> From: <l.wood@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> I'd like to point out that I didn't make an ad hominem argument or
> assertion.
> From: Dave Crocker <dcrocker@xxxxxxxx>
> The form of your note was not the issue. It was the substance. The
> substance was directed at a person and was /about/ that person. It's
> the 'about' that made it ad hominem.
I think there are different thresholds for 'ad hominem' - loosely interpreted
as '_inappropriately_ about the speaker rather than about what they say' -
depending on the area.
For instance, in a purely technical issue (e.g. 'that algorithm scales as
O(<foo>), not O(<bar>), as has been contended'), I think it's pretty clear
that pretty much anything about the questioner is relatively immaterial.
There's an objective 'right' or 'wrong', etc. So the 'ad hominem' threshold
there is pretty low.
On the other hand, for discussions of group governance, I think the person's
experience/knowledge/etc _are_ relevant, because when it comes to managing
human groups, there are no 'right' answers. (Which is why the Law of
Unintended Consequences often comes into play in human governance decisions.)
That kind of information about someone has some real utility in evaluating
their thoughts about such topics, so _some_ questioning is legitimate.
And in these latter case, I suspect there's also a grey area - 'you're an
idiot' is pretty clearly over the line, 'how much experience have you had
running large groups' is probably relevant, and 'how old are you' (as a quick
example off the top of my head, not necessarily the greyest I could come up
with if I spent more time thinking about it) is somewhere in the middle..
Noel