alias_sqbr

if they know and like you then they're probably more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt compared to some stranger

I agree with you. It's unfortunate in a way, because one of the especially good things about public discussions is that you can can interact with strangers, who may have points of view and reasons you would never have thought of or understood yourself, whereas it's in the nature of things that your friends probable think in roughly the same sort of way as you do much of the time - most probably you choose to associate with them because you have something in common. So anything that tends to reduce the chance of a profitable discussion with strangers is rather a shame. But I don't think there's anything to be done about it - it's hardly unreasonable to be more sure of someones good faith when you know them than when you don't. And the very fact that strangers may think about things differently from you means you can't be certain that one of the things they think is that civil and reasoned debate is good and trolling bad.

Hmm, that's not something I've noticed but I shall keep an eye out for it.

It's something I only noticed quite recently, although I don't know if I've just missed seeing it in the past. The first time I noticed I was actually mentally going along with it, and then it suddenly struck me that the only reason I thought the comment off topic was that I'd somehow come to accept there was only one proper way to approach the subject. And yet, given that the subject had only just been raised, in the middle of a wide-ranging discussion, who had decided that there was One True Approach? ... Oh dear, reading back over that, it's far to vague to be helpful, and yet I'm reluctant to give an example, because I've only ever seen it done on topics that are absolute lightning rods for wank. I think what happens is that various well known ljers post on a subject, wanting to look at it from a particular perspective and not unreasonably rejecting comments not from that perspective; sometimes other people who admire said posters conclude either that there is just something inherently wrong with comments of that sort, regardless of context, or that there is only the one perspective from which the subject can be examined. To assay an example (one I absolutely haven't seen): there are plenty of discussions in which 'but men can be raped too' is irrelevant (and indeed, would attract much suspicion of trollishness) because what is being discussed is women, and rape is being looked at with regards to their experience; on the other hand, it would be very wrong to think that any time rape is mentioned, it must automatically be talked about in the context of women's experience or that it is automatically wrong and off topic to make any mention of male victims in any discussion of rape. Well, perhaps that example is too good: I wasn't thinking of something as serious as ignoring the existence of one group of victims of a serious crime, just the damage to the general intellectual climate that comes from any practice that encourages the treatment of objections not as things to be rebutted but as things to be dismissed.