On 11/10/03 8:50 PM, "Andrew Lih" <alih(a)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.