On 11/10/03 8:50 PM, "Andrew Lih" alih@hku.hk wrote:
From: Jimmy Wales James Duffy wrote:
The ''deletionists'' against ''inclusionists'' argument is utterly bogus. It is a case of those who take the idea that wikipedia as an encyclopedia seriously and basic standards below which an article is
deleted and those who see wikipedia as some sort of scribblebox
where
any sort of rubbish, not matter how bad, has a 'right' to be left undisturbed.
People have been upset about the phrase "straw man", but really I think that phrase has to be said when you try to characterize the debate in this way.
The problem is, recently folks have been crying "straw man" and it hasn't been accurate, and unnecessarily villifies the poster.
At least according to Wikipedia, "the straw man rhetorical technique is the practice of refuting weaker arguments than your opponents actually offer."
That is what people have been doing.
Your use of the word "crying"--when describing what people are doing in a textual medium--unnecessarily vilifies the posters.
In most of these cases, discussion has consisted of reasonable "What if..." and "slippery slope" arguments when standards for "articleness" are lowered. This is not automatically a straw man, and in most posts here, they have not been straw man arguments at all.
For one, slippery slope arguments are fallacies too.
Secondly, you actually made a straw man argument again: "when standards for 'articleness' are lowered". I am not advocating lowering standards for 'articleness'. Rather, others are advocating changing the standards, and claiming that the new standards are the "real" standards and that any other position is for lower standards.
Thirdly, slippery slope arguments are generally connected to a further straw man argument when the "what if" scenario is deemed to be bad and used to attack the original position.
Finally, I hope you're not trying to characterize what James Duffy wrote above as a reasonable "what if" argument.