For what it’s worth, I upvoted Alexei’s comment in part because—not having read the conversations between you and Zack—I literally had no idea what sentences like “when [Zack] tries to tell you what constitutes good conduct and productive discourse” were referring to. You didn’t explain what Zack’s views on this were and didn’t even have a link to him explaining his views that I could follow to find out what they were, so basically that section read to me as “huh Duncan is saying that Zack is bad but not really explaining why we should think so, that was weird and random”.
Yeah I’m going to go back in and add links, partly due to this comment thread and partly at Zack’s (reasonable, correct!) request; I should’ve done that in the first place and lose points for not doing so. Apologies, Zack.
Clarification: I didn’t think of that as a “request.” I was saying that according to my standards, I would be embarrassed to publish criticism of someone that didn’t quote or link to their writings, and that it seemed to me to be in tension with your condemnations of strawmanning.
I don’t think of that as a request that you change it, because in general, I don’t think I have “jurisdiction” over other people’s writing. If someone says something I think is wrong, my response is to write my own comment or post explaining why I think it’s wrong (or perhaps mention it in person at Less Online), which they can respond or not-respond to as they see fit. You don’t owe me anything!
For what it’s worth, I upvoted Alexei’s comment in part because—not having read the conversations between you and Zack—I literally had no idea what sentences like “when [Zack] tries to tell you what constitutes good conduct and productive discourse” were referring to. You didn’t explain what Zack’s views on this were and didn’t even have a link to him explaining his views that I could follow to find out what they were, so basically that section read to me as “huh Duncan is saying that Zack is bad but not really explaining why we should think so, that was weird and random”.
(Though I did strong-upvote your post anyway.)
Yeah I’m going to go back in and add links, partly due to this comment thread and partly at Zack’s (reasonable, correct!) request; I should’ve done that in the first place and lose points for not doing so. Apologies, Zack.
Clarification: I didn’t think of that as a “request.” I was saying that according to my standards, I would be embarrassed to publish criticism of someone that didn’t quote or link to their writings, and that it seemed to me to be in tension with your condemnations of strawmanning.
I don’t think of that as a request that you change it, because in general, I don’t think I have “jurisdiction” over other people’s writing. If someone says something I think is wrong, my response is to write my own comment or post explaining why I think it’s wrong (or perhaps mention it in person at Less Online), which they can respond or not-respond to as they see fit. You don’t owe me anything!