06-05-2017, 06:44 AM
June 2 comment from Eric1600 (in TMT - Contested Case Hearing Status): “It has been a common strategy with TMT opponents to try and discredit any TMT supporter using personal attacks... ”
I have not been around long enough to judge whether the above re the TMT opponents is true, but other Punatalk critics do the same. Some of their favorite insults: ignorant, ill-informed, clueless. Allied to this method of challenging others is the excessive citing of hyperlinks supporting one’s view. IMO opinion there is too much reliance on links. You can place a keyboard in front of monkey; odds are it will pull up a source for something.
Some critics rely on these two approaches almost exclusively. Sample pattern: How could you be so stupid? X does not equal Y; it equals W. Then link attached. Why reason out an opinion if you can cite a link? Some dialogs, if one can call them that, are just a series of these short exchanges.
Pre-internet, the exchange of written opinion was a much different enterprise. It took place primarily in newspapers’ opinion pages. Community interest in letters-to-the-editor-exchanges was widespread. Challenging published ideas typically took bit of thinking, a credible response. Personal attacks, gross exaggerations, flippancy, etc. were kept to a minimum. Reason: the editor, the gatekeeper.
Editors generally imposed limits on letter length (150-175 words was a norm). If you were lucky the editor might authorize a viewpoint (up to 600 words, perhaps). If you wanted to cite a source, you chose only most salient quotes/ideas. Editors would cut submissions for a variety of reasons: wordiness, irrelevant information, repetitiveness, exaggeration. (And editors rarely negotiated with writers on what they cut. Irritating: One would not know if or how the editor changed your text until it appeared in print.)
Letter writers were expected to be charitable about generally accepted knowledge. I recently asserted on Punatalk that a major factor in homelessness in Hawaii is the disparity in the rate of increase between wages and rents. Someone had significant objections, and a lengthy exchange followed. In the past the editor would rapidly cut short such a useless dialog. (Editors varied in how long they would allow back and forth exchanges.)
Another time I noted that the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Hawaii’s paper of record, cited in one of their editorials a fact that I had presented on Punatalk (concerning farming practices). A critic here dismissed my view that the paper was an authoritative source. One job of a newspaper editor: To be an unbiased source of facts.
OK, the Star-Advertiser is not the NY Times, and we can debate what constitutes an authoritative source. Or what is a basic fact. But if people are not charitable, endless debate can ensue. Result: Most everyone is bored except the person driving the unprofitable discussion. (contrarian troll).
Our online forums bring a different world. Reddit, one of the largest, contains several topics (“subreddits”) where the exchanges are largely civil and sincere (through heavy moderation and occasional bans). Most notable are science and philosophy.
Much of reddit, though, is the same free-for-all regularly found on Punatalk and other online forums. Notable are insults, hijacking of threads (agenda troll), hijacking with irrelevant comments (flaming), baiting, unnecessary argumentation (contrarian troll)*, excessive expertise (affected profundity troll)*, newbie bashing, retroactive stalking (posting old embarrassing posts), excessive links (spam troll), false identities (sockpuppets), compulsive commenter troll (“I didn’t read what you said but here’s what I think”)*, language pedant (grammar hag), following a nemesis with negative posts (stalker troll), to name a few.
(*In Punatalk these three seem particularly dominant.)
The reddit concept is logical: Regulate some threads for a genuine exchange of views or knowledge; others can be largely unrestricted. (Seems our telescopes discoveries thread ought to be in category 1.) But there is dissent. Some trolls, apparently, will be aggrieved if they cannot post wherever they want. Kind of reminds me of a dog that is compelled to piss on every fire hydrant on the block. Morons.
My insult is directed at Reddit’s chronic trolls. The periodic trolling by Punatalk posters is mostly tame (though in some instances very tedious). Intermittent trolling can be amusing. The newspaper forum milieu, aside from being generally over-restricted by editors, is prone to boredom.
(In the mid-1980s I worked as proofreader for the Tribune Herald under editor Sherman Frederick. This unique personality not only welcomed submissions, he encouraged them; the letters page under his tenure was boisterous: heated exchanges of opinions, provocative viewpoints, satire. The staid editors that followed Frederick apparently regarded all this as nonsense and closed the open door policy. Suffice to say that for some 2 decades now the T-H letters forum has been anemic. Another example of the mainstream media helping its own slide toward irrelevance?)
