Abusive forumites

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Daydream believer

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Having started the thread on "solent sailors" i was not surprised how quickly some forumites get abusive

Why then is this so?
Are there really that many obnoxious old "s..ds" about or does this forum cause " road rage" due to frustration
Do we really have the inability to put over a structured argument without resorting to written violence.

Or are we so passionate about our pastime that we object to opinions that may conflict with ours in case our long held beliefs are broken
 
Its quite simple, classify people then denigrate the collective at some point and one should expect a robust defence.
 
BlowingOldBoots said:
Its quite simple, classify people then denigrate the collective at some point and one should expect a robust defence.
Click to expand...

+1 - welcome to the Internet. Where people who would never talk to each other for long if they met in person don't know that because they haven't met in person.
 
I've met over 2 dozen forumites, individually, now and have found them to be very good company.
It must be t'internet that causes them all to go off on one.
 
Daydream believer said:
Why then is this so? Do we really have the inability to put over a structured argument without resorting to written violence.
Click to expand...

I've come to the conclusion that, although personal attacks are obvious to everyone else, posters that use personal attacks don't know they're doing it. My main reason for this conclusion is that I've seen abusive posters post their abuse, and then post to ask why their abuse didn't get a response! So clearly they thought they'd addressed the point under discussion and therefore others would feel their response warranted a reply.

I only recall seeing two occasions people who use personal attacks on YBW tried to articulate why, neither seemed very logical:

- One one occasion someone justified their attacks on the basis that a minority who would read the post wouldn't listen to reason. [1]

- On another occasion a regular user of personal attacks cited frustration. That seemed to be a fair explanation[2], except the example the abusive poster gave was an issue that's been debated for centuries and is purely a matter of opinion, not fact. Frustration that someone won't acknowledge a fact or won't disclose evidence seems fair enough to me, but if you get frustrated that someone holds a different opinion why read forums!

The other bane of YBW is the Straw Man fallacy. Again, it's use is obvious to everyone else, but I'm convinced that people who use it are oblivious to the fact they're doing it.

In an ideal world we'd all jump on any logical fallacy, in reality life is too short to point out flaws in every duff post. Therefore, all that most of us can do is refrain from replying. Hopefully failing to challenge nonsense is harmless, few people looking for information and finding a YBW thread with google will accept an idea based on a logical fallacy. [3]

[1] Think about the implications of that for a second. The poster felt a minority of readers don't listen to fact or reason, therefore he/she chose to inflict repeated posts without either on the majority!

[2] But not excuse.

[3] That's very hard to do so most of us are guilty of posting to debunk straw man arguments and other logical fallacies from time to time.
 
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