Tip.It Times - 23rd October 2011

[RU_Insane]

"Furthermore, it is exceptionally lazy for people on the internet not to be able to fact-check for themselves"

 

The burden of proof is always on people making the claim.

Whenever they do it is THEIR responsibility to back it up. To not back up your claims and expect other people to do your work for you is lazy.

 

I hope you see the irony in what you just said. You're telling him to fact-check on a claim which deals with burden of proof, the truth of which is self-evident.

[Father_Time]

"Furthermore, it is exceptionally lazy for people on the internet not to be able to fact-check for themselves"

 

The burden of proof is always on people making the claim.

Whenever they do it is THEIR responsibility to back it up. To not back up your claims and expect other people to do your work for you is lazy.

 

I hope you see the irony in what you just said. You're telling him to fact-check

 

I did not. I said that if someone doesn't believe your claim then it's your job to prove it.

[RU_Insane]

"Furthermore, it is exceptionally lazy for people on the internet not to be able to fact-check for themselves"

 

The burden of proof is always on people making the claim.

Whenever they do it is THEIR responsibility to back it up. To not back up your claims and expect other people to do your work for you is lazy.

 

I hope you see the irony in what you just said. You're telling him to fact-check

 

I did not. I said that if someone doesn't believe your claim then it's your job to prove it.

 

Backing up your claims with evidence to substantiate them is fact-checking. You check facts to prove something along with reasoning and other evidence. The two are not mutually exclusive. The problem with what you said is that, again, you're asking him to fact-check (or if you prefer, prove) a claim about fact-checking. It's self-evident that failing to fact-check is usually indicative of at least a disinterest in the truth of a statement.

 

You can also occasionally chock up failure of such to oversight. In that case, it's not so much the laziness to fact-check as opposed to (usually) a subtle error that takes some digging to get to. In other cases, its gross incompetence as the culprit for failure to fact-check. In either case, I agree that there are many outcomes besides laziness that are responsible for failure to verify your facts. So I see why you told Croce to prove what he claimed.

 

That said, even if there are other causes behind failure of verification, it doesn't make his statement any less true. Crocefisso was making a specific statement about a process in debate. It's true that many people are lazy to check facts -- hence why I said it's self evident and he doesn't need to prove his claim beyond that. If he were positing an absolute as opposed to a particular (i.e. everyone who fails to fact-check is lazy), I'd agree that he'd have to prove his claim beyond self-evidence. I understand that he's positing a particular, not an absolute, given how he phrased his claim.

[Father_Time]

I was not asking him to back up anything.

 

He was saying that those who ask for proof from people making a claim are lazy because they aren't fact checking it themselves (and I just realized now that my quote does a bad job of showing that).

 

I'm telling him that he's wrong, that if they want proof it's the other person's job to provide it.

[Guest jrhairychest]

 

I fail to see any merit in your criticism. In case you didn't notice, you're the only one who seems to have a problem with the way Croce writes. Yet, you make this assumption that all users share your own (lack of?) attention span for an article that happens to be relevant to every user on this forum. With respect to "more suited to the audience," I can't help but read that as, "Everyone on TIF is stupid but me." Yet here you stand alone in complaining about how it was written rather than what was written.

 

I see you dont read the feedback to these articles as youll see Im not alone. More suited to the audience means just that. I havent said anyone is stupid. You have. The audience doesnt need a long winded and wordy article. As Rook put it, keep it straight to the point. I prefer things in plain English as do most people.

 

For your cute little comment about the EP, we make the judgment of what is published. Everyone on the EP knows how to write well, knows conceptual and practical English, and doesn't seem to have any difficulty in reading an article longer than the length of the chat box on RuneScape. Croce puts his all into his articles and is never going to change his style. The common denominator in all of his articles is trying to enlighten users of an often overlooked or downright unknown idea and he does a damn great job every single time.

 

Just because youre on the EP doesnt mean you know everything about article writing or that you understand the meaning of writing for your audience actually is. Ive highlighted exactly that in your response here. Never change his style? What sort of writer or member of the EP who are worth their salt doesnt consider their audience first? Completely ridiculous.

 

If someone looks at one of his articles and thinks it's too long or whatever else you were suggesting, they're missing out on a great piece with some knowledge that will benefit them beyond RuneScape and Tip.It. If you alone think his articles are too long or educational, you're reading the wrong editorial, buddy. If it's short abominations of the English language you were hoping to see, try Reddit.

 

Try asking the people who actually get to the end of the articles first before switching off due to the boredom of it. Im always willing to read articles as long as theyre just what you say informative, knowledgeable, entertaining and to the point. This article isnt.

 

As far as the simpleton remarks go dont forget youre writing for Tipit, not the Times Educational section so come down from your perch a little here. It takes more to convince me than a couple of guys who have EP logos next to their name, mistake themselves for professional writers/editors who laughably ignore the most essential concept The audience.

[RU_Insane]

I was not asking him to back up anything.

 

He was saying that those who ask for proof from people making a claim are lazy because they aren't fact checking it themselves (and I just realized now that my quote does a bad job of showing that).

 

I'm telling him that he's wrong, that if they want proof it's the other person's job to provide it.

 

Oh! I see what you mean now. Yeah, you're right. :P Though depending on the statement made, it could boil down to laziness. If I state something to be well-known fact, like "Obama is the current President of the US", and someone challenges me on that point, I'd tell them to Google it since it requires almost no effort to. If they still refuse, well, no effort wasted. I've actually had that happen to me before, too. I make an obvious statement and someone challenges me on it. Luckily, it only happens with pure idiots, and I've encountered a handful of them in my travels across the Internet XD

[Kimberly]

This has sadly and swiftly gone from discussing articles and their contents to borderline attacking author or user's writing or posting styles. These guidelines that are in the very first post apply to users, moderators, admins, EP'ers, TET Leaders, Crewbies--everyone. Everyone is expected to abide by them, as well as our forum rules. This sly and sneaky passive-aggressive debate style has slowly snuck back into the discussion threads for the past few weeks. This is not acceptable.

 

I'm going to give everyone one last opportunity to re-read this:

[hide=Read these rules before posting in this thread]

Rampant flame wars have taken control of virtually every week's times discussion topics. The following guidelines must be followed when posting on this topic. Posts that ignore these guidelines will be removed.

 

1. You are invited and welcome to express like or dislike on articles and a particular author's writing style. It is not acceptable, however, to flame or personally insult an author. Posts that aren't anything but an attack will be removed from the topic.

 

2. Spelling and grammar errors can be reported to tripsis by PMing her and they will be fixed promptly. It is not necessary to post them on the discussion topic.

 

3. Off topic posts that do not discuss the content of that week's articles will be removed. This is not the place to discuss the direction of the times, how much you love or hate the times, etc. Off topic posts will be removed.

 

By keeping within these guidelines, Times discussion topics will mean more for the Panel and Administration than just a place for flame wars. Flame wars do not provide any useful feedback to the Times, which is mainly what we're aiming for with these topics: feedback.

 

This policy is effective as of now, November 17, 2010. Any posts prior to the creation of this policy may or may not be removed according to the new guidelines.

[/hide]

 

...and try to keep things on track.

 

If we all can't exercise self restraint and rein it back on-topic together, moderators will essentially be forced to butcher discussion by deleting posts and editing out personal attacks, which will kill a weekly topic like this. It's not something we want to do, seriously. You can PM me if you have any questions, but I will be forced to remove further off-topic posts if this continues. Please don't let it get to that point.

 

Thanks

 

EDIT: Continuing previous off-topic discussion will not help the situation; please don't do it.

Edited October 27, 2011 by Kimberly