Hi!
On Mon, 04 Jul 2005 07:29:54 +1000, Jerome Jamnicky wrote:
Calling
someone a hypocrite IS criticizing their behavior. Having to
write out "your behavior is hypocritical" in place of "you are a
hypocrite" is just tedious and redundant.
It's useful because Wikipedia is not written by Vulcans. The emotional
impact of differently-worded but logically equivalent statements is
different, and this affects how constructive the discussion is.
No, actually, those two statements are not "logically equivalent". Calling
somebody _a_ something implies that this person engages in this behaviour
regularly, while saying "your behaviour here is something" does criticise only
a behaviour at a certain place and time.
"You lied about X" is therefore far less (potentially) insulting than "you
are
a liar". Not to mention the fact that it is impossible to say the latter about
any Wikipedian whom one does not personally know, and very well, too - because
I doubt that there are any people who spend so much time on WP that their
behaviour here, even if they were constantly lying (or doing anything else) on
WP, would constitute most of _all_ behaviour they ever exhibit.
Alex
(who wanted to keep out of the debate, but that had to be said)
--
If you don't go over the top,
you can't see what's on the other side.
--- Jim Steinman ---
Alex' Assorted Homepages:
www.alexsite.de