Are Weakly Backed Opinions Acceptable

(Based on discussion originally in CriticizeDiplomatically)

Blunt Approach: "You should supply more details instead of being so damned vague!"

Smoother Approach: "Please elaborate on this. I'd like to know more."

Nobody is obligated to justify opinions with further details. If a poster wishes to leave a vague or poorly-supported claim, that is their right. There is no consensus wiki rule that obligates one to fill in details, and badgering them to get more details is not socially acceptable.

Corollary: If all you have is an unjustified opinion or claim, please don't post it. On some Internet fora, injecting unsupported opinions (e.g., "<x> is crap!" or "I agree") into a thread is called "thread crapping" and is strongly deprecated because it's rude and only adds noise. Normally, it's deleted by moderators.

What "moderators" are you referring to? This wiki or others?

Some Internet fora, as I wrote.

It may be a matter of opinion whether anecdotal or weakly-backed opinions are welcome. I have not seen any evidence that a wiki consensus nor a majority of WikiZens don't want un-backed opinions. Personally, I usually don't mind such if not worded rudely and not disguised as being well-backed. "I found that product X has a difficult-to-use GUI. -Bob" is perfectly acceptable and even welcome, in my opinion as one WikiZen. (Problems do happen when one insists they are an authority and should be blindly followed.) -t

Anecdotal or weakly-backed opinions are fine. Random drive-by quips that offer no information, tell no story, and provide nothing useful are obviously of no value. Why waste bandwidth by generating them?

See ParkingTicket for information on this. Often the originators of drive-by putdowns never respond or justify their action -- JohnFletcher

Noting that "product X has a difficult-to-use GUI" is a brief, but distantly worthwhile personal opinion. The comment that spawned this thread -- (paraphrasing) that Emacs suffers from an "overdose" of features -- only suggests that this Wiki is inhabited by incapable lamers, fanboys, and superficial technophobes. There's enough of that on FaceBook, LinkedIn and GooglePlus. It doesn't need perpetuation here, where the discourse is hopefully (and usually) a bit more thoughtful and sophisticated.

That may or may not be the case, but the final decision of what is "acceptable" on this wiki is not yours alone to make, and your judgement on those matters is not the canonical reference source. The consensus appears to be that everyone is allowed to have their opinion on a tool etc., even if that opinion is stupid, poorly backed, or embarrassing to this wiki, as long as they are not overly rude to people. (Being "rude" to a tool itself is generally accepted in small quantities. Some enjoy a nice anti-tool rant.)

Nothing wrong with a nice rant, too. Your off-the-cuff comment about Emacs was no rant; it was nothing but irritating and ignorant. It's the sort of thing that diminishes the legitimacy of Wiki.

Mental irritation is in the eye of the beholder. Try Prozac if it bothers you. I'll even assist you with the prescription request writeup for your doctor, as I can supply him/her anecdotal evidence about your high level of irritability over things most of the population would consider small matters. This may help the doctor tune your dosage.

So you're defending your pointless comment with insults? Very mature of you.

Insults? I am trying to help you be less irritated by things that don't normally irritate most humans. If you are also irritated by doctors, I cannot help you there. You are kind of like the GrammarVandal in that your irritation over things which are "small" to most others drives you to be pushy and aggressive in your "correction" endeavors to "cleanse the world of wrong things".

I'm not personally irritated. Your original Emacs comment, however, is irritating. More importantly, it's a pointless waste of bandwidth that conveys no useful information, other than to make it look like this Wiki is as susceptible to the sort of naive Emacs fanboiz/haterz as the various juvenile "brogramming" fora.

Your opinion on that is noted, but you are not the final arbiter, as described above. Semi-free speech does not guarantee "comfortable" speech. If you are truly and heavily bothered by it, then create your wiki with your own rules. Complaining just exasperates the problem. Dogshit on the grass is annoying, but a guy loudly and repeatedly pointing out its existence on the lawn and repeatedly describing its nastiness is perhaps even more annoying than the dogshit itself. It makes it look like this Wiki is as susceptible to pedantic quibblers.

Recognising that your contribution is on par with dogshit, wouldn't it make the most sense to remove your "dogshit" so that this becomes a non-issue?

I don't believe it is, you do. The analogy was formulated to match your view of "irritation", not mine. Again, I'm fine with short un-backed observations/anecdotes/claims (within the stated caveats).

PageAnchor use01

What useful information is conveyed by "un-backed observations/anecdotes/claims" that provide little more detail than essentially "I dislike <x>"?

