is room to argue that certain WAYS of saying it are unacceptable. I’ve always thought the specific phrase “JAQing off” was associating it with masturbation, and there specifically is a rule against such. I much prefer saying “You appear to be just asking questions, while avoiding giving a premise. What is it you are trying to argue?”
I’m also all for my style of posts where I point out that the way someone is arguing is bad. I point out that various things (like sarcasm) are not substitutes for argument. I point out that they argued things they did not prove, or are using hostility or emotional arguments in place of facts.
I think all of those I described should remain in a poster’s ability to argue. And if the person is not arguing in bad faith, and just made a bad argument, it encourages them to do better. And, if not, you now have a reason to ignore their post since it wasn’t actually an argument.
A quick reply wanted to voice my appreciation for conveying that idea in that manner. That’s what I’ve been trying to say–they aren’t deliberately saying someone they disagreed with are trolling–they’re just too caught up in the argument.
Then you’ve judged the discussion before it’s been had. When people get to accuse other people of something before they’ve done it, there’s no reason to have any discussion. It also relieves people of having to back up their accusations with evidence and facts. If people just want to go after a certain person, they can do that in the Pit. But going after a topic because a certain person brought it up stifles all discussion because some people will accuse others of JAQing repeatedly. That can lead to targeting behavior that I don’t like to see on message boards.
That’s not to say that it’s never fair to point out that people are dodging questions, but doing it in the second post stifles discussion.
I disagree with Tom’s standard of what defines “Just Asking Questions”. I don’t feel it requires a series of questions. I feel the defining characteristic is to present a negative story but pose it in the form of a question. This allows a person to disseminate the negative story without having to take personal responsibility for it.
If I said, for example, that President Matt Santos (I’m using a fictional president to avoid derailing the topic) was cheating on his wife, people would challenge me on what evidence I had to support this allegation and I would have to back it up with evidence. If I said I heard that President Santos was cheating on his wife, people would challenge me on my sources and I would have to produce some cites. If I said I believe that President Santos was cheating on his wife, people would challenge my opinions and I would have to back up my judgement. But in all of these cases, I would have to stand by what I wrote.
However if I ask if President Santos is cheating on his wife, I can spread the accusation without having to defend it. If anyone tries to challenge me on what I said, I can just claim I didn’t necessarily say/hear/believe what I wrote, I just asked a question. And even if everyone answers my question with a resounding no, I’ve succeeded in making President Santos cheating on his wife a topic that people are now talking and thinking about.
And, yes, I feel that’s what UltraVires did in his thread. He’s a lawyer; he doesn’t need the people on this message board to explain to him how the law works.
He started his OP in a certain way; he cited Georgia’s law on citizen’s arrests and described how the incident might have occurred - that Arbury had committed a crime and McMichael was performing a valid citizen’s arrest and then Arbury resisted being arrested and McMichael had to defend himself. And only then, after having presented this scenario, does he ask “So, what exactly happened here?”
If UltraVires just wanted to ask for information about what happened, he should have just asked what happened. There was no reason to present a scenario about what might have happened before asking.
And if UltraVires wanted to present a possible scenario for what might have happened, he should have openly said that this was his theory and then stood up to defend it if people wanted to challenge it.
Unlike you, I wouldn’t judge it. On this board, it might hit the debate rule of thrice told tales. I don’t know.
But I’ve started a flat earth thread before, not on this board. It comes down to a debate about epistemology.
As for the facts of each of those topics that are highly accepted, those are easy to find and link so they’re easy to refute. It’s not necessary to accuse anyone of anything. Just link the facts.
If it’s only the topic under question, I’m good with anything being discussed within the rules of the forum. But your original point was that it matters who asks. That leads to more targeting. If the same person is asking the same unanswerable questions, that’s probably a mod issue.
So what is the accusation here? That I know what is going on and am attempting to provide cover for racists and summary executions? If that is the accusation, then lets lay it on the table. Because that in and of itself should be modded, and not just in the first post, but all subsequent ones. Those are straight up attacking the poster and not the post and are accusations of racism and trolling. Against the rules.
I explained exactly what I was looking for. If the new rules of the board are that I need to jump on the liberal bandwagon at every turn, then you might as well just ban me now and enjoy your liberal echo chamber as most of you seem to want.
An OP that is a question is appropriate. I want people to start threads on topics they don’t understand well. That’s how we learn.
Responding to an argument with a non-clarifying question instead of countering the argument by pointing out problems with the reasoning or data is JAQing. It’s discouraged in reviewing journal articles and grant applications. It’s a lazy practice employed by people incapable of formulating an actual argument. Whether it should be against the rules here, I don’t know. I recommend people just not respond to JAQs.
Calling an OP a JAQ is threadshitting. Calling a question-in-response a JAQ is not. Questioning why a thread even exists (which also occurred in that thread, unmoderated last I checked) is threadshitting.
Granted. Now I’d like you to go through the boards and find three threads where
Someone started in bad faith.
A poster called them out for it using a term like “JAQing off”.
Good debate followed.
I’m not saying that bad faith is good debates. I’m saying that bad debates aren’t improved by calling out bad faith like that. The truly bad faith debates are unsalvageable.
Meanwhile, good discussions can be torpedoed by accusations of bad faith. And people are really, really bad at correctly identifying bad faith, tending to conclude that anyone who disagrees with them must be lying, because how on earth could anyone honestly disagree with their obviously correct point?
I missed this. This may be correct, but I think it misses something really important: sometimes I come to GD not to win, but to listen. I’ve posted several threads over the years that are along these lines: “Here’s this thorny issue, and as I understand it here are two different takes on it, and I’m torn and haven’t reached a conclusion. Does anyone have some information or reasoning that they find persuasive?”
It’s not good arguing, but I’m not looking to argue. I’m asking a question that might provoke thoughtful responses that can help me draw a conclusion.
WI the poster in question has a long history of doing exactly that, and appears to be doing so again? In this scenario, by poisoning the well in this manner, he’s essentially stifled “reasonable discussion” before any replies can come rolling in.