What constitutes a fair and reasonable discussion?
A contribution to the myUMBC community
posted over 13 years ago
I feel that many phrases -- burden of proof among others -- are used as a defensive shield with which to hide behind. An argument is not as discrete as many would like to believe. There is much beyond the philosophical handbook that goes into a fair and reasonable discussion. For example: what are generally acceptable sources of information? how do we effectively describe the place we are in an argument, which is inherently nonlinear as there are many branches and side-arguments?
I wonder how many of these arguments conclude with neither party understanding what they have agreed to with the other party (a mutual understanding under false pretense).
As many arguments are not mathematical in nature and based on societal conventions, it would be nice to establish a convention for our community. Naturally such a convention cannot be set in stone because our community changes. Can such a convention be made with a fixed duration? What does the community think on this?
I think that a convention that we can generally agree upon (everyone will have some objection so I concede this is not perfect) that can be modified as a Community Standard would be nice. While our community updates once a semester as new people come in and old ones graduate, I believe updating this standard once a semester would be too cumbersome. However, I believe updating it annually with the fall semester would be a step in the right direction. Think of it like a form of forum moderation decided upon by the community.
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