It is an efficient way to address multiple statements by another poster. I don’t understand the criticism.
But a post isn’t a like a face-to-face conversation in a very important way. There are no real-time responses. So we often wind up making multiple points in the same post. They aren’t side conversations, but part of the same conversation, made in parallel due to the restrictions of the format.
A real life conversation doesn’t have paragraphs of text before the other person is allowed to speak. If you see something you need to respond to, you can respond to it as soon as there is a break. That’s the same thing as using a split quote structure.
Online conversations are more complex than face to face ones because of this. And that’s not a bug a but a feature. There are so many topics that are easier to discuss in this format.
Don’t take this to mean that I don’t understand why line-by-line quoting is annoying. If split quotes are the equivalent to waiting for the other person to stop for a bit, line-by-line quoting is the equivalent of interrupting people while they are still talking. It’s only very occasionally useful.
Actually, it is highly inefficient. It forces the reader to reread the statements of the original poster and then review the original post to understand context, then try to follow a string of unconnected comments to discern some semblance of a point (if there is one) and try to put the overall argument together himself. It is also frequently and explicitly repetitive, with the respondent actually citing above sections of his own post because of the difficulty in putting coherent arguments together in this format. It really only makes sense in response to a discrete list put forth by the original poster.
Like excessive narrative voiceover in film, it is typically an indication of sloppy writing and lazy thinking.
Stranger
I agree with Bruce Wayne. I disagree with you. More than disagree. I think all your points are factually incorrect.
I don’t even understand why this is in ATMB. Are the mods expected to ban this practice? Give out warnings for its use? How exactly would they define and police this?
The practice is obviously a personal preference. If you don’t want to use it, don’t use it. But you yourself have used it at times, because there are times in which it is a useful technique. I have used it at times for that reason. Unconditional rejection of it is foolish and counterproductive. Especially if it means skipping a wonderful post made by me.
I agree with the above. It seemed to me to be common courtesy to repost the point one is addressing just above the response. That’s how you know, specifically, what argument is addressed to what point.
That’s generally how I do it. I don’t see the objection. YMMV but I’m not going to stop doing it (unless instructed by a mod, and they won’t).
Regards,
Shodan
Well, I have no problem with it. I find little to recommend that style of posting, but it wouldn’t rise to any level that I would feel damages anyone’s ability to debate. As a moderator I wouldn’t take action based on it.
So…no. I don’t think any of us on the moderation staff would intervene based on that level of post provided it’s not on the ‘intentionally annoying’ level a la Vinyl Turnip’s post of 10AM.
Oh, you mean Great Debates.
I agree. You may be responding to someone upthread and so you have to quote their post in order to clarify to whom you are responding. If you are careful to break the post up into logical bites, it’s much easier to follow the rebuttal. Sure, it can be abused, but there are many times when a poster could have literally numbered his points, and then you could have responded by number. Same diff.
Could be in IMHO, but it’s more about SDMB culture, so I think it’s fine here.
Indeed. It’s a tool, and as a tool it can be misused or used well. Depends on the tool user.
Or me!
The line-by-line critique of an argument is sometimes called “fisking” Glossary of blogging - Wikipedia by the way.
Yes!
I’m quoting that last part of that sentence in the wiki for completeness.
Some examples of the one-line critiques I’ve seen include:
So what?
Who cares?
Irrelevant.
You’re wrong.
This doesn’t matter.
Nope.
It depends.
Obviously I disagree. (without anything more)
They might have a sentence or two following them but not enough to do anything more than be negation, IMO. Other people might disagree on that.
I’m interested to hear what some of you who are defending the practice would respond to this type of practice, regardless of whether it’s good form or not.
I probably would have ignored it except that I saw someone else quote the snippets to ostensibly prove that the point had been negated.
As an aside, the phrase I made up to describe the practice was “cut and post” (as in cutting up a post to respond) not “cut and past”, which doesn’t have a meaning to me. I was thinking it might have been a typo in the title, but I’ve seen it repeated.
I want to thank iiandyiiii for opening up the discussion. It’s been an interesting one so far.
I would, for one.
