On Wed, Jul 26, 2023 at 04:53:01PM +0000, Andrew Campling <andrew.campling@419.consulting> wrote a message of 147 lines which said: > It should be possible to disagree on matters of substance without > resorting to ad hominem attacks that question the motivation of an > individual, their employer etc. People and organisations have goals and agenda. Their proposals and opinions do not come out of the blue, they are rooted in their values, history, previous actions, etc. For organisations, the goals are often explicit (even if organisations also have goals that are a bit hidden) and are also expressed via their former declarations. So, it is perfectly legitimate to judge a proposal by the person / organisation promoting it (like George Michaelson did in his assessment of IWF). Also, it is simply necessary: there is no way a reasonable person could study everything from scratch, we don't have time for that. Deciding on previous knowledge is a normal way of working.
