Sorry to drag this out, but I feel I have something important to add.
On Thu, 6 Dec 2001, Manning Bartlett wrote:
If you want to criticise a decision, or an action, or
an article, or
discuss a policy, count me in. But I find expressing contempt for any
individual, for any reason, to be unacceptable in this forum.
I wish I could agree, but I can't, not entirely. I agree that the initial
posts about Cunctator being a troll, which started this most recent
dispute, were unnecessary.
My own post, while it did express no small amount of contempt for some of
Cunctator's public statements, was made not out of hostility but out of
self-defense. Cunctator now tries to say that he himself is under
"attack," as if he had not brought the criticism of his behavior upon
himself. Words have consequences. In a dispute that has become personal,
the consequences are consequences for reputation, and some of us (myself
certainly) require at least a decent reputation in order to be able to do
our jobs. If someone makes many misleading public statements
(intentionally, or not!) that tend to undermine my reputation, I think
it's important that I defend it. Repeatedly, if necessary. I won't
apologize for doing so.
Two important qualifications to the above: first, of course, it would have
been better if the dispute never happened in the first place. Then I
would have enjoyed, well, *not* getting defensive. Second, if the
misrepresentations are not credible to anyone, then of course there's no
point in trying to correct them. But if someone has enough good will and
credibility in the Wikipedia community, then, when he says something that
I think is particularly damaging to me, I must consider responding, out of
self-defense.
This is all of course a huge waste of time, in that all of our time would
be far better used in working on the encyclopedia. But--seriously--I
don't see how it can be helped! For instance, I would like to be able to
take the high road and say, "There's no need to respond to this, I'll just
let thinking people come to whatever conclusions they like." I wish it
worked that way, but I really don't think it does. Personal attacks of
all sorts really do have consequences, and if they have even some small
amount of credibility, then if you don't fight back, there are going to be
people who are convinced to some small degree.
Finally, I want to make a distinction--one that is all too easily
blurred, however--between reasonable, constructive criticism on the one
hand, and unfair, misleading attacks. I welcome constructive criticism.
I don't even demand niceness. I do generally want fairness, though.
I'm not trying to offend anyone by this, and I
truly hope no offence
is taken.
No offense taken here.
Larry