It will be useful to you if you criticise the person's behaviour rather than criticise the person. Maybe you see no distinction, but the fact is that criticising the behaviour is less likely to cause offense and lead to a flamewar.
Calling someone a hypocrite IS criticizing their behavior. Having to write out "your behavior is hypocritical" in place of "you are a hypocrite" is just tedious and redundant. The accusation (and others like it) is also very well deserved when someone continually acts in bad faith on a talk page by trying to constalt twist parts of and ignore other parts of your argument.
Unfortunately Wikipedia does not provide a course in social skills for the benefit of those who can't or won't learn by themselves.
Wow, that sounds like a personal insult, did you just imply I have no social skills?
In fact it's likely to be impossible to completely unambiguously codify it, which makes things vulnerable to _lawyering_ by people acting in bad faith.
It makes it even more vulnerable to scrupulous admins who act in bad faith all for a rule of questionable benefit.
I'd suggest you try to make it quite clear that you're acting in good faith.
Ok? I am making it clear that I'm acting in good faith. Sadly, the same can't be said of the list owner David Gerard, who is saying I need to be conditioned like an animal (with a cattle prod). His entirely immature behavior and personal attacks on this list and censorship of me are in bad faith.
---------------------------------------------- Nathan J. Yoder http://www.gummibears.nu/ http://www.gummibears.nu/files/njyoder_pgp.key ----------------------------------------------