I like to know what other people's opinions are. Others' opinions have a relationship to what tool builders, vendors, and buyers do. Vendors and tool builders typically will survey the "market" for the target product before they decide to invest resources, and opinions shape what features they put in such products. I realize any such comment is far from a "scientific" sample, but it may be better than no comments. Bigger vendors can take formal surveys, but garage projects and open-source developers may surf the net looking for opinions. Further, sometimes people will elaborate if asked, eventually.

And it may help inspire survey questions. For example, if they see "Emacs has too many features, making its UI confusing", that may suggest adding a few questions to a new survey:

"Does product X have a confusing UI?"
"If so, do you think it's primarily due to A) too many features, B) just a bad UI design, or C) something else/combo?"
"If it's due to too many features, what are some features you think can be tossed?"

I remember once somebody complained about Microsoft Windows' case insensitivity, but didn't elaborate much. It was the first time I realized anybody cared about case insensitivity in an OS. I thought everybody agreed it was a good feature and that Unix was outdated in that area. That made me think deeper about the issue. It made me ask questions I would not have otherwise asked. -t

An aggregation of opinions are useful. Single opinions on one forum are meaningful, how?

This seems like a contradiction. In statistics one sample point is not "useless", but rather conveys very weak statistical information. Two sample points provides a better picture, and yet more sample points more. It's roughly analogous to an image. If we have zero pixels available from the image, we know zero about the picture (beyond its existence perhaps). If we have one pixel, we can begin to make rough estimations. The more pixels we have, the more we can surmise about the image. (Note that knowledge about whether the pixel is randomly selected or based on some other bias matters in making statistical conclusions.)
No useful statistical inference can derived from a sample with N = 1. If you were taking a poll of Emacs views, it might have value. Your drive-by quip about Emacs was nothing more than self-indulgence, which tells us nothing about Emacs and a little more about you.
Further, just because YOU personally don't like such opinions is not a reason to inject that preference onto everybody else. PersonalChoiceElevatedToMoralImperative. I keep pointing this out, but it does not seem to be sinking in. It is very very very clear to me that it bothers you personally; you don't have to keep pointing that out. If you wish to persuade WikiZens in general that such should be banned, you are going about it wrong. Keep in mind that WikiZens are not required to justify the reasoning behind their content norms any more than voters are required to divulge their reasoning for their votes. I'm not putting a value judgement on that situation, only saying that's the way it is as a social/societal institution. If you want your own planet to do your own way, become a Mormon in good standing and God will (allegedly) grant you your own planet to be a sub-god over.
Do you really think Wiki benefits from random, un-defended, unsubstantiated injections of personal opinion into otherwise meaningful content?
Haven't you already asked that question? How is this materially different from prior similar questions?
My question is rhetorical.
And still redundant. You seem to be using repetition as a persuasion tool.

As for the original point re Emacs, consider yourself asked to elaborate.

I don't wish to at this time. For one, it was roughly a decade ago and I don't remember the specifics. -t

Then your comment on Emacs is thread-crapping, nothing more.

I find your repetitious complaining to be of a very similar texture, color, and smell.

That's probably because you feel embarrassed by your blunder.

Go ahead and believe that if you makes you shut up.

You're getting ruder and ruder. Such defensive behaviour shows you know you are wrong. What started this was a pointlessly negative, unsubstantiated quip about Emacs. Rather than perpetuate your immature and embarrassing behaviour, the best thing to do is correct it.

Projection. Your defense of censorship of unbacked opinions sucked eggs, so now you are red herring into the Emacs comment. I stand by my defense of un-backed opinions in general on this wiki and believe the majority of WikiZens will also. By the way, this topic is NOT about Emacs.

This page was spawned directly as a result of discussion about your Emacs quip, which -- at best -- demonstrated your annoyance at being unable to grasp a powerful tool.

I realize that, but the topic as it is is not about Emacs, but the complaint that un-backed opinions are "bad". Unless un-backed Emacs opinions are somehow different than other un-backed opinions, I see no reason to dwell on Emacs. Readers expect the topic to be about weakly-backed opinions and not about Emacs nor your gripes about my alleged personality. You are wondering OffTopic.

The Emacs quip is a perfect demonstration of why un-backed opinions are bad: It highlights that they're useless noise which reflect personal peccadilloes rather than providing information, insight, or even entertainment.

Objectively prove it's "useless", not just make that claim repeatedly. Go!

What isn't "useless" about it? What value does it provide?

See near PageAnchor use01. I expanded it.

CategoryCriticism