Look, them’s the rules: You may not describe another poster as having an attribute that would normally be considered negative.
I.e., no matter how blatant, you may not call out another poster as a racist. You may say that their words are racist, but not that they are. You can’t call another poster a liar, either – only say that their words are a lie (but you must leave wiggle room for the possibility that the words are not their own. Or that they actually believe what they’re saying. Or something… :rolleyes:**)
As mentioned, them’s the rules. I don’t have to like it, you don’t have to like it, but there it is.
Yup. If the rule was that you couldn’t call a statement stupid, racist, bigoted, etc., then that would make sense. If the rule was that, in an appropriate context, you could call a person stupid, racist, bigoted, etc. (e.g., in a discussion of whether a particular position is bigoted, you could call a person a bigot), that’d make sense. But the current position is both clear and totally weird to me.
I guess it has to be derogative but also the language would matter, being called not very nice wouldn’t bother me but being called a c*nt would. Words like bigot, racist, obese, coward do not have negative connotations to me, why should they? They are perfectly cromulent (some humor, does this mean I pass the Turing test? maybe not) English words that I find useful.
So I can say that magellan01’s view are bigoted but not that he is a bigot. I can’t see the functional difference but Ok.
How can I state without breaking the rules that I think he is a coward for not admitting his views are bigoted?
It’s what we referred to in our house as “state vs trait”. You can criticize someone for their current state “You sound whiny” or “That’s a selfish attitude” but not go after their trait (which would be a fundamental part of who they are) “You are such a whiner” or “You are a selfish person”.
State comments address an action or current behavior, which might be out of character, you might be in a bad mood, not realize how you come off and can be changed.
Trait comments comment on who they are as a person, not just at the moment, and run the risk of being more hurtful, longer lasting and cause defensiveness.
These are important distinctions for relationship building (between friends, siblings, parent to child), but less important in other settings. Here, we consider ourselves in a community and want the participants to build relationships as community members.
Bah, it’s trivial to make a computer recognize if a specific program never halts. You just can’t make it decide whether an arbitrary program halts. I’m onto your games, Cleverbot.
Thanks I can see the distinction between the argument and argumentee, but again fail to see why calling someone selfish if they are indeed selfish, is an insult.
Simple. Start a Pit thread, and put a link in the non-Pit thread with a note for the person to join you there.
martu: The mods don’t want to have to be in a position of being the arbiters of truth every time someone claims another person is “selfish” or “bigoted”. Those are not always objectively determinable. And in this particular case, you weren’t even referencing a specific post-- just calling him a coward and a bigot.
Possibly, but it doesn’t really matter. In Great Debates you’re generally supposed to be talking about the ideas and arguments that are being posted. What they say about the person who is making the posts usually doesn’t matter.
Say it in the BBQ Pit and you can phrase it however you like. In Great Debates, you have to comment on the argument itself and don’t make derogatory comments about the poster.