great! name calling and straw men [LWN.net]

great! name calling and straw men

Posted Oct 25, 2004 10:46 UTC (Mon) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462)
In reply to: great! name calling and straw men by stevenj
Parent article: How to be a Free Software zealot (NewsForge)

What's the problem exactly? You are offended by the term "zealot"? Look it up in your favourite dictionary, it's a perfectly normal term; much more so than the names some reserve for Windows users sometimes.

There's no doubt that there are many people out there to whom the term "zealot" applies. They are the ones that will not compromise, that will adhere to their principles at all cost, to the point those principles will never be realised in the real world.

And that's not what we want, right?

I don't think the article was particularly clever or deep, but it clearly points out the importance of knowing what's important and what's not.

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great! name calling and straw men

Posted Oct 25, 2004 19:11 UTC (Mon) by stevenj (guest, #421) [Link]

The word "moron" is also a perfectly ordinary word that appears in every English dictionary. Applied to people, it was initially a medical term, but it now has derogatory implications. Similarly, "zealot" has derogatory implications, and that's how it is used here; it is disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

For one thing, this is an ad hominem attack (as opposed to criticizing someone's words or actions) and shouldn't appear in the first place. Worse, simply calling someone a zealot (or "irrational", or ...) as the premise rather than the conclusion of a criticism (no, fabricated "quotations" don't count as supporting arguments) is mere schoolyard name-calling. Neither ad hominem attacks, nor name-calling, nor straw-men arguments, have any place in a site that aspires to serious journalism. They are useful in a site like Slashdot that relies on flamewars to draw readers and contributors, but I hope LWN doesn't go in that direction.

(Nor can the article defend itself by claiming that it doesn't actually name specific entities in its hypothetical criticisms; that's sophistry, because we all know what philosophy's adherents it is trying to besmirch.)

great! name calling and straw men

Posted Oct 25, 2004 21:46 UTC (Mon) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462) [Link]

Wow, you read a lot more into this article than I do.

Since you did't get it, here's the definition of "zealot": a fanatically committed person -- no offense here, unless it is taken. Contrast that with the definition of moron.

Obviously the article was meant to drive home a point by exaggerating it. It was deliberately worded to reflect a "typical" conversation between a "zealot" and what one could call an "average Open Source community member". One could say the zealot does not come across as the cleverest or most rational of people, so the article is a bit unfair, but that doesn't justify the kind of comments that this article has received here, and this portrayal of the zealot is, again, deliberate.

You swallowed it hook, line and sinker -- but there was no bait.

(By the way: the quality of sites like Slashdot, and to a lesser extent LWN, is not only determined by the articles that are selected by the editors, but also by the comments of their readers.)