Lootman wrote:Gengulphus wrote: "It is forbidden to write defamatory remarks, whether about site users or others."
No, I didn't write that - I quoted it from
the site rules, written by someone else (I would guess one or both of the site admins, but that's just a guess). Not a major point, but it does affect the context of the remarks I did make: they're my explanation of something written by others, not something I'm arguing for myself.
Lootman wrote:"Defamatory" has a specific legal meaning. I doubt many TLF comments are defamatory in that sense. If they were, then remedies exist outside of TLF.
But TLF still want to know about it, so that they can get rid of it promptly and avoid getting caught up in any legal action - and quite possibly avoid any legal action that they could get caught up in even happening at all. It's quickest and cheapest for TLF if a possibly-defamatory comment gets reported and removed without the person it targets ever realising that it was there in the first place. And I say "possibly-defamatory" in that because while "defamatory" has a specific legal meaning, whether a particular remark is defamatory in that legal sense can still be the subject of legal argument and opinion. And since legal argument and opinion costs money and that money is likely to be quite serious in the context of TLF's finances, that means that moderator action is likely to be taken against anything that looks as though it might possibly be defamatory.
Lootman wrote:However, taking that more generally to mean negative comments, as we both did, then one can accept that as being undesirable in principle. That leaves it as a matter of linguistic gymnastics how you make constructive criticisms of a class of Lemons without falling foul of the guideline. Given that criticism is often the vehicle of self-awareness and improvement, the challenge is to find a way of criticising without the perception of negativity. Difficult, but not impossible, perhaps needing the employment of an array of euphemisms.
The answer to that is
very simple: you
DON'T make criticisms of other users here, whether constructive or not. Criticise their ideas, yes, but not them. If a user makes a comment you want to respond to and you find yourself having to indulge in linguistic gymnastics to make your reply without describing/criticising the user who made the comment, think again about making that reply, because it's probably not wanted by TLF.
Also, personal criticism will only help someone to become more self-aware or to improve if that's what they actually
want to do at the time. They may well not want to, for instance because they don't agree that a particular improvement is wanted (*). And if becoming more self-aware or improving is not what they want at the time, uninvited personal criticism intended to help them do so is liable to be seen at best as the actions of an interfering do-gooder - and I think more likely to be seen as not so constructively motivated...
That does leave open the possibility of invited personal criticism, of course, and I'm uncertain about what the moderator response to that might be. I.e.
if I'm after self-awareness and improvement through constructive criticism of me as a person, I could
explicitly ask for such criticism. If I were to do so on TLF (**), the moderators might take my request into account and decide not to take any action against such criticism - but only "might", because they might well decide that maintaining the "no personal criticism" norm on TLF was a higher priority than providing a platform for users to help each other in that particular way.
(*) An example is that it's quite clear that some users think I need to improve my posts by making them shorter. I disagree: it might make those users happier, but it's also clear that some other users appreciate my attempts to be thorough and would be made less happy... In any case, such posts are my
forte and I've no desire whatsoever to join the tweeting population!
(**) Which is incredibly unlikely - I can think of far better groups to ask than a group of 3000+ strangers, most of whom I know absolutely nothing about and a few of whom have demonstrated outright hostility towards me in the past.
Lootman wrote:So [expletive deleted] supporters may not be members of a cult, but perhaps do sometimes exhibit a pattern of not giving full credit to the merits of Tottenham. They are not zealous but are very enthusiastic. They are not prejudiced but are passionate. They are not disciples but are single-mindedly proud of their tribe. That kind of thing
Yes, you could try such "linguistic gymnastics" to make personal criticism look like personal approval. It's rather pointless, though: if you succeed and everybody takes it as personal approval, you've failed to make your point, and if you don't succeed, your post is still fairly likely to attract moderator action.
IMHO it's far easier to pay attention to the "play the ball, not the man" principle and make a point about [expletive deleted], Tottenham, or whatever other club comes up in the discussion. If your point is valid and [expletive deleted] supporters have been claiming otherwise, they end up looking like zealots without you ever calling them zealots - and you haven't had to look for suitable euphemisms or do other "linguistic gymnastics".
And one final point: people who have run out of arguments to support their viewpoint often resort to personal criticism as a smokescreen to try to hide their defeat - often enough that using personal criticism runs a significant risk of getting oneself tarred with the same brush in the eyes of one's readers.
Gengulphus