There's a fine line between arguing passionately and browbeating, and where you think that line is and where the majority of us think it is do not exactly line up. Go back over the threads and mark ANYTHING that could be considered a personal attack. If you want to, you can also try to determine if someone did consider it a personal attack. Also make note if YOU responded to a perceived insult in kind (i.e. with your own insult). Then ask yourself if you could have made your point or responded differently, without the [possible] personal attacks.

If you still cannot connect the dots, then you might want to take a few print outs to someone schooled in debate and go over them.

As for your your example, it's irrelevant -- just because someone else crosses the line and does or does not get called out on it doesn't justify or vindicate YOUR actions.

As an example of what I was talking about in the first paragraph, I was going to end the previous paragraph with "Didn't they teach this back in school?" But it's just inflammatory -- there's no actual value to it.

Elda Taluta; Sarks Sark; Ark Arks

In reply to Re: What is "aggressive" argument? by Argel
in thread What is "aggressive" argument? by BrowserUk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.