Aren't unfounded attacks on Buddhism unacceptable here?

Question

In civilized discussions, if you disagree, you should provide counter-arguments, not offenses.

For example, when Dhammadhatu called Pratityasamutpada explanation "materialistic error" (https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/a/22096/11762), I provided sutta quotation and reference to show that it was actual Buddha's Teaching, and I explained the seeming contradiction with another sutta (https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/63892/discussion-on-answer-by-dhammadhatu-once-ignorance-is-removed-is-the-cessation)

That's a proper way to discuss disagreements.

Dhammadhatu commented on that as "misunderstanding ... confusion, materialism & unverifiable superstition"[2], instead of backing his view with any arguments.

I don't think such behavior is mature and should be accepted on this site.

So I propose that moderators:

• Leave important comments like mine under the answer, rather than moving them to chat. Then users could compare such answers with actual words of Buddha, and avoid being misinformed.
• Delete comments with denigrating labels, rather than moving them to chat. Such unfounded attacks on Buddha's Teaching have no benefit for anyone.

Answer 1

In civilized discussions, if you disagree, you should provide counter-arguments, not offenses.

I agree. When having discussions, counter-arguments should be provided, instead of offenses. Regarding validity, its also a good idea to back up ones statements with references or other sources.

The thing is, this is different on the Stack Exchange Format. This is not a discussion-format. Actually, discussions are not welcome, unless they take place in the Chat Rooms or on Meta.

This is a Q/A-site, meaning we are looking for the best answers possible, i.e. answers of the highest quality.

So I propose that moderators:

• Leave important comments like mine under the answer, rather than moving them to chat. Then users could compare such answers with actual words of Buddha, and avoid being misinformed.

The discussion was moved to chat in order to remove (and clean) it from the main page. If users want to read the conversation, there is a chat-link in the comment section, where everything is preserved.

• Delete comments with denigrating labels, rather than moving them to chat. Such unfounded attacks on Buddha's Teaching have no benefit for anyone.

Deleting the comment by @Dhammadhatu would have removed important evidence from the discussion.

If a comment is clearly denigrating or offensive, moderators will take appropriate actions. I think that the comment is not appropriate and it should be followed up by references instead of merely statements. Still, I don't think its directly offending or denigrating, its more of an unbacked personal opinion a bit on the harsh side.

Of course, if this behavior continues to be an issue, moderators will intervene. As for now, I will leave it at that.

Answer 2

you wrote long explanation about the situation in general, but managed to avoid answering the topic, "about accepting unfounded attacks on Buddhism". Maybe it would be reasonable to ... answer here the question itself.

Assuming that the question itself is, "Aren't unfounded attacks on Buddhism unacceptable here?", I suppose an answer is that "attacks" of any kind are fairly unwelcome, including:

• Attacks on Buddhism
• Attacks on non-Buddhism
• Attacks on users
• Whether well-founded or unfounded

Any "attacks" may be moderated (and hopefully all users usually moderate their own posts).

Sometimes, moderation takes the form of simple deletion (especially when a post is nothing but an attack).

Sometimes the situation is more complicated:

• When an "attack" is mixed into otherwise-acceptable content
• When it's not clear whether something is an "attack" or a "defense"

In these situations, moderators often handle that by moving the whole conversation off the page, into chat.

Incidentally you probably shouldn't expect me, as a moderator, to define what "Buddhism" is ... for example I'm not going to say, "What Dheeraj Verma and chang zhao say is Buddhism, and what Dhammadatu says is non-Buddhism or against Buddhism". Instead I see it as a discussion or explanation of different views, interpretations, doctrines (which I think is usually acceptable), or a public argument between users (which is less acceptable, and likely to be moved to a chat room).

I apologize if this too doesn't answer your question.

Moving arguments to a chat room is a kind of compromise solution. What you want is for moderators to "Leave important comments like mine under the answer, rather than moving them to chat". Sometimes moderators do that and sometimes not. I tried to explain in my first answer what we could do (five options), and what we actually do and why. Your "important comment" was preserved, in the chat room associated with the answer (and whose hyperlink is displayed underneath the answer), where it's available to anyone who wants to read the "extended discussion" associated with that answer, so I'm not sure I understand why you were dissatisfied.

I think it would be ideal if people would choose their language carefully and avoid making statements which can perceived (or even mis-perceived) as an attack. Thankfully people are generally successful at doing that, so moderators intervene only occasionally.

Also you are a welcome but relatively new user. I hoe you understand that, on his site and perhaps unlike on other "discussion forums", questions and answers are paramount, comments are auxiliary, discussions are tolerated, and arguments tend to get deleted (and even "extended discussions" may be moved).

Answer 3

I don't think we should treat people differently depending on attachments.

So let's examine, not automatically accept habitual oppositions, such as

• "host" (author of an answer) and "guest" (author of a comment),
• "new user" and "old user".

Commenting on someone else's answer is like being an uninvited or unexpected guest in their house

In the context of Buddhism, Buddhadharma is always invited. No matter if you are a guests or a stranger.

Hosts have no more rights to be abusive than guests.

If the answer is factually incorrect, pointing that is a necessary part of gathering quality information, because omitting that would mislead readers. Not all the readers are interested in discussions and go to chat, and so they would lose important information if it was just moved to chat.

If valuable comments were moved to chat and considered preserved, the same approach would preserve abusive comments. Thus abusive comments should be deleted, not moved to chat.

