In a Pit thread, my “cut and paste” style of post and argument was criticized. I’d never even considered this or heard this before – I thought it was the easiest way to both read and make arguments that involve multiple points of disagreement. I thought this was a very common way to make such arguments and discussion posts. Am I wrong?
Some people don’t like it. Maybe others have a different opinion, but to me it’s perfectly fine.
I’ve never heard of people being annoyed by it, but then I don’t spend much time in GD.
Doesn’t bother me at all. The only thing I don’t like about it is the way VB puts a space after the quote. To compensate, I try to put a few spaces before the quote to separate everything, if I think of it, just to keep it clear.
Also, for each person that complains about this style, you’re going to get 5 people complaining if you had made 8 posts to reply to 8 people. Also, if you’re just replying to one person and picking apart their argument, I think this makes it much clearer. It saves the ‘I wasn’t talking about that, I was talking about this’ problem later in the thread.
If you need to respond to a long post that makes multiple arguments, it’s perfectly sensible to break it into multiple quotes and address each point in turn. I’d actually go as far as to say that I think it’s best practice.
One must be careful not to commit the fraud of quote-mining, when slicing up the quotes, of course.
I don’t like it, but I’m not sure entirely why it irritates me. That example post contains one reason: apparently you said “Nope,” and the person you debated with quoted that single word and made a long snarky response to it. I think that’s the sort of nonsense that the cut-and-paste approach leads to: people spend way too much energy responding to side-points or to stuff that doesn’t really merit a response.
It’s much better, in my opinion, to respond either to the whole post someone makes, attacking (if necessary) the meat of the post, its thesis, or else to break their post into two or three smaller sections that merit individual responses.
I’ve seen criticism of it in the past, but I agree with the OP - it’s an easy and natural way to respond to detailed post. I can understand an argument that it could take individual points out of context, but that should be determined in context as well.
Me too.
[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
don’t
[/quote]
Me neither.
Like isn’t the word.
That’s exactly it.
I am. It’s intensely irritating and induces instant eye-glaze. Regardless of the topic or the merits of the argument, it gives the appearance of a sniping game of “no u” Pong that nobody outside of the players wants to read.
These are, of course, only my opinions.
Even I didn’t want to read it, and I’m the one who posted it. That was the reason for my apology to the readers of that thread which prompted this thread.
Let me also clarify that the OP’s responses are cut up in one-sentence fragments, so if my argument is a three-sentence paragraph signifying one idea, I’m getting a response to each sentence individually as a stand-alone argument. None of the ideas are considered as a whole because each sentence is taken out of context.
The ideas become so fragmented that it’s hard to even parse out any meaning. I continued the style because it was frustrating to write out an idea, just to get it fragmented again.
I’ll take this under consideration for future posts. When there are multiple assertions/ideas/arguments in a single paragraph, I thought it was easier and clearer to address each point individually, but maybe that’s too much. I’ll try and leave paragraphs in one piece in the future unless they’re very, very long, or have way too many ideas to address at once.
This was the first time I’d ever seen anyone complain about this – I sincerely thought it was the best may to make my arguments clear and easy to read and understand.
Thank you. 
In my response to your latest post that I’ll write later, I’ll try to point out where I think you might have given a different response if you read the whole idea before responding to the first line.
Many years ago I read a philosopher who was attacking the arguments of his opponents. He spent some time explaining his intent to attack the strongest, not the weakest, arguments raised against his view, because that would be the most persuasive approach.
I’m not great at doing this, but I try to keep it in mind when I’m responding to someone. If a single paragraphs has multiple points in it, either it’s a hot mess of a paragraph and doesn’t really merit a response, or, more likely, there is a main idea to the paragraph which can be addressed. Multiple paragraphs probably have a central thesis that they all support; if that thesis is really worth addressing, do so, but only address the individual paragraphs if you think they’re persuasive, OR if you think they raise strong arguments that are nonetheless wrong.
More than fine to me. When a poster is making multiple points, doing so that OP’s way is easier to follow.
I won’t read a post that’s split into more than about three or four “conversations.” So I’ve been skipping a lot of posts in that thread.
Attack the main arguments. If you can’t agree on the main arguments, the side issues are immaterial and a waste of time. And if you aren’t part of the argument, trying to remember what a one word quote sliced from a larger post might have referred to? Terrible.
