Rules of Discussion V 1.00

I thought iut might be a good idea for us all to discuss what qualifies as a sound argument, what’s appropriate, what’s inappropriate, how best to address someone, and how to structure responses in general here in the Kongregate forums.

These would be guidelines of course, and I think we all can appreciate and use them to keep the discussions civilized.

Anyone can give out their ideas.

“This is a safe place for people, but not for ideas. Expect what you say to be challenged, but do not go after the individual people.”

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From Phoenix 00017


- Remain On Topic In All Discussions


- All post are to be written well enough so that it is easily readable (occasional mistakes are fine, but make some effort to effectively communicate)


- Be polite and courteous to other debaters (A.K.A the original don’t be a jerk clause from the Behavior guidelines )


- We should also get away from our collective habit of over-quoting people. It’s easy to pick people’s arguments apart line-by-line. Perhaps we should focus instead on broader posts and stop nit-picking as much as we have the tendency to do. I noticed the Eketek rarely quoted and I kinda liked his style. It keeps the forums more readable and probably generates much more productive and effective debate.

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I think Matt’s working on something like this too, but I’ll go ahead and give some suggestions.

Basically, a post in a discussion forum should have the following qualities:

- Provide some sort of on-topic comment or argument

- Be written well enough so that it is easily readable (occasional mistakes are fine, but make some effort to effectively communicate)

- Be polite and courteous to other debaters

In general, I wonder if we should also get away from our collective habit of over-quoting people. It’s easy to pick people’s arguments apart line-by-line. Perhaps we should focus instead on broader posts and stop nit-picking as much as we have the tendency to do. I noticed the Eketek rarely quoted and I kinda liked his style. It keeps the forums more readable and probably generates much more productive and effective debate.

Actually, I don’t quote people directly because I’m willfully ignorant on the format required…

Lol…shhh…I was giving you credit! :-D

By the way, you do it by using "bq. ", so this:

bq. This is a quote

will generate

This is a quote.

EDIT: Ok, I misread “willfully” as “woefully”…whoops. Oh well, now you know anyway. ;)

Phatcat – I was in a discussion club in college, and we always opened up with a quick explanation for new members (paraphrased due to poor memory): “This is a safe place for people, but not for ideas. Expect what you say to be challenged, but do not go after the individual people.”

That’s very nice phoenix I think we have a discussion forum motto.

and when someone ask a question about formatting do your best to promote this link

Aside from quoting being a quite subpar format this forum (not the standard

[QUOTE)][/QUOTE]

, quotestacks tend to cause degeneration to really aggressive and personal dialogue.

NPA is standard to almost all forums but isn’t an issue here, certainly so in a manner that should/can be addressed.

I don’t think going offtopic is a bad thing, nor humour, just because this is the SDF. Just don’t try and sidetrack the topic.

I didn’t mean to imply humor should not be used. On-topic should be fairly lenient, and may not even be necessary. Fundamentally, yes, I should start posting about my opinions of abortion in this thread, but slight deviations, or even large deviations if the topic heads that way, are fine in my book.\

Phatcat – I’m glad you like the quote. The first sentence is good, but if I think a rewrite (or perhaps removal) of the second sentence would be good. Looking back at it, it just doesn’t sound as good as the first one.

It does lack a certain feng shui from the first sentence,

“This is a safe place for people, but not for ideas. Expect what you say to be challenged."

hmm?

Also, Phoenix, there is a much easier and more typo proof format than the traditional bq. quote format.

If you simply place a > sign in front of your post, it quotes.

>See?

Much easier and faster than typing bq. (considering the . is on the same space as the > anyway).

Also, I fully support picking apart arguments line by line. With Eketek, no offense, but the arguments tend to get derailed from any actual points into a restatement of his ideas far too often.

I don’t know if it is just him or the format itself, but I certainly think that quoting a lot helps the arguments keep structure and leads to less of the annoying “You never responded to (insert point here), you must agree I am right” posts (they have occured sometimes).

I’m not saying that arguments can’t stray, as they have very often done so with quoting every line, but they tend to stray in a way that is more like a natural discussion than the times that nonquoting leads to full restatements of somebodies stance every few posts, hardly advancing the debate.

Oh and quotes embedded quotes aren’t possible here either afaik =/

Mils here’s the most recent sample of your predilection for quote wars.

>Damn it, I wish there were more people that thought like you out there…

>And I wish there were less people who beleived that legalizing cocaine was a good idea despite the inherent secondhand health risks.

Could you tie this into your above post? A point isn’t being made, yet you’re responding to it anyway, and not making any helpful point in doing so. This is pretty standard fare for quote stacking.

When you have a point that furthers your argument to make, by all means quote relevent parts of the post you reply to, but please restrain yourself from this mutually demeaning escalatory extreme.

I think it would be a good idea to keep people from insulting one another. I don’t know if its been said already though.

>Mils here’s the most recent sample of your predilection for quote wars.

If you are attempting to single me out, which I hope you are not, I can point to multiple times where you were worse than me with quote wars.

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he was providing an example of how that can begin to go astray. i’m sure we’ve all done it. do not to be personalizing it :D

what about quoting external sources?

how should that be handled?

For external sources:
Just name/link drop before or after the quote if it isn’t directly mentioned. We’re not exactly writing an essay here ;). With quoting, though, I’d also suggest adding not trying to take things out of context/spewing quotes in a vain attempt to make whatever argument valid; that does make for some amusing claims, though…

On to something mentioned earlier:
bq. This is a safe place for people, but not for ideas. Expect what you say to be challenged, but do not go after the individual people.

For some people, posting something like “That’s a dumbass idea.” is attacking the user; other people think differently. Either way, a bit about how the idea is bad would make sense, and leaving that out always works. Possibly something about “add something to the argument” or “offer a counter”. Or simply “Contribute.”? If you wanted to clarify that even more, as sometimes needed, it’d probably get too long, so I suppose a line also needs to be drawn for how far in depth people want to go with it. If that really is needed, though, the person is probably looking for somewhere else to post.

ANyone else disagree or care to modify the above suggestion

Here is how I see it:

If you disagree with something and just say their idea is stupid, that is insulting the person and not advancing the discussion. If you give reasons why it is stupid, it is attacking the idea and arguing.

no because reasons would show why you think it’s stupid it would be ur own opinion not arguing.

If you attack an idea, and give reasons why the idea is flawed, then you are generating debate. And debate is a desirable thing in the Serious Discussion board (as are punctuation, capital letters, and other typographical features to enhance readability).

Just saying an idea “sux” is not serious, and it’s not discussion, just a weak attempt at a flame.

What about asking open ended questions.

Assuming they are meant to start discussions (and not open ended like “write a prime number over 6000 but below 8011 without an even number in it”) those are fine.

Let me elaborate asking actual discussion question and not just look for answers to a question that has one simple answer. Those kind of questions I think would be better suited for the Off Topic Forum

Because of the way most people act to one another on this forum, I think they should rename is “Seriously Rude”.

Sorry, I couldn’t hold back that whimsical joke :P