Gentle reminder:
When commenting, please consider the three doors that charitable speech must pass through. The gatekeeper at the door asks, “Is it true?” The second gatekeeper asks, “Is it helpful?” The third gatekeeper asks, “Is it kind?” (adapted from the writings of Krishnamurti by James Martin on p. 169 of his book “Between Heaven and Mirth.)
There are many new people here so, to reiterate:
Here we don’t make broad claims about groups of people. We stick to our own experience, and use the word “some” a lot. Like “some” FS employees do this or that, or some political operatives from X party, or… The more specific your claim is, the better we understand. This is not the place to decry generic evils of generic groups.
Also here we stick to the topic. Any Admin or Congress may, and will, do all kinds of things we don’t agree with. But we don’t switch from the topic at hand to something else.
Jon’s post on the GSA leases is an excellent example. He picked a topic and related it to the FS and BLM.
I’ve not approved some comments recently because they veered off topic or made unnecessary generalizations about groups. If you remove those sentences they will be approved.
For new people, I will give you a chance and point out the problems the first or first few times.
A cynical observer might view these rulings as arbitrary and capricious but prior restraint doesn’t apply to private fora, right?
Dear Sharon,
I certainly agree with you about maintaining a degree of decorum, remaining generally on topic, and sticking to the facts. That is just good form. I would also expect contributors and commenters to avoid the logical fallacies explained by Aristotle, such as Ad Hominems (name-calling). Those are favorites of political types.
But I do not think you want to clamp down on all generalizations (like my previous sentence) or force too many caveats. As scientists, we need to occasionally set ourselves apart from other groups or say “That is complete nonsense!” Scientists are always looking for generalizations that will hold up to scrutiny (eg., the Laws of Physics) and should be able to call a spade a spade, even if it might hurt some feelings. The dictionary definition of “Ad Hominem” mentions its use in politics.
Most people understand good behavior versus bad. Vigorous discussions should fall under “good behavior,” in my humble opinion. Name-calling when someone cannot think of anything else to say is quite the opposite.
Gordon