Thomas Dalton writes:
If you consider all (personal) criticism to be an attack, then clearly you're going to have a problem with it.
It's not really a matter of what I consider to be a personal criticism or a personal attack. I think it's really a matter of what the Board members judge to be a personal criticism or attack, and they are the ones who ultimately will interpret this provision. That said, I think it is entirely possible to criticize someone's actions without attacking their character (for example). The notion that the only way to express disagreement with someone is to criticize them personally seems to me to be dead certain to lead to personal animosity.
(really, I struggle to see how you can criticise anything other than a person or group of people - criticising what they do, rather than them, is just semantics).
This doesn't strike me as a struggle, and I disagree that this is just semantics. I certainly know how to express disagreement without personally criticizing someone, and I think this posting of mine actually stands as a demonstration of how to do this.
--Mike