Answer 4

"everyone thinks they're usually right" - that's why the culture of discussion was developed. E.g., reasoning without criticism is OK, criticism without reasoning is not OK.

In the example you gave I think that a moderator moved the "discussion" into a chat room, where you can continue the discussion if you want to.

So far as I know, moderators have the following options:

1. Try to persuade people to be civil
2. Delete the whole discussion if any comment takes a turn for the worse
3. Move the whole discussion to a chat room
4. Delete selected comments and leave others
5. Edit other people's comments

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1. Try to persuade people to be civil

It seems to me I have done that a lot, perhaps too much -- see my previous answers to topics marked comments. I don't want to repeat that all here.

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2. Delete the whole discussion if any comment takes a turn for the worse

I do that if there isn't much substance to the comments, if they're just like, "You're wrong." "No, you're wrong."

I also do that if comments are obsolete. e.g. if their content is edited into the answer.

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3. Move the whole discussion to a chat room

Lanka did this, and I do this (and this seems to be what you're objecting to), if any part of the discussion sound so hostile that I don't want it to appear on the main site, yet it contains some content that might be interesting to someone -- either which the users might want to continue discussing, or which a future avid reader of the answer might want to read if they see ...

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

... at the end of the answer.

Your comment wasn't exactly deleted: it was "moved to chat".

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4. Delete selected comments and leave others

This is what you're suggesting, and it's not a bad suggestion, and I often do that.

In this particular case (where Dhammadhatu is the OP) I see some disadvantage to doing that, and so option 3 ("move to chat room") might be better (I agree with and don't see a disadvantage of Lanka's decision to move it all to chat).

My general policy (a personal policy, I don't know about other moderators) is that whoever wrote the answer is allowed to have the last word in comment discussion. So if it's Dhammadhatu's answer then Dhammadhatu is allowed the last comment. See e.g. this answer where I wrote,

Commenting on someone else's answer is like being an uninvited or unexpected guest in their house:

• Be polite, straightforward, easy to support, not too demanding
• My visit is over when tell me it's over: don't overstay my welcome.
• Generally I think that the other user (whose answer it is) should be allowed the last word. For example if I post a comment to ask a question, and they post a comment to answer, then that's it: end of "discussion". Sometimes I might have a follow-up question, but in general I'm hoping for a satisfactory reply.

Part of hoping for a satisfactory reply is not posting comments like, "you are wrong", because it's hard to imagine any satisfactory response to that comment.

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5. Edit other people's comments

Moderators can edit anyone else's comments.

It's been very very rare that I edit someone else's comment ... and that's usually just to improve the formatting of a hyperlink.

If I edit their comments then that confuses people, which itself leads to further discussion (see e.g. here).

There are disadvantages to my editing comments:

• It's a "hostile edit" rather than a "helpful edit" i.e. it's editing to say something which maybe the author didn't intend to say (it's not just like correcting a spelling mistake or something)
• There's no edit history for a comment, the previous version of the comment is lost even to me
• The edited comment appears to be from the original author, there's no indication it was edited by a moderator (so I'm "putting my words into their mouth" as the saying goes)
• It hasn't been policy

I think that as a result of this discussion I eventually decided that I should edit people's answers to remove what I decide is hostility ... that it's OK if I edit an answer for tone, like I edit for grammar and so sometimes.

I haven't (we haven't, the community hasn't) decided (or hasn't yet decided) that it's OK for moderators to do the same to comments.

For example the comment you're objecting to, which you call "unacceptable" and an "unfounded attack on Buddhism", was,

This last comment about name-&-form is a misunderstanding. I will start a new question about this to avoid further confusion, materialism & unverifiable superstition posted about my answer. Thanks

Theoretically I could edit that to say something like,

@changzhao I think your comment about name-&-form misunderstands what I was trying to say. I will start a new question about this, to avoid further discussion about this answer. Thanks.

Some people might see that edit as an improvement, I'm not sure everyone would find that acceptable.

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To conclude:

• You might not agree with every answer posted on this site
• If you dislike an answer, you really are welcome to post a better answer of your own
• Discussing an answer using comment is tolerated, but is not the main purpose of the site
• If a discussion becomes an argument, that's less tolerated and a moderator may (or should) intervene
• To have a "discussion", both parties need to be willing
• In this case, the author wasn't willing to edit his answer based on Dheeraj Verma's comment, and wasn't willing to discuss it further with you ... and that's OK.
• Your starting your comment with "Actually @DheerajVerma was correct." might be an example of "piling on" so regardless of the content, maybe you didn't phrase it very tactfully. Tactically I suggest you use "I" messages ("I don't think that...") instead of allegations ("That's wrong") nor "You" messages ("You're wrong"), and or that you phrase your comment as a (polite ... open-minded?) question instead of as a statement.

If I ever have to choose between people using comments to argue, versus not having comments at all, then it's likely to be the latter and comments will be deleted.

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that's why the culture of discussion was developed. E.g., reasoning without criticism is OK, criticism without reasoning is not OK.

Yeah...

The purpose of this site is question-and-answer rather than discussion. Part of the reason for (or a beneficial side-effect of) minimizing discussion is that it minimizes argument too.

So I guess we tend to emphasize "reasoning without criticism" and de-emphasize "culture of discussion".

People who post answers may, but aren't required to, discuss their answer if you comment.