I think there are times when it's appropriate, but I've only once seen it done in a productive manner (in the context of forum threads). Usually, and in this case specifically, it's just a way to say, "You are an undesirable type of person, so you shouldn't be listened to."
Forum posters, by and large, aren't public figures and shouldn't be subjected to personal scrutiny. Their views should be debated in isolation, because we should be discussing ideas and not each other. Otherwise you just get into mud flinging and dissections of hypocrisy, neither of which are informative or productive; it's just toxicity.
Sometimes someone is sort of a limited purpose public figure in that forum, and they cause problems across multiple threads with repetitive, disruptive behavior. In that case, the only way to challenge them on it is to call a spade a spade and to show the receipts. But it's a delicate criticism to make which readily devolves into mud flinging.
This case specifically isn't saying they're undesirable therefore wrong. Do you think it's a coincidence the views cited are on the same topic? The purpose of mentioning other comments here is to fill in a bigger picture of the views they are expressing right now, not to mention anything else about the person.
This is not violating the idea of looking at views in isolation. It's only violating the idea of looking at posts in isolation, which is a worse goal. We should want to look at someone's entire view on a specific topic.
You may not find that comment productive, and that's fine, but the reference to other posts about their view is not the problem with it.
I think you simply misunderstand the comment. I don't know how you are reading the word "bootlicker" and not taking the implication that their views are to be disregarded, or why you don't think "bootlicker" is an undesirable category.
Please note that I'm not saying you shouldn't read a comment history. I'm saying, you shouldn't weaponize a comment history.
If you examine the sibling thread to this one, I think you'll find that the commenter clarifies that they do, in fact, hold this person's views in contempt. Frankly when I skimmed the comment history in question I did find comments that made me go "yikes!", but that doesn't mean we engage in a no holds barred rhetorical cage match. As I've argued, that does harm to the conversation and community and fails to reach the people who should be reached.
> I don't know how you are reading the word "bootlicker" and not taking the implication that their views are to be disregarded, or why you don't think "bootlicker" is an undesirable category.
I do see that.
But that doesn't mean the part before "bootlicker" was wrong!
> If you examine the sibling thread to this one, I think you'll find that the commenter clarifies that they do, in fact, hold this person's views in contempt.
Yes, the views. They're applying scrutiny to the specific views and not anything else about the person, which is the correct thing to do.
You can say they are doing the scrutiny wrong, but that's different from scrutinizing the wrong thing. They are scrutinizing the right thing. They're not bringing in irrelevant information to discredit. They're only bringing in information on the directly relevant views.
tl;dr "what to scrutinize" and "how to scrutinize" are different things. The way they did the former, "referencing views from another thread" but only on the same topic, was fine. The stuff like "bootlicker" is the latter.
You're picking and choosing what parts of the comment to base your opinion on, and in the process you've transformed it into an entirely different comment. As a result the first half of your comment contradicts the second. At this point the ball is just entirely in your court; if you're going to deliberately misread this comment then there's nothing more I can do or say to convince you you've made an error.
I have no idea how you think my comment is contradictory.
Maybe just focus on the tl;dr?
You accused someone of bringing in outside information they should not have. I assert that, while they were very rude, the information they brought in was correct to bring in.
What am I missing?
I promise promise promise I am not deliberately misreading anything.
If we go back to the very start, you said "I don't think it's okay to call someone a bootlicker, or to reference their views from one thread in another". I'm not defending the bootlicker thing! I'm defending the referencing of views in this case, because and only because they are directly relevant.
You said two things were wrong, I think one of them is not wrong. That's not "picking and choosing" in any negative way.
I don't know why you ever thought I was defending the bootlicking accusation. But I didn't accuse you of misreading me on purpose.