Two points can be made in response. One is that the sentence or two following in the case of your second example, the only one with this pattern, give an explanation for the negation, so obviously do more. The other is that simple negation may indeed be sufficient for posts that are wrong, irrelevant, obfuscating, or declining to engage in real argument. It is more powerful to dissect a nonsense post line by line to show that each point is wrong than to say it is wrong overall, something that would likely bring a demand for a better explanation.
You’ll notice that the third example, which was directed at you, addresses your points directly, even when disagreeing with them. They are short answers, true, but that is exactly the purpose for such a style: long answers to single sentences would be far more offensive than basic ripostes.
I haven’t read the thread in question, so there may be some context I’m losing, but nothing about about three posts in isolation strike me as egregious.
Since the phrase “cut and paste” is used in the post itself, the title certainly seems to be typoed.
OK, it sounds like you’re on board with this practice. If you’re on the other side of this practice, how would you respond to it?
Let’s say that you created a couple long paragraphs with ideas you felt were on-topic and the ideas were presented as a cohesive whole. Then your responder took each line and dissected it with this style of rebuttal, how would you respond?
As I said earlier, fisking is a tool. It may be the right tool or the wrong one at any given moment. No general answer is possible.
Yep. My mind read “cut and paste” (and then my fingers typed “past”). Sorry about that.
The “obviously I disagree” was a statement in response to the statement that " your argumentation isn’t very cohesive, not just on this point, but it’s indicative of many of your arguments" – what would be an appropriate response to this, in which you’re essentially saying my arguments are bad? You thought my argumentation wasn’t on point or cohesive, and I thought it did (or I wouldn’t have made them!). For all the rest of the short answers you quoted, I think I had a sentence or two following up about the irrelevancy/nonsense nature of the assertion.
When you make an argument on a board, it’s for everyone to see. You aren’t just having a debate with one person where you’re trying to convince that one person that you are right. 99.9% of the time, you will fail, even if you are right. If you think you’ve made a good argument and someone responds with basically nothing, there’s no need to respond to it or get annoyed by it.
I do it when it makes sense to do it—when there are multiple claims or arguments that each call for a response or refutation. In those cases, there’s no better way to respond.
Wow, I was unaware this was an issue for people. It’s pretty much my go to style. People have made some cogent arguments against it, though, so I will give it some consideration.
I also find it amusing and ironic that this thread is complaining that the posting style dissects arguments into meaningless bits instead of examining the claim as a whole, but in the cited thread iiandyiiii keeps making the point that Heffalump and Roo is dissecting the victim’s story into meaningless bits instead of looking at the whole. Not that it matters for this thread, just amused me.
As Exapno Mapcase said, no one answer is sufficient to address all possible situations this describes. I would say, if someone has selected individual coherent thoughts out of a string of arguments, it makes sense to address those thoughts as steps in the logical argument. However, if someone is chewing the post into two or three word bits to say “false” behind each, then don’t bother reiterating each point unless you can drop cites for each point. Instead, resummarize the intent of the argument.
Look, it is valid to look at individual components of an argument or claim, because someone can be wrong multiple times in a long, multiparagraph argument, and each point is an appropriate point that can break the argument. It’s like a syllogism - each step of the syllogism must be valid for the syllogism to be true. If the first might be invalid for one reason, and the second might be invalid for another reason, you want to list both questionable conditions.
But there is also the possibility for any participant to take the opportunity to summarize the conversation or the gist of the arguments to reframe the conversation and try to get it onto a track instead of beating bullet points to death. “Here is what I think your main argument is: xxxx. Here is why I think it is wrong. Can we start at this general point and see where it takes us rather than get stuck in the weeds?”
That depends on your purpose. Those were examples of the handwaving style. If your purpose was to dismiss or handwave away my point, then it worked.
I often try to engage the person or try to understand their argument, so if that were posted to me, one possible response might have been to ask the person why they felt my argument wasn’t cohesive and could they give me examples since I wouldn’t be seeing it.
Your response was eventually similar in that you started this thread to ask others. But since the person making the claim can answer it most directly and in context, asking the person directly is sometimes faster. In this case, I’m glad you started the thread. Others had more insight about it than I did.
In my experience, that’s often more work than someone on the other side wants to underake, so the argument is just left unanswered due to style.
I’m not against the style in all situations. But I do realize that it can be used poorly and that it can annoying when it goes on too long, which is why I apologized in that thread for continuing with it.