Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Basically, when lawyers go into appellate courts - "issue courts" (not "present the facts" trial courts) lawyers act with mind set: Prove the issue to your client's advantage. Win the issue.
How do lawyers win the issue? By "proving" that all opposing or inconsistent ideas are invalid, inapplicable, wrong, etc. This is the process I call "lawyering". For the most part lawyering is handled respectfully - attack the issue not the person, etc. - but it's a one-sided, singled minded approach. Not quite the Socratic method.
I lawyered the AdSense TOS issue. Without notice or warning. Without invitation or consent.
Lawyering has its place. That place isn't a webmaster forum. I handled it badly. I'm sorry for injecting that air into this forum. I apologize. I crossed a threshold of action and of self-awareness when I allowed myself to drift far into lawyer mode.
In the course of lawyering the issue - "When and to what degree do we interpret the TOS for others?" - the issue itself fell out of focus, so 2 bad things happened: I lawyered and in doing so focus on the issue was lost, muddled.
I'll be a bit more circumspect and a bit less ... lawyerly ... when raising issues in the future. A little more Socrates and less Justice Antonin Scalia.
If I fail in this approach, which may happen despite my best efforts, I invite you to bring it to my attention. ;0) I'd rather "the issue" stay front and center and not my approach to handling the issue. Mostly what I'm after is not forcing people to 'think my way' so much as I'm motivated to get people to think and reflect on issues that may have escaped their notice or consideration.
Kind of like me not noticing or considering how far I was drifting into lawyer mode recently.
Ouch.
Self-awareness hurts.
I was just thinking about that thread. I was out of line with my comments about your style of posting.
Please accept my apologies.
But you are right - in this day and age everyone has to be a lawyer. We should really have a disclaimer under every post saying "take no notice of any of this - it's just an opinion or interpretation. And don't put your pets in the washing machine."
M
