Issuepedia:Arguing/respect the room

I started to type up a proper page earlier, but lost what I had written before I had it saved -- so I'm going to save these notes now, so I won't lose them again. —Woozle (talk) 11:29, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Notes

Be aware when an argument or claim you might make would be upsetting in view of the room consensus -- and don't be all surprised when people get upset if people do get upset when you or someone else says such a thing. Even in rooms that are dominated by groupthink rather than rational consensus, there's going to be a lot of feeling attached to such issues, and making light of those feelings is not going to win anyone over.

Alexandria wrote:

[...] if you go into a space where people have a common understanding, and you post an article from a news website that disagrees with that common understanding, of course people are going to take that in a weird way, because it looks like you're going to try and stir up shit. Most people here have gained an understanding of communism and anarchism indirectly from people writing about the academia that they've been reading. i.e. to people here their beliefs are more strongly sourced than a random news source that's written by someone with a vested interest in presenting that different worldview as fact

So instead in the future if you phrased it differently, like for example:

Hey, this article seems to say X, but I gather that's not what people here believe, so would it be ok to ask if you explain why Y is the case?

that's going to be received a whole lot better, because rather than deliberately ignoring the difference in view and just being contradictory, you're directly addressing it and asking politely for that contradiction to be resolved

It's also outright giving people the option to say no, [although] most people won't do that since they're friendly