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Post by sara on Jan 11, 2003 15:20:54 GMT -5
Exactly - there is such a thing as a good rebuttal, but it's difficult to do, and usually is uncalled for.
For example, since Tdyans is wishing someone wrote a rebuttal to some of her articles, I'll write a rebuttal to the article which first got myself aqauinted with her even though I totally agree with Tdyans' original article -
The Value of Adoption Agencies
by Sarakrindel
Adoption agencies - guilds or groups on Neopets which adopt pets from the pou nd, paint or morph them, and them release them to be adopted, are quite common, and are a good force.
It has been said that adoption agencies delayed the adoption of pets by adopting them, changing them, then releasing them, as opposed to just letting them get adopted normally. Sometimes this is the case. However if adoption agencies learn about pets which don't appear on the random search, then those are definitely the ones to work on, as their chances of adoption without help are slim. Also if a pet does not get adopted via random search, it may get destroyed (yes, this happens) so if an adoption agency notices a pet is in the pound for an unusually long period they may have to take action to rescue it.
The best scenario for a pet is to get an owner who will love him/her regardless of color or name. However is not what happens most of the time. Even the pets who get adopted from the random search frequently land wih sub-par owners. Often owners need to be enticed by a rare color or a more popular species. As pound pets always come out as having a "dying" hunger, I assume that Dr. Death doesn't treat them too kindly (Karma, remember, I don't mean any of this seriously). If a pet will just land with an owner who will be as bad, if they hadn't been in the random search, it's not exactly a lowering in status.
Of course this is promoting that rare colors are superiror, and I completely disagree with that philosoply, but it is definitely better than a pet getting destroyed. At least with its existence guaranteed, a pet has a chance of getting a better life. And sometimes it's not necessary for an adoption agency to even change the pet, they just take the pets which have a high chance of being destroyed, hold them, and when a good owner wants them they can have them.
However this is just my opinion (not) and it depends on what you, the reader, feel is best for the pet - ending the suffereing, or a chance to a higher life.
If you don't already know what junk the above is, you'll know once you read Tdyan's article. Writing a good rebuttal is hard, and I think in this case uncalled for unless someone really has a stronger opinion advocating for adoption agencies than "I'm-in-an-adoption-agency-guild-and-even-though-the-article-said-that-people-who-are-in-adoption-agencies
-have-a-good-heart-it-is-against-me-and -Tdyans-stinks".
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Post by Tdyans on Jan 11, 2003 15:58:36 GMT -5
If you don't already know what junk the above is, you'll know once you read Tdyan's article. Writing a good rebuttal is hard, and I think in this cas uncalled for unless someone really has a stronger opinion than "I-was-in-an-adoption-agency-guild-and-even-though-the-article-said-that
-people-who-are-in-adoption-agencies-have-a-good-heart-it-is-against-me-and
-Tdyans-stinks" advocating for adoption agencies. Yes, there is something to be said for the fact that a good article will probably acknowledge its own counterarguments and therefore make a rebuttal kind of moot. (Although, as you kind of pointed out, most people seem to magically skip over the acknowledgements of the other side of the argument and just see an attack on their point of view.  ) Still, I think you actually did have a few good points in there, which just goes to show that that issue (and almost any other) isn't just black and white-- but then, again, that's why I try to admit counterarguments when I'm writing something like that. I guess I was just disappointed that there were no rebuttals to that article because I got so many neomails about it and I advised so many people to write their own article and so many of them said they were going to, so I was really expecting it and interested to see it. Maybe Josh didn't like to publish rebuttals as much back then... I guess that's really the only article of mine that even remotely called for a rebuttal. I imagined that if someone wanted to, they could write a rebuttal to "Who Are You Calling Plain?" which would have been unlikely but funny. |
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Post by aachewwthree on Jan 11, 2003 20:28:57 GMT -5
This is for the Neopian Times so I may end up quoting you.What do you think about rebuttals in the Neopian Times, when someone argues against an article with another article? Do you like them or not? Any ideas on how to actually make a good rebuttal? Having had a rebuttal against me (Worse Than the Eraser?) I would say that there really is no reason write a rebuttal. It isn't like the author was attacking YOU personally. I mean, all those war rebuttals were by people who didn't even use writing skills, but made fun of either Merdiell or Darigan. From what I see, most rebuttals are not as justifiying as the seem to be. If you have a bone to pick, do it my neomail I say, not fillinf up a slot in the Neopian Times. |
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Post by mushroom on Jan 11, 2003 20:54:54 GMT -5
Having had a rebuttal against me (Worse Than the Eraser?) I would say that there really is no reason write a rebuttal. It isn't like the author was attacking YOU personally. I mean, all those war rebuttals were by people who didn't even use writing skills, but made fun of either Merdiell or Darigan. From what I see, most rebuttals are not as justifiying as the seem to be. If you have a bone to pick, do it my neomail I say, not fillinf up a slot in the Neopian Times. I've never had a rebuttal written, as I've never written an article, but I've got to disagree. If you have good points, decent writing, and a convincing article, and your article isn't written against a specific other article, you should submit your writing to the Times to give everyone, not just the writer of the article, your view on things. If you just want to attack the other author, yes, Neomail is the way to go (if it's necessary at all), but not if you want to air another viewpoint. |
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Post by sara on Jan 11, 2003 21:17:42 GMT -5