Treat the thread like a conversation. In conversation, you pretty much have to deal with one issue at a time. We don’t walk around holding fifty conversational balls in the air at a time because it’s boring, hard to pay attention to, and means you’re getting sidetracked on silly stuff.
Lots of differing opinions so far. Thanks to everyone for their input.
The real problem arises when there is much back-and-forth and arguments get cut up into smaller sections. After awhile, it’s just too difficult to follow as things get sliced and diced into smaller segments.
Beyond the aesthetic offenses committed in this type of post, which amounts to the online version of shouting down the speaker, there are two reasons why this “bitwise response” approach is rightly criticized in terms of rhetorical merit and should be avoided by anyone who wishes to engage in honest discussion or debate. One is that it takes the original posters message in its totality and breaks it up into isolated statements which themselves may not hold together. This makes it difficult to follow the original poster’s chain of reasoning and intent versus reading the post in toto, and even if it isn’t the intent of the responding poster, it may break important lines of continuity in the argument.
The second is that this is often done out of a lazy, stream-of-consciousness approach to rebuttal; that is, instead of reading the original post in depth, forming an independent comprehension of the structure and basis for the argument, and addressing it with a respectful and thoughtful argument in rhetorical opposition, it devolves into a spastic, nitpicking, off the cuff style of response that is often little more than heckling, ad hominem, and “Gotcha!” arguments that are just an attempt to “win” by a thousand tiny blows rather than come to a rationale debate. Further, it invites response in kind, to the point that such exchanges typically result in two or three posters dominating a thread in just responding by virtually shouting the same things back and forth at one another which is of little interest to anyone else. Unfortunately, this trend is reinforced by modern communications media; from infographics summarizing complex issues in a four color pie chart to reporting via Twitter feed, there is just little general interest in taking sufficient time to comprehend an argument before attempting to rebut it, resulting in knee-jerk responses.
I’ll have to admit to having been reduced to this style of response on a number of occasions but almost always because it was initiated by another poster, and such exchanges are typically completely fruitless to the point that when I see this kind of response I either try to summarize the high points (such as they are) of the argument and address them with a complete rebuttal or ignore the poster entirely, which is unfortunate because it is often the case that the poster has some valuable point that they are attempting to make, but as it is so buried in a series of blipverts it is often hardly worth the effort of trying to extract the essential point of contention.
But by all means, if you desire is to blurt out words as rapidly as possible without any consideration for rhetorical structure, coherence, or bothering to understand the original argument, cut and paste away. You won’t be taken seriously or, indeed, at all by many posters, but I don’t expect that will deter the “I must respond now before I lose the post count superiority ground!” contingent.
Stranger
The style itself is not a problem. The substance is the issue.
Like every other example of rhetoric, the line-by-line analysis can be done well or poorly. That is not inherent in the style.
Different posts also demand different responses. Some posts contain huge numbers of separate assertions that are better dealt with one by one rather than by forcing the reader to go through a long block of text and figure out which particular piece is being questioned.
I’d agree that responding to a line-by-line answer with another line-by-line followed with a line-by-line rejoinder is poor form, but that’s because it loses substance. Just as I’d disagree with the point about modern infographic styles. But it would have been easier for you if I’d extracted those lines so that you didn’t need to reread the thread to know what I’m referring to.
The better the argument, the more likely it has been presented in the form best suited to it. That form is irrelevant.
Off the top of my head I can’t think of any well known posters that debate in what I consider a logical, understandable and effective manner that use the cut and past format.
Also, my first inclination now when I see a large cut and paste job my instinct is to just skip it. I imagine this is a learned response. Probably because I typically found reading it a waste of time. Which implies that it certainly doesn’t work for me, and most likely for the many reasons mentioned by others above.
This is pretty much exactly my sentiments: 3-4 chunks often makes sense, but when someone is replying line-by-line, it’s turning into a kluge. It reads like people are trying to score points in isolation rather than have a meaningful exchange.
At it’s absolute worst, it reminds me of CT logic: if you can suggest 1% doubt in 51 places, that adds up to “probably untrue”. Not everyone with the style does this, but when a thread reaches that point, I typically abandon it. I don’t have time to play that game.
Yep–that’s my response, too. There are a lot of this sort of conversation that goes on around here. If there are other posters in a thread who are engaging in an interesting conversation, I’ll put the “pagedown” key to good use. Otherwise, I leave the conversation behind.