>Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss man schweigen. >
OK, so I am both clueless and Germanless. May I have a fully nuanced interpretation from the original speaker or an insider, please?
My pleasure! What Tony was referring to was your use of a rhethorical trick. But since you seem to be unaware of it, it's not quite right to label it a trick and instead let us call it a mistake. Basically you were employing a variant of "The affecteds perspective" and "underreporting" (excuse my terminology, English is not my naitive language).
Your argumentation was that you yourself belongs to a large group of people who is negatively affected by the words "nude" and "picture" in the subject-line of mailing-list discussions. It is a great way to argue for something, because it diverts attention from the subject and makes the discussion personal. It makes it very hard for me to try and argue that you are wrong because you have taken the role as one that is "affected." The same thing happens if you are arguing sexual assault issues against a rape victim - she will have a huge advantage because she is "affected." Same thing with arguing housing issues with homeless people etc.
For the rest of the audience: Think of how you would have read Tom Haws message if he had not said he himself was affected, and just referred to those affected by "nude" and "picture" subject lines as "they."
As I said, it is a great way to imply that you are speaking for a large group of people when in reality, you are only speaking for yourself. The only effective way to really counter that argument is to be a member of the group of people you try to present. And it will be hard since you stated that "many others like me ... also have various reasons to be discouraged from participating in debates about the same images." Well, I'm a son, a brother, a boyfriend, a Christian, an engineer and many other roles in which I am loathe to be associated with the subjects of these debates, but that hasn't stopped me from participating so obviously I cannot pretend to speak of being a member of the group you are representing.
The other trick I was speaking of was your use of "underreporting." Not many have reported an inability to participate in wiki-en debates because of bad subject lines, why? Underreporting! Since noone has objected they must be afraid...
Sorry to sound harsh, it is not my intention. I'm sure what I have called rhethorical tricks are just honest mistakes that we all do when arguing sometimes. It is just good to be aware of them.