Quoting Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com:
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
On Fri, 7 Dec 2007 11:18:42 -0800, "George Herbert" george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Cade is clearly looking for and finding controversy. The Register thrives on that. The reality is rather different. Rendering aid and comfort to people who behave sociopathically online is not in the best interests of the project.
However, it's a logical fallacy to go from there to where several admins seem to be on various related articles lately (e.g., [[Gary Weiss]]), where they're dismissing all concerns that are in any way related to those mentioned in that article, even when brought up by perfectly rational, non-sociopathic, non-banned editors.
If mapped out in outline, the line of argument seems to go:
- Bagley claims that [list various claims of his, such as that the
Weiss article is non-NPOV] 2) Bagley is a sociopathic, evil harasser. 3) Therefore, the claims in (1) are all false. 4) Thus, anybody who repeats the claims should be dismissed out of hand.
This does not follow logically.
AKA the ad hominem fallacy: Just because an asshole said it doesn't mean it's incorrect; assholes can still be right.
Correct, if that line of logic worked I'd never be right about anything. Point of fact, my impression is that Bagley wasn't treated very well when he did show up but his behavior was so out of proportion that I lack any sympathy for him.