[thelist] One blowhard, hundreds of cubic feet of hot air

spinhead evolt at spinhead.com
Tue Jan 22 14:45:13 CST 2002


> >2) the tone of your message is unnecessarily argumentative
>
> really? i rather thought (other than the word "moron") that it was worded
> quite well.
>

Subjective on my part (ymmv) - for me, it only requires one bit of rudeness
to qualify as 'unnecessary' and the general tone struck me that way (the
poster himself was concerned enough to add the disclaimer at the end)

> >3) Martin has proven repeatedly that he knows what he's talking about (I
> >hope you read his resume before you posted)
>
> What does THAT have to do about ANYTHING when you're talking hard facts.
>
> >and in a war of opinions, I'll
> >take his well-thought-out and politely worded one over anyone else's
angry
> >spouting every single time.
>
> Personally, I'll take the hard facts over resume-waving.

I used the word 'opinion' intentionally. Since the poster didn't include one
word of Martin's post, it's difficult to see both sides of the argument. If
his point was, "Amazon has not made a profit" that's all that should be
posted. If the point was, "Martin doesn't have his facts straight" then
Martin's statements should be quoted from the original message with
appropriate documentation. The lack of any apparent attempt to make the post
a professional, properly handled debate makes it seem much more like a
personal attack than a useful conversation.

>
> >Disagreement is fine; it's how we learn. Rudeness is not fine, it's
> >counterproductive.
>
> Yeah. I think all parties involved in this conversation could make use of
> the above comment.

Yup!

>
> THanks,
>

You're so welcome!

joel

> --
> mattwarden
> mattwarden.com
>
>







More information about the thelist mailing list