Several great suggestions have been on the same theme. Some posting behaviors are not clearly trolling (as trolling requires a no reasonable doubt of intent) but they have every appearance of bad faith posting and get in the way of actual discussion.
Hijacks.
Those poster A says … examples.
Repetitively bring up subjects that cross many reasonable posters lines as excessively offensive. One thread once only and constrained to that thread, clearly identified? I’d grant that per poster. Not allowed to use it as a monologue diatribe and shut down if bad faith style tactics are used.
Using language that clearly offends many for no significant point of value to the subject of the thread discussion.
Taking offense and accusing others of ill intent very easily. Thin skins are not well suited for serious discussions on sensitive subjects.
Moderation that enforces not only no trolling but constrains behaviors like those whether or not the intent is to troll or to express hate or derail is an improved goal.
And a tough gig which will always have some unhappy and bitching.
FWIW, I’d love to see both a ban on scientific racism AND for folks to knock it off with the line-by-liners. Even when someone posts a multi-paragraph essay, dissecting it line-by-line almost never adds insight, in my opinion. I’ll read a multi-paragraph response if written well, but when I see the line-by-liners, I’ll just grumble and scroll past, because I find them unreadable.
You obviously don’t need to listen to me, but I wanted to throw that out there.
I think line by line parsing is the lesser of evils here. The others options are to address all of the points made in the post in one quote, which is even harder to read than breaking the quote up, or only addressing points B and C out of A through D in the response, which around half the time will result in a response “but you didn’t address points A and D, your argument is invalid” even if there is a genuine rebuttal to them that you didn’t post out of clarity and brevity.
The main advantage of line-by-line responses is that it is the only way to unpick a Gish Gallop in any substantive way. But I agree that when it turns into a series of line-by-line back-and-forths, it gets tiresome to read.
…and they’ll just come back with “you didn’t address this point, or that point”, anyway, even if you say you’re just addressing one point. Or argue about whether it was their main point like you assumed. Naah, my way, it’s clear what part of my reply relates to what part of the post I’m replying to.
And I don’t post (outside the Pit) as performance art, so if other posters are scrolling past, I don’t think I care much. When I am addressing a general audience, I think I tend to be pithier.
Well, I’d gladly give up my precious scientific racism to get rid of the line by line posts. So I guess we have a deal. I’ll have Tuba type it up all formal like.
I found MrDibble’s line by line post quite easy to read.
This. I think breaking down separate points and answering them separately is far clearer and easier to follow than any other technique; and I don’t see why people should be allowed to address multiple points but others should only be able to answer one or two of them. I suppose instead of addressing separate points within the same post we could use several separate posts to do so, but I think that would only annoy both the people who find line by line difficult to read, and the people who find it easier to read and more clear than other techniques.
I think this may be a difference in how people’s minds work, rather than there being something wrong with the posting style. My head breaks down arguments in this fashion, and I find it easier to read an argument that’s already phrased that way. Others may find it easier to read things all lumped in together.
Of course it’s legible. It’s a series of single sentences. Some of them a simple “no” or “yes”. But it’s like someone dumped a play dialogue into the middle of a discussion. IMHO.
I didn’t just mean it was legible. I meant that it was easy to follow; which the other techniques for answering a multi-point post often aren’t.
On the other hand spreadsheets drive me crazy, while lots of people seem to find them useful tools for organizing things. Minds vary. I’ll bear in mind that separate line quoting doesn’t work well for everybody, and will try to keep it to cases where I really find it the most useful way of answering; but I’m still going to use it in those cases. If you won’t read such posts, so it goes. There are people who won’t read a long answer that’s not broken up in that fashion, also. And some things really are complicated; so trying to always give simple short answers means, in effect, often giving wrong or at best misleading answers.
If a post is seven sentences and you can’t answer it without splitting out each one, that’s not good writing. I am not telling you to be annoyed by it, just understand that me and LHoD aren’t the only ones who scroll past that crap frequently.
I, too was taught this in school. By the same people that taught me glass is a really thick liquid and that America’s history is of strong, unambiguous moral leadership. I am beginning to suspect all three.
Saying “the bigots and racists will get it if we just educate them enough” is the macro-version of “the bully will stop if you just ignore him”. People don’t work that way. Bigots don’t want to be wrong. They like the world they live in. Rehashing scientific racism, rape myths, climate change denial and a few other things just gives them more ammunition.
I think the problem with the snip style is not that it is hard to follow, but that it encourages a score-keeping mentality. People tone-police, and sub-sub divide to get in a zinger. People clip half a sentence to ask a coy, disingenuous question–which then has to be answered, and an arch counter-question asked. It becomes about laying rhetorical traps, skimming lists of snips for anything that can be spun as internally inconsistent.
Someone said it is the only way to respond to a Gish gallop. That’s the exact wrong way to look at it: it’s feeding the Gish Gallop. It’s chopping the head off the hydra. And it never results in resolution, because eventually someone is going to look at the 27 response-snips to their 18 snips and say fuck it. Or, as I often do, intend to come back but never have the chance to block out the solid 45 minutes it’s going to take me to fight the hydra.
Snipping doesn’t lead to productive debate. I would really, really encourage all of you to try to let it go–or at least, limit yourselves to sniping paragraphs, not sentences and lines–and see if it doesn’t improve your experience.
Oh man, exactly. But the problem is that there’s two definitions at work. “Only way to respond” is true in some people’s brains because they’ve got a bad case of “someone’s wrong on the internet”. They can’t let a single tiny piece of wrongness to go unaddressed.
But as you say, that feeds it. You just agreed to engage in five to ten superfluous debates. If you can’t go for the heart, rethink the submit button.
