by M. Henri Day » Fri Jun 24, 2005 6:43 am
As is obvious from my previous postings, I am not entirely in agreement with uncronopio and Tim - rather more in agreement with Katy. My reasons are as follows - pithy epigrams do well in quotes and as clubs with which to beat one another over the head in a debate, but articles in extenso provide a basis which (better) allows the reader to draw his own conclusions concerning the validity of an argument. Thus I think that citing in extenso is more conducive to shedding light, rather than heat on a discussion. What I fear is that we can be reduced to quoting slogans at each other, which procedure usually leads to nothing more productive than the cementing of prior points of view....
Of course, interested readers can always look up the original text if a functioning link is provided, but one of the main points of a discussion is - at least to me - to awaken interest where none was before. As to these texts impeding the flow of argument, most of them are at the most no longer than a couple of pages, so I am not sure that they in fact do constitute so great a hinder (and surely, pausing to click on a link and read the text in another window is more of an impediment to a smooth flow than reading the text in the posting to which one is considering responding ?). Moreover, our own discourse on certain topics can, over the course of time, extend to quite a fair number of pages, in which case, unless one is blessed (cursed ?) with eidetic recall, it can be handy to have access to the text which gave rise to so many responses there on the same thread....
Slow modems are, of course, a problem, and we certainly don't wish to cause the Agora any difficulties with regard to possible copywrite infringment. That is why I asked Andrew if he was aware of any cases in which reproducing an article from the on-line version of, say, a daily newspaper on a discussion forum like our own had lead to difficulties. Does anyone else have any experience of such matters ? I find it hard to believe, for example, that solicitors for the New York Times will come beating on our doors, due to the number of articles I've forwarded to the forum, but of course, with a dastardly liberal rag like that, one never knows....
In any event, I've learned (I fondly hope !) a lot from the articles fellow Agorists have been kind enough to forward to our forum, and I hope that they will continue to do so, taking care that they do not infringe on anybody's copyright....
Henri
曾记否，到中流击水，浪遏飞舟？
)
