I agree, but that wasn’t the issue I was questioning. I was pointing out that “attacking the post” vs “attacking the person” often seems to me to be a grammatical distinction without a semantic difference.
Nor do I, that was my point. Hence the common recommendation to “attack the post” isn’t really sufficient. I think it has to mean to address the content of the post in some substantive way that doesn’t just amount to an indirect insult or accusation of lying.
I guess it works best if you’re a native English speaker?? 
A lie implies bad intent. Since a post can’t have bad intent, that intent must have come from the poster. So, saying a post is a lie is an attack on the poster.
“This is a stupid post” on the other hand, doesn’t imply bad intent on the part of the poster in question. It doesn’t even say the poster is stupid, but rather that the poster went astray with that post. “You are a stupid poster”, however, is an attack on the poster.
I say stupid things all the time, but I don’t think I’m stupid. If I make a stupid post (with some glaring factual error and conclusions that are based on that error), and you call the post stupid, you’re not attacking me, you’re attacking the post. It’s even more effect if you point out where I went wrong, rather than a drive-by “this post is stupid.”
I don’t know, this doesn’t seem that hard to me.
In my post, I indicated a way to challenge what one considers a lie without making the “Liar” accusation.
If one regards Reporting as “whining to moderators” we cannot control the emotions of our posters.
That’s fine. There’s no need for you to control anything or do anything altogether, including mixing in to this discussion.
My initial post was not aimed at you or any other moderator. I was responding to someone who asserted that “it’s just not hard not to accuse someone of lying”, and my response was that 1) it’s sometimes hard in certain circumstances, and 2) the collective impact of the policy was to give free rein to liars. Your posts don’t relate to either of these issues.
n/m – accidental post
Emphasis mine.
TubaDiva, I agree in principle with the entirety of your post, which I think the first sentence summarizes well. AIUI, a lot of thought and debate went into the “accusations of lying” rule, and it’s justified because calling someone a liar is a direct personal attack. Statements like “that’s not true and you know it” are IMO exactly equivalent, the “you know it” part being the operative insult despite not using the word “liar”.
The point I want to make here is that the part that I bolded – giving people the benefit of the doubt – works both ways and should also apply to moderator judgments about whether or not something is actually an accusation of lying. I sometimes see what I regard as rather stretched interpretations of otherwise innocent phrases. I was involved in such an altercation myself some years ago – unfortunately I can’t find the thread in question and I don’t want to try to reproduce the argument lest I get some important details wrong, but it involved my allegation that a certain statement was so obviously wrong that my opponent was “just making it up”. That’s really quite far removed from an accusation of lying or a personal attack on the poster, in my view, but rather should at least plausibly be viewed as perhaps a sincere belief that has no factual basis and may result from an honest misinterpretation. In this case, my opponent actually acknowledged that he was “making it up” in the sense that it was his interpretation of a particular statistic, which I then argued was entirely an inappropriate interpretation – no insult was intended, and none was perceived. Yet it resulted in a mod note that probably would have been a warning had the poster himself not acknowledged what had really happened. Same goes for “that’s not true” (without the unnecessarily insulting “and you know it” part, or accusing the poster of intentionally lying) when supported by a credible cite showing that the statement is indeed not true. There are many reasons that someone could honestly and with all good intentions make an untrue statement. Otherwise, we really do risk stifling expression, which should be anathema to the purpose of this board.
My point is that the rule against accusations of lying is a good one, and there are certainly more polite and less polite ways of disagreeing with the veracity of another poster’s claims, but we should not have moderators so overzealous about the “accusation of lying” rule that we feel we are walking on eggshells whenever we disagree with someone. Lying is a very specific, intentional, and unethical action and warnings of such accusations should, in my view, be limited to cases where such an accusation is unambiguously clear.
You are lying vs the post is not true is a better example of attacking the poster vs attacking the post. As soon as you introduce the word “lie” you’re insulting the poster. A lie is a deliberate intent to deceive.
In my opinion, the first two are inappropriate and the second two could be appropriate.
You are a liar -> I believe that what you said is a lie
That is a lie -> I believe that what you said is a lie
I don’t believe you -> I don’t believe that what you said is the truth
I don’t believe that -> I don’t believe that what you said is the truth
If you don’t believe something said was the truth, then what do you believe it was? A lie? Not necessarily - the opposite of “truth” can also be “false”.
You may be asked, “are you calling me a liar?” and then you have the opportunity to try and deescalate by clarifying, “no, I’m not saying you’re a liar, I’m saying you’re wrong.” Nevertheless there are better ways to convey disagreement than “I don’t believe you/that”, and the small escalation there could easily be avoided.
~Max