Let us all be thankful for Punatalk!
I have not been around long enough to judge whether the above re the TMT opponents is true, but other Punatalk critics do the same. Some of their favorite insults: ignorant, ill-informed, clueless. Allied to this method of challenging others is the excessive citing of hyperlinks supporting one’s view. IMO opinion there is too much reliance on links. You can place a keyboard in front of monkey; odds are it will pull up a source for something.
Some critics rely on these two approaches almost exclusively. Sample pattern: How could you be so stupid? X does not equal Y; it equals W. Then link attached. Why reason out an opinion if you can cite a link? Some dialogs, if one can call them that, are just a series of these short exchanges.
Pre-internet, the exchange of written opinion was a much different enterprise. It took place primarily in newspapers’ opinion pages. Community interest in letters-to-the-editor-exchanges was widespread. Challenging published ideas typically took bit of thinking, a credible response. Personal attacks, gross exaggerations, flippancy, etc. were kept to a minimum. Reason: the editor, the gatekeeper.
Editors generally imposed limits on letter length (150-175 words was a norm). If you were lucky the editor might authorize a viewpoint (up to 600 words, perhaps). If you wanted to cite a source, you chose only most salient quotes/ideas. Editors would cut submissions for a variety of reasons: wordiness, irrelevant information, repetitiveness, exaggeration. (And editors rarely negotiated with writers on what they cut. Irritating: One would not know if or how the editor changed your text until it appeared in print.)
Letter writers were expected to be charitable about generally accepted knowledge. I recently asserted on Punatalk that a major factor in homelessness in Hawaii is the disparity in the rate of increase between wages and rents. Someone had significant objections, and a lengthy exchange followed. In the past the editor would rapidly cut short such a useless dialog. (Editors varied in how long they would allow back and forth exchanges.)
Another time I noted that the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Hawaii’s paper of record, cited in one of their editorials a fact that I had presented on Punatalk (concerning farming practices). A critic here dismissed my view that the paper was an authoritative source. One job of a newspaper editor: To be an unbiased source of facts.
OK, the Star-Advertiser is not the NY Times, and we can debate what constitutes an authoritative source. Or what is a basic fact. But if people are not charitable, endless debate can ensue. Result: Most everyone is bored except the person driving the unprofitable discussion. (contrarian troll).
Our online forums bring a different world. Reddit, one of the largest, contains several topics (“subreddits”) where the exchanges are largely civil and sincere (through heavy moderation and occasional bans). Most notable are science and philosophy.
Much of reddit, though, is the same free-for-all regularly found on Punatalk and other online forums. Notable are insults, hijacking of threads (agenda troll), hijacking with irrelevant comments (flaming), baiting, unnecessary argumentation (contrarian troll)*, excessive expertise (affected profundity troll)*, newbie bashing, retroactive stalking (posting old embarrassing posts), excessive links (spam troll), false identities (sockpuppets), compulsive commenter troll (“I didn’t read what you said but here’s what I think”)*, language pedant (grammar hag), following a nemesis with negative posts (stalker troll), to name a few.
(*In Punatalk these three seem particularly dominant.)
The reddit concept is logical: Regulate some threads for a genuine exchange of views or knowledge; others can be largely unrestricted. (Seems our telescopes discoveries thread ought to be in category 1.) But there is dissent. Some trolls, apparently, will be aggrieved if they cannot post wherever they want. Kind of reminds me of a dog that is compelled to piss on every fire hydrant on the block. Morons.
My insult is directed at Reddit’s chronic trolls. The periodic trolling by Punatalk posters is mostly tame (though in some instances very tedious). Intermittent trolling can be amusing. The newspaper forum milieu, aside from being generally over-restricted by editors, is prone to boredom.
(In the mid-1980s I worked as proofreader for the Tribune Herald under editor Sherman Frederick. This unique personality not only welcomed submissions, he encouraged them; the letters page under his tenure was boisterous: heated exchanges of opinions, provocative viewpoints, satire. The staid editors that followed Frederick apparently regarded all this as nonsense and closed the open door policy. Suffice to say that for some 2 decades now the T-H letters forum has been anemic. Another example of the mainstream media helping its own slide toward irrelevance?)
Let us all be thankful for Punatalk!
