What are your top 3 most-despised SOPT (Same Old Putrid Tactics)?

"Fixed that for ya.."

This, though sometimes it can be humorous enough to overlook.

Your last sentence is a good expression of the goal behind the making of this thread.

To elaborate: my surmise is that people who routinely resort to the type of tactics discussed here might be less likely to whip them out, if they know that their readers are aware of what they're up to.

I think people are more likely to play nice, when they know they may be called on playing putridly.

No, that's the point. People who complain about complaining simply need to gain a little self-control, or learn judicious use of the ignore feature if they can't muster that.



No, the real irony here that I am complaining about complaining about complaining, but in a meta-formal sort of way. But, sauce for the goose and all that rot.



Why would I want to defend the posting of lies? I mean, if lies are actually posted, then there's a REAL basis for a libel suit, right?

No, the point is that a would-be thread dictator uses the threat of a "libel" suit in order to try and intimidate other posters to shut their pieholes instead of discussing the issue in a rational manner.

At least net.cops in the forums can rarely "take it to RL". There's been a number of cases on Usenet where people have taken flame-wars into the real world and caused people to lose their RL jobs.

Fixed it for ya.


And even though a posted lie may be readily exposable as a lie, this may or may not result in a lawsuit. Considerations beyond whether or not the lie is exposable as a lie will always obtain.

So the defense 'you didn't sue me therefore what I posted wasn't a lie' is ludicrous.

Which is another reason why this is a topic that shouldn't be swept under the rug.

I don't think so.

The problem is that it will always be *another* person who is employing SOPT.
We already have a whiff of that in this thread
A formal SOPT list would result in an additional flavour of to-and-fro with SOPT wars, and probably with at least one party calling SOPT on the other in a terms that are themselves SOPT.
Oh yes!

It is a nice thought, but it has been done before, here and elsewhere, in various forms, and people still post the way they do.

The same way that there is a widely-known book on Etiquette by none other than Emily Post, yet so few people practice it, let alone have ever read it.

After a week or two, the thread will saunter off to the annals of forum history, but the status quo will remain.

About the only way to have a place where people discuss according to formal rules of debate, protocol, and etiquette is to create one where those rules are enforced.

The worst lies are those that *can't* be readily exposed. They leave readers not knowing whether or not the lie is true, so the liar wins.

I thought that is what status quo meant?

Hear hear.

Seconded.

Thanks for proving my point. Even the initiator of a thread on forum etiquette (which this amounts to) can't follow it.



That still doesn't change the fact that threatening a libel suit is nothing more than a silencing tactic, not a response. There is no point to even posting the fact that you're going to file a libel suit. Just get to the filing and let the law take care of the rest. Threatening a suit in public as a response is nothing more than an extreme form of saying "Lies! Lies!! You're a LIAR!!!".



The converse is also just as ludicrous. If a suit was not filed, it doesn't mean anything either way. Like I said, it was nothing more than a tactic; a ploy. In accordance with the purposes of this thread, it is a Putrid Tactic.

Thanks ... I'm in the hospital for a few days and my posting skills is not at tops form ... not that its all the close to the top as is.

Sure. Most would-be character assassins are careful to craft their attacks in ways that won't land them in a court of law. (Occasionally they slip up, as in the case being alluded to by one individual and me in this thread. Such occasions provide genuine-if-disreputable amusement, as the would-be character assassin wriggles and back-pedals to try to get away from the actionable lie.)

But think of the lives of those who spend their days trying to think up just-this-side-of-the-law slurs...think of the emptiness and despair of such a life.

It means "the present state" or "the existing state". More than one state can exist, separated by time (or, if you want to talk quantum theory, by probability). Thus, the "present state" can change, or it can remain the same.

5. TURNING A GENERAL ARGUMENT INTO A SPECIFIC: When you're talking about a general point, and suddenly the reply is full of "you"s. It's a neat trick, because people like talking about themselves, but if you take the opportunity to do so and engage with it, in a few posts the response will be "it's just you, so why does it matter?"

6. YOU ARE FREE BECAUSE NO-ONE IS STOPPING YOU: an oversimplistic and incorrect argument. In a brutal dictatorship, "nobody is stopping" anyone criticising the dictator: they just shoot them _afterwards_.

7. THREADCRAPPING: "I don't like this discussion, let's talk about pie!"

"I haven't read the whole thread (actually I haven't read any of it except the last three posts and the mistyped misleading title) but from what my (iliterate and hysterical) friend posted I think the OP should be hung drawn and quartered."

This remark could have merit (however slight) only if the initiator of the thread had agreed that posting "fixed it for ya" was a violation of forum etiquette.

In which post did that agreement occur?






(I respond only to this part of your post as in my estimation the rest wasn't worth a response. You'll never dig yourself out of that particular hole. Nor will you ever be able to recast your actions as honorable. Simply: they were not.)

If it changes it is not the "present state" then surely.

I alluded to no cases whatsoever. That you want to bring up a specific one is wholly your doing, don't try tying it to me. My point in bringing it up is as a Putrid Tactic that should be applied to the list. That you reminded me of it doesn't mean it is solely about that case; it happens often enough here and elsewhere (and not just to me and you) to qualify.



Ad hominem. There's a good one to add to your list.

"Quidquid latine dictum, altum videtur", one of my favorites.

Oh, wait, this was about tactics you *hate*.

Nevermind.

No we'd be The Borg and those gits are always upto no good.

Right so, derailing a thread, taking a quote out of context, away goals count double, no mention of pie, I reckon I'm in for about seven points here.

On a serious note, in between the barrages of hatred and contempt I'm yet to see anyone who isn't actual helpful at some time. These forums do serve the purpose they were intended for, people do get their queries answered, the bickering, and heck I'm guilty of that more than most I guess but I'm on a vow of good behaviour, is just part of the whole package, the disparate parts make up the whole, the whole is good.

I'm sorry, I didn't realize that this was a thread solely about the list that Ponsonby Low considers as "Putrid". I withdraw the remark.



If you want to rehash old hat, putrifying up your own thread, OK. Don't try hanging it on me, though.

Blindly quibbling over semantics: That's when people argue for several pages of who's right, when what's really going on is that they're using two different, but legitimate interpretations of the same term. Someone says "All X's are Y's", second person says "here's an X that's not a Y", first person says "obviously that can't be an X because it's not a Y", second says "I gave a perfectly good counterexample, you just don't like it". What's really going on is the first person uses X to mean one thing, the second uses X to mean something similar, but not identical, and they spend pages arguing over whether "All X's are Y's" instead of just stopping and saying "You and I mean something different by X".

Exploiting imprecision: Someone says "X's do Y", someone else says "prove it", first person gives reasoning, second says that argument is wrong because here's a counterexample, first person explains why the argument is right, second person says you're ignoring my counterexample. What's really going on is that the first person's intent is "Many X's do Y", with perfectly valid reasoning for that statement, while second person interprets the statement as "All X's do Y". Again, they spend pages arguing over the validity of the first person's argument, totally missing that "X's do Y" is imprecise, and neither one willing to end the argument by simply dealing with "Does it mean most or all?".

These are similar phenomenon. They're both ways in which people argue over what's really a miscommunication, but they don't want to resolve the miscommunication because no one wins when you admit you're talking about different things, and winning an argument is the most important thing.

True, but that doesn't invalidate the construct "The status quo has changed", nor does it make "the status quo will remain" redundant.

Remember it is the "present state". The "present state" can be different from the "past state" or the "future state".