Maybe I'm suffering from the surfeit of elections which has of late broken out in the countries surrounding the Celtic Sea, but isn't this what the White House press corps might call a Non-Denial Denial?
> Why don't we take another poll -- who would like people to at least make
> an effort to distinguish between their own ideas and material, and
> someone else's?
Like most referenda, the key question here is "what's the right question"? I think the reason this degenerated into a flamefest last time was the perception of a Carmanian-style exercise in dividing up sources by Validity. "... And then the Good Lord parted all Gloranthan Material, and that which was to the Right of GregoVanus was Good, and that which was to the Left was Not Good, and was summarily Gregged."
Me, I prefer to make my own judgements as to Validity, but I do sometimes find it confusing if someone makes a statement out of the blue, unqualified by either a reference or an IM{HO|G|C}, and I find myself wondering if they thought of it 30s ago, got it out of a source I haven't read, or (sadly often) simply one I can't remember, or can't place. Which is why I made a suggestion myself about "references" at least once over the aeons, which though unflamed, went largely ignored. Though having said that, I think the List has somewhat "improved" in that respect anyway, one suspects coincidentally.
I acknowledge that this could get tedious for both writer and reader if taken to excess, so I don't advocate either the ritual flaming of non-compliant posters, or the neglect of the Sense Common skill. Think of references, or even brief allusions to where one might have half-remembered something from (happens to me all the time), as a convenience for anyone who wishes to go read further on the subject, that's all, I'd suggest.
Uncommonly,
Alex.
Powered by hypermail