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Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 8, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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There’s a post in the CW thread which I suspect of bad-faith argumentation. Specifically: mixing in enough concrete questions to make it difficult to point out the unsupported (and relatively spicy) claims. What’s the appropriate response?

Obviously, I don’t want to respond in that thread without addressing the actual questions. Especially if it’s good-faith, just poorly drafted. But I also don’t want to let the generalizations go unchallenged.

Challenge the generalizations, call out what you consider to be unsupported claims. Same as any other contentious post.

People report posts as "bad faith" constantly, and nine times out of ten, what that means is "I disagree with this post and it makes me angry."

For what it’s worth, I didn’t report it.

In theory, I wanted to write a thorough response, but felt frustrated that doing so would take more time and effort than I had available. Asking this question...well, I suppose it was an inelegant way to register the prediction that the user in question wouldn’t engage with effortful criticism, thus justifying my own inaction. I can’t say I’m satisfied with my choice.

Another user ended up making just such a more thorough dissection, thankfully, and the thread was more productive for it.