However, I feel the idea of creating an RFC
merely to define "ad hominem" and suggest ways to prevent it is just a bit
silly. For example, I can imagine a citation like "Your comment is an ad
hominem, as defined in RFCxxxx. Please don't do that, or rephrase your
question."
I'd like to take this in a different direction, and suggest that we
stop using the term "ad hominem" entirely. It's misused too often,
and results in pedantic metadiscussion about what it does and doesn't
mean. In the end, communication wasn't did, as a group of pedants I
used to hang with used to say.
I suggest that we just say it clearly this way: "We discuss the
content, not the speaker." That at the same time states the desired
behaviour and specifies exactly what the problem is with where the
discussion is starting to go.
Perhaps I'm just amazed that we've reached a point where we feel we actually
have to write down what things constitute professional conduct (or the
opposite).
D'accord. But amazing or not, we do. Sigh.
Barry