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Peter Staudenmaier's attempt to keep the discussion
away from my original statement (and obscure his deception
in deliberately misunderstanding me) continues:
To: <anthroposophy_tomorrow@yahoogroups.com>
References: <20040305231555.29294.qmail@web14427.mail.yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [anthroposophy_tomorrow] Morality and Racism
- Selective quotation
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 20:56:29 -0500
Hi Daniel, you wrote:
"And I was talking about emails AND articles."
Peter Staudenmaier:
Yes, that's the problem. Those are two very different things.
Quotation procedures that make sense in the one are not always
appropriate in the other.
Daniel:
Skipping away from the original again, I see. Your statement
here is, of course, eminently sensible, and of course I agree
completely that quotation procedures that make sense in the
one are not always appropriate in the other. However...
I never stated that the opposite was true, as this seems to
imply (chalk that up as distortion number three). Nor did
I suggest different standards of accuracy in one or the other.
I suggested that since you have been less than scrupulous
in one medium, we can suspect that you might carry this tendency
over into another. Let's review the exchange:
For review:
Peter Staudenmaier wrote:
"Selective quotation is only a bad idea when others do
not have access to the original. That is obviously not the
case on a public email list. Everybody reading your reply
to me has already read the post that you're replying to, and
so forth. In these circumstances it makes much more sense
to quote the specific portion you'd like to reply to. The
rest of us can always go back and check the earlier post for
the full argument."
Daniel replied:
Now that is an interesting position. Essentially, you state
that you are justified in selectively quoting statements of
others, even if this then alters the original meaning, because
theoretically anyone can go back and look at the original
statement to catch you at it. While this absolves you of any
requirements to be fair or accurate, I have to point out that
the logic of this justification will not fly among historians.
In history, quoting sources out of context in a way that alters
the original meaning is a cardinal sin and something than
no historian can do and hope to be taken seriously. Completely
independent of the question of the ethics of such a stance,
I would suggest that as a habit it is dangerous. If this is
consistent in your writing here, are you really sure you can
successfully switch modes and go for strict accuracy when
writing formally for publication?
If you are known to employ this technique here, we may quite
rightly suspect that you employ it in your other writings.
You may respond that you write polemic, not history. If you'd
do take that stance, then you are essentially telling all
your readers that they cannot actually trust anything the
you write, for at any point your examples may not actually
support your argument as they may appear to, and the summaries
and explanations that you give may intentionally not accurately
represent the things are describing at all. Of course, all
your sources are theoretically public, and anyone could go
out and acquirer four-foot stack of books and spend a month
or two checking you (provided, of course, they read German).
But certainly you don't expect to a majority of your readers
to do this, so essentially you have put us on noticed not
trust anything you say. Perhaps you might consider being upfront
about this in your articles, and lead off with a disclaimer
of some sort.
Peter Staudenmaier snipped this to:
"Of course, all your sources are theoretically public"
And then Peter responded:
You are very much missing the point. On an email list like
this one, every post you reply to is not just "theoretically"
public, it is actually public, with no need to buy any books
or visit any libraries. All you need is a click of the mouse.
Anybody reading this post has already read the previous posts
in the thread. If you think this is an unreasonable approach
to email discussion, could you perhaps explain why?
Daniel responded:
Chalk that up as a distortion. I was talking about both your
e-mails and your articles, and not jsut your e-mails as you
reply would suggest. By shortening my original quote, it is
not clear what I was actually writing about. This is exactly
what I am suggesting you could avoid by longer quotation.
Everything you say is true about an e-mail list. But it does
not help the readers of your articles, whether they read them
on the web or in a magazine, and that was the entire point
of my original paragraph.
Peter Staudenmaier then simply said:
"I was talking about emails."
And Daniel said:
And I was talking about emails AND articles. But you didn't
respond to what I was talking about, you selectively snipped
and then talked about something different. When I try to point
this out, you reiterate that you were, indeed, misquoting
me. Thanks.
If you find all this tedious to read, imagine how much more
so it is to have to write it! This exchnge will continue.
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