Browsing this forums for years now some lack of proper civil behaviour during debates has caught my attention. I have been in some of those activly, and in some mearly an observer.
The first thing that bothers me that some people think themselves the keepers of the true Freespace knowledge. While there are a lot of us with good knowledge of the lore, the problem is when they treat their personal interpretations or theories as the absolute truth...
I'll start with a example:
-------------------------------------------
NOTE - the following example is from the battleship discussion as it's the only one I could recall at short notice that shows nicely what I'm talking about. This is not an attempt to revive that debate - I've said all that needs to be said on that subject
-------------------------------------------
In that debate someone (can't remember who exactly and I'm too lazy to check, so let's jsut say The Other Guy - or TOG), using canon numbers from the game came to a conclusion.
Looking at the size and HP number of terran ship he concluded that the armor increase is smaller the bigger the ship is - or in other words that the armor is limited by ships size and thus bigger ships can't have as much armor. So he concluded that there can't exist a destroyer-sized ship with the armor-size ratio of the deimos.
Now his conlusion is logical and there are really no errors in it...however...
My interpretation of those numbers was that the ship were specificly designed for different purposes - and as such they have differnt capabilities. Cruisers and corvettes are designed as close combat warships so they have smaller rooms, more bulkheads and thicker armor - which all result in a bigger structural integrity increase than armor alone - it's the whole design.
This conclusion is allso logical and makes sense..
So what's the problem? We have two different theories, both derived from the same numbers and both make sense. The problem is that I never claimed my theory to be the correct one - I claimed it be a possible one, and as such, that the
possibility of existance of such ship is there.
TOG on the other hand claimed his theory the only true one, taking it as cannon and basicly acusing me of trying to create "TrashManverse.. or whatever.."..
--------------------------------------------------------
The point? You can't attack another person for simply having a different (but vaible) THEORY.
The other problem is charachter asasination (and I feel a lot of it will come once I post it). It's a cheap trick employed by some forum members when they can't win a debate trough arguments, so they throw dirt at the guy holding hte other oppinion.
The usual accuasations are of childish behavior, inability to face truth/reality (AKA - MY OPPINION), bigotry, fanatissm with a idea or whatever else they can think of.
The purpose of this is to deavalute the contect of the persons posts while at the same time make their own sound truer. Sometimes this is done subtly (like a frindly warning or joke) and it then builds up..
Either way, such behaviour is not productive and very rude to say it mildely. This threads purpose is to serve as a reminder to those forums members who acted this way allready to pay attention to what they write and as a warning to future debate goers of the things they might encounter.
Stay frosty
