Smorgasboarding: Pros and Cons

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   Jane,

When you said: "Publicly accusing an alliance of thieving with little evidence" you obvioiusly did not read the post completely or look at the available evidence.  The post specifically says I was not accusing anybody of thieving.  Read the post.  I merely laid out the evidence I had and told people they could draw their own conclusions.  That you thought the evidence pointed to thieving is the only way you could say I accused anybody of thieving.  Thus the evidence presented was sufficient for you to draw a conclusion I did not draw.  You can't have it both ways.  You can't say the evidence was "little" at the same time you say it was "enough" for a person to draw a particular conclusion (valid or not).

In addition, if the alliance in question thought the evidence so poor, why did they think I had accused them?  I can call you a marshmallow but nobody would take me seriously unless I had a picture of you in a "Stay Puff" bag (LOL)  My point is that the evidence was strong enough that a LOT of people thought it led to the accusation you thought I was making.... and if so, then obviously the evidence was not "little" 

I will admit here and now that the evidence was not conclusive.  But it was never presented that way and in the post I said the evidence was not complete AND that I was NOT accusing anybody.  I will also admit that the structure of the presentation was not neutral enough to and tended to lead others to a conclusion that fell short of proof.  I regret that I did not reflect myself enough on the wording and should have either not made the post of taken it to a different place for review.

But even so, whatever a person says in the forum ought to be dealt with in the forum.  I'm quite certain that if I were accused of this I would have done my homework and presented an alternative theory to show that the evidence presented could reach a different conclusion and THEN asked the poster to amend his or her post.  And if I had been presented with that scenario (the alternative explanation did come long after other actions were taken) I would have sheepishly amended my post and admitted my mistakes.

But that is not the procedure some people think to use.  Instead of doing themselves justice and making their case in the forums (and in doing so the weakness of the original argument) they choose display their own apparent belief that they have no good counter argument by using "other means" to "win"the debate.  This approach is nothing more than the same thuggery you experience when you are in a debate in RL and the person with whom you are debating decides they can't win and threatens you.  It is obviously not as serious a threat, but it's the same basic threat.  I would say to anybody who doesn't have the stomach for good debate and the self-discipline to stick to the question and make their case, don't get into the debate.  

There is no excuse for bullying people just because you can't counter their arguments with better arguments.  The force of arms ought not be the final arbiter of good debate for when it is all who speak are threatened.  If you wish to speak you ought to remember that the first step to silencing everybody is to silence the best and the loudest.   

AJ