I don’t get the misquoting thing. I’m not talking about the debate of how far it should be tolerated, but the thing I don’t get is the actual desire to misquote in the first place - the act itself.
Poster A: Hey everyone look! Poster B said, “I felch goats.” Poster B: Erm, no. I said, “I never felch goats.” Here is a link. Posters C through Z: Hey, Poster A, you really are a lying arsehole!
So what’s the point? How does it work? I mean, Dopers check and cross-check everything. Fuck up and you’ll be called on it within nanoseconds. How can misquoting possibly do anything but damage your own argument (and your entire SDMB reputation)?
You know, Go You Big Red Fire Engine, when I used your full name I thought of you as masculine, but when I (not to be condescending, honest, but simply to save time and space) referred to you as Big Red, I thought of you as female, regardless of the masculine (which is the default choice) pronoun. This probably says something very bad about me that is best left unexplored (at least by my feminist wife). Nonetheless, I’m operating under the assumption that we’ve patched up our differences, and hello and I’m happy to have met you. Sorry for the confusion: I can’t undo it, but I won’t make the same mistake again.
Scott Plaid, you could be practicing a sophomore typing assignment, or you could be randomly pecking with your nose at the keyboard like a blind chicken, with unexpected results, or you could be testing the upper limit for misspelled words the servers will tolerate, or you could just be marking time until someone big enough to squash you comes along, or you could just be reminding people of the real definition of “argument” by providing something clearly not it. The loud sound you make when you stick out your tongue may be the best contribution you could make. For Pete’s sake, say what you mean to say or stop saying things.
And Giraffe, I’m pretty much on your side here, as a review will show. But I think the criteria you originally offered, that people feel, despite the disclaimers, that the technique was still “potentially confusing” has been met. So pony up with the apology and the promise not to do it again, and let’s get to work on a rule that works for everybody.
After reading many (Not by choice, you just can’t avoid them) of Scott Plaid’s posts, I have established that he is in fact, an idiot. At times, I could get more coherency from a random sentence generator.
Why misquote at all? Haven’t both the stalking horse and the straw man methods of arguing been discredited for more than 2400 years? What could be more disreputable than misquoting someone in an argument to make them look stupid? It’s dishonest and ineffectual at the same time, and then someone can pull it up out of context at a later time. It’s like accusing Jimmy Carter of saying the country is in a “malaise” or that Al Gore “claimed to have invented the internet” when neither person made the statement, but they were maliciously attributed to them as quotes in order to make them look foolish to those who didn’t have access to check the original context. The attempts at justification here all assume that that the original context of the original thread will always be carefully referred to. Life just isn’t like that.
To continue (I gather that Guests don’t get to edit, do Members?), it’s one thing to endure people calling every name in the book/Pit (gee this is a lively place), but another to have someone Google you a few years after the fact and then make a bad footnote out of it Ann Coulter style. It seems to me that as long as message boards have this great exact-a-quote feature, there is no legitimate debate point to be made. But then, other than hiding behind a pseudonym, I don’t like to fight dirty.
Therein lies the rub. A lot of posters don’t want to search back through umpteen archived posts for ‘proof’ of anything: they just plain aren’t all that obsessive. But some do. The Dope runs high to proof-freaks, impassioned debaters and some world-class nitpickers, bless 'em all.
Their legitimate quest for The Word conflicts with the rowdy, free-wheeling nature that’s life blood to Dope discussions. Rather, their reliance on What Was Written can get tangled up with active give-and-take board jazzin’. Unfortunately, as with many rules, one idiot pissing in the cook pot can lead to some serious ick-avoidance rules and regs.
Useful rules must change. Nobody wants someone else putting words in their mouths but not every–or even many–technical variation is necessarily malicious, much less credible. Is there a perfect balance? Hell no. But there should be an acceptable middle ground that allows parody, gentle (or even pointed) tweaking, much less rowdy editorial comment. Otherwise perfectly legitimate razzin’, not to mention some innocent fun, could be lost due to the lowest, nastiest common denominator.
There were two words there that should have tipped you off that the post wasn’t going to make any sense and should be ignored. They are “Scott Plaid”. When you see that you can safely ignore anything that follows.
You know, I <i>used</i> to be able to understand perfectly what Scott Plaid was talking about. Then I started reading all the posts that said he was incomprehensible. Now I’m as clueless as the rest of you.
Re: the quoting thing: It can be done with humour. It can be done with finesse. It can also be done by dumbasses. shrug Personally, I’m used to frequenting places where it is not only permitted but in constant use. Prohibiting it doesn’t make sense to me.
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