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His behavior is not incompatible with respect, and you're being pedantic. I really wish "beating an argument to death with Merriam-Webster" wasn't as common on HN as it is.

One can respect Craigslist for their history, and what they have done for the online community in the past, without conceding the right to say that they're wrong now, and that you'll be proceeding without their blessing.

One can also respect and understand Craigslist's objection to Padmapper scraping their site, without conceding that the good vastly outweighs whatever valid concerns may exist.

Respect is a complicated social concept, the colloquial usage of the word even more so. Using dictionary definitions to try and corner complex social phenomena is at best a poor idea, at worst an attempt at being disingenuous.



back in the usenet days, it was generally[0] held that the first person to reach for the dictionary had implicitly conceded the argument.

[0] at least on the newsgroups i used to frequent


Clearly my post came across poorly and not as I intended, as at the time I imagined it to be a softer way of suggesting that his words don't represent his actions. Other ways of saying that directly sound much more personal and less civil in my head, but perhaps not to others.

With respect to your definition, I submit that you misunderstand the element that differentiates respect from admiration, appreciation or value. Further debate seems unhelpful, whatever you call it it's the same behavior.




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