Timeline for Do significant claims require evidence?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
19 events
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| Apr 12, 2017 at 7:31 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Jul 22, 2011 at 9:32 | comment | added | Joonas Pulakka | @Aarnoaught & Mark Trapp & everybody else: Thank you for your patience and sorry for wasting your time. I think our mutual understanding is now quite reasonable, if not perfect. I'll try to improve my original answer right when I have time for it. | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 13:31 | comment | added | Aaronaught | "Common sense" - is invariably what people say when they're unable or unwilling to validate a claim. Common sense often, over a long enough period of time, turns out to be wrong; before Brooks, most managers would think nothing of staffing up in order to meet a short-term deadline. Now I won't nitpick the original answer itself further - as Mark says, it's certainly improved - but I'd really like for you to understand that we're not asking you to go out and do research, just explain why it is that you believe in some particular wisdom. | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 13:16 | comment | added | user8 | Guidelines 1, 2, 4, and 5 in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective describe what we're looking for when we talk about evidence (although I strongly encourage you to read the whole thing). Saying something is X is not what we're looking for; saying something is X and explaining why you believe something is X is. To quote from "Good Subjective, Bad Subjective", "We like you. We want to believe you. But like wikipedia itself, {{citation needed}}." | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 13:09 | comment | added | Joonas Pulakka | @Mark Trapp: Sorry, I thought you meant the "In other words" part in this post. My bad. Still, does the added section about how some successful companies were once small startups add any evidence to the original answer? I'm confused about what counts as evidence and what doesn't. | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 12:49 | comment | added | user8 | You added a whole section that provided some evidence of your original claims. That's not a change in tone, that's actually providing some backing to your claim and went a long way in improving it. That's what we expect from answers. To make this into an argument about your tone in the question detracts from the central issue and has caused this discussion to almost completely derail. It's not about tone. It's about backing statements up with some semblance of evidence. | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 12:16 | comment | added | Joonas Pulakka | @Mark Trapp: Thanks for encouragement, but I fail to see any improvement in the above two revisions in terms of evidence. The only difference is in tone. I'm surprised how much the tone affects the perception of evidence. It's probably similar to how wearing a suit improves your credibility, even though the suit itself of course has no actual effect on anything. | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 12:10 | comment | added | user8 | You've provided three different answers defending your answer, attempting to guess at why your answer is the target of discussion, but there have been a lot of comments and answers—not to mention a thorough explanation provided in Aaronaught's question—saying explicitly any significant claim needs evidence. It's not about the tone, or what words you claim people chose to focus on: you made a claim so provide some evidence of that claim. To that end, the revisions you've made to the answer in question have improved it. | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 9:45 | comment | added | Jon Hopkins | I do understand that but as you now admit yourself that it's not the best worded answer your strong defence of it seems odd. As it goes I don't think Aaronaught is really against someone like yourself who just happens to have got a bunch of votes for one of a weaker answers but generally posts at a higher level. I think this is more about those (whether voting or posting) who simply don't get what a good answer is. | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 9:16 | comment | added | Joonas Pulakka | @Jon Hopkins: About the failed communication. Communication always involves (at least) two parties. I obviously have failed to communicate my key point to some people who get easily irritated by entertaining text and see only that part of it. But I also believe that lots of readers can see the actual substance in it - therefore lots of upvotes. Yet another possibility is that most of the upvotes come from the entertaining part, but I do believe this community is mature enough so that it can't be so. | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 9:10 | comment | added | Joonas Pulakka | @Jon Hopkins: I'm not defending that specific answer so much as I'm defending my (and others') right to write less-than-brilliant, and maybe even populist, answers. Probably nobody considers the existence of less-than-brilliant answers a serious problem (all answers can't be brilliant, right?), but the fact that sometimes they get lots of undeserved upvotes seems to be irritating - maybe rightly so. But the answer's writer can hardly be blamed for that? | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 8:58 | comment | added | Jon Hopkins | People shouldn't be ashamed of their own biases but you basically admit that by writing in this way you've failed to communicate what you actually were trying to say. If you think that the entertainment contained in strong wording is more important than accurately making your point then you are being populist. But it seems that what you're actually doing is admitting that it's not a brilliantly written answer which begs the question why are you so vociferously defending it? | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 8:05 | history | edited | Joonas Pulakka | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 21, 2011 at 6:53 | history | edited | Joonas Pulakka | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 21, 2011 at 6:46 | history | edited | Joonas Pulakka | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 21, 2011 at 6:41 | history | edited | Joonas Pulakka | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 21, 2011 at 6:26 | history | edited | Joonas Pulakka | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 21, 2011 at 6:21 | history | edited | Joonas Pulakka | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 21, 2011 at 6:16 | history | answered | Joonas Pulakka | CC BY-SA 3.0 |