Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
Obviously, pursuing this further isn't a good use of either of our time.
Well I appreciate the concession - it takes a serious amount of integrity to acknowledge that previous arguments were "not a good use of our time," and I commend you for it.
Boldly moving on to deal with the issue at hand about IAR now means just agreeing on some simple and basic facts: Sanger wrote BOLD in 10-01, and Crocker wrote IAR five months later in 03-02. Due to the former's issues of stature here, and the latter's status as a techno-savior of the project, I understand that there may be some lingering geek preference for the latter. But of the two BOLD is far more fitting of the title of "pillar."
The problem seems to be that Crocker wrote IAR at a time when we only had "rules." I did not rip off Anthere's "Uncivility" essay from meta to create "Civility" just to be a "rule" - I created it to be a 'statement of principle,' and a good one - one that stands as our re-conceptualization of the Golden Rule. It became obvious somewhere around 10-03 that, in spite of our geek-utopian conceptions of "wiki" and openness, we needed an actual moral and social principle. (In addition to the editorial principle of Objectivity/NPOV).
So just as no amount of nihilism or atheism can negate the Golden Rule, no abundance of IAR-droids can ever negate Civility. If Civility is to continue to be regarded as a "pillar," second only to Objectivity/Neutrality, then IAR, clever though it claims to be (apparently hard to understand too), is simply not on the same level as Civility or any other "pillar."
Regards, -Stevertigo