Having had a rebuttal against me (Worse Than the Eraser?) I would say that there really is no reason write a rebuttal. It isn't like the author was attacking YOU personally. I mean, all those war rebuttals were by people who didn't even use writing skills, but made fun of either Merdiell or Darigan. From what I see, most rebuttals are not as justifiying as the seem to be. If you have a bone to pick, do it my neomail I say, not fillinf up a slot in the Neopian Times. You have a good point there - if you don't have enough to say to fill up an srticle, express it by neomail. That is why rebuttals are usually shouldn't be written. *ONLY* if you have so much to say which is new that can be expressed in 800 words or more without being redundant should you write an article. And as Tdyans said, a good article will mention the counterarguments, kind of like a built-in rebuttal, therefore nullifying the need for a rebuttal/reponse (unless the counterarguments were bad). If an original article was well-written, but didn't have counterarguments, one can make a better case for the rebuttal. In four of my seven articles I have recieved many neomails where people clearly didn't read/understand the whole article. But like I said, rebuttals should be rare, Responses should be more common than rebuttals, although I thnk there are enough of them too. I know *I* don't completely agree with every opinion piece published in the Neopian Times, and if I feel I have a broad idea which I think would be useful to add to the issue, and can fill up an article, I'll write a bloody responce article! And I just did that in Issue 72! |
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Post by Tdyans on Jan 11, 2003 21:31:35 GMT -5
If you have a bone to pick, do it my neomail I say, not fillinf up a slot in the Neopian Times. But see, there came a point for me where I would have preferred that people get out their negative energy by writing an article rather than neomailing me with it. As I've said before, if I felt there was really a call for it on some issue that mattered to me enough, I'd probably write a rebuttal-- I guess I just think it would be more productive in that case for me to write an article on the issue (not the article or its author) than to argue with the person him/herself. But that day hasn't come and probably never will. If it did, I'd be careful, because I understand all of the arguments here that rebuttals usually aren't necessary and usually aren't that good either. |
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Post by sara on Jan 11, 2003 22:08:49 GMT -5
But see, there came a point for me where I would have preferred that people get out their negative energy by writing an article rather than neomailing me with it Hmmm, I know that too (if I am interpreting you properly). Sometimes with really strong neomails I reply "Write a better article" or something. However I only meant it seriously one time - someone had a really good critiscism of my article "Fair Fight or Foul Play" (it was something I thought of myself, but I thought it would only get in the way of my article) and I would have like them to have written a response. However they felt they didn't have the talent ... oh well. But that wa an excetoption, not the rule. Most of the time, for petty fine points which one disagrees on (i.e. I do not agree with chewing_dung's point that some chatspeak is necessary on the internet) it's not material to write an article on. Speaking with the author will only help the author, but if it's not big enough to write an article on, it's something which I think the Neopian Community as a whole can miss. |
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Post by Tdyans on Jan 11, 2003 23:13:39 GMT -5
True, but there were at least a few people for me who were like your first example-- they had good points and I think they probably could have made good articles out of them... but maybe not.
I make it sound like I was just suffering from all of the hate mail, but it really wasn't that bad. I did get a lot of neomail from that article, but a lot of it was positive-- people saying they agreed or that I'd changed their perspective. There were a few people who just yelled at me (and didn't seem to have read the article very carefully), but there were quite a few who disagreed but who were nice about it and who I got into some good, constructive conversations with.
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Post by stoneman3x on Jan 12, 2003 4:04:35 GMT -5
The only "rebuttal" I have ever written was actually a lampoon of rebuttal articles (in my case chat speak). I wrote it because I TRULY DISLIKE rebuttal articles. To me writing a rebuttal is like flogging a subject. Even if I totally disagree with the article, I prefer to move on to other subjects and write about something else. It irks me sometimes to see the same subjects rehashed over and over and over and over week after week after week after week... disagree mentally-- change subject. That's my motto.
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Post by aachewwthree on Jan 12, 2003 14:54:44 GMT -5
It irks me sometimes to see the same subjects rehashed over and over and over and over week after week after week after week... disagree mentally-- change subject. That's my motto. Yeah, bringing up the subject of the war again. Those war articles were all "rebuttals", but they had no reason. It absoultely reminded me of polititcians. These were no facts, just mudslinging over an orb made up of pixels. |
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Post by Princess Ember Mononoke on Jan 12, 2003 15:58:10 GMT -5
Yeah, bringing up the subject of the war again. Those war articles were all "rebuttals", but they had no reason. It absoultely reminded me of polititcians. These were no facts, just mudslinging over an orb made up of pixels. *laughs* So true. It's crazy how some things work, isn't it? |
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Post by starhamster on Jan 12, 2003 21:34:15 GMT -5
The article is written for the reader, so the reader making sense of it and enjoying it is essential. Okay, yes, I understand and agree with that - it's a guideline which is essential for anything you write, not just articles. If your audience can't understand your piece, it can't like it. I'm sorry, that's where I have a bone to pick with you - a little bone, perhaps, but all the same: if YOU put YOUR time and YOUR effort into a piece, I'm sure you wouldn't want it automatically classed as a waste of time just because it's a rebuttal, however badly worded it may be. Additionally, the only way you can know if someone likes your article is if they mail you about it, and if nobody mails you, you can't tell - that may lead you to continue writing in a sloppy style. But then if you get one piece of hatemail, and that's all you hear out of the silence, you'll overreact and think "Oh my goodness! Everyone hates me! I'm a failure!", even if your work was good. I guess what I'm trying to say is, you can try to come close, but you will never be able to get 100% of the people to like your work all the time.
Realizing this has wandered off the topic: personally, I don't much like rebuttals because of the way they're WORDED, not because I don't like the effort put in, etc. Usually all they involve is a person going through and picking another person's article and points to death because of some personal vendetta. I figure if you want to defend your beliefs, do so *politely* in an article of your own; that way you too expose yourself before the masses. Hatemail and criticism mails should be for picking things apart, not articles in the Times where they not only take up space but also can hurt someone else's feelings. |
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Post by sensei on Jan 13, 2003 9:10:19 GMT -5
As silly as I may sound now, I am laughing my butt off. Do you realize what this board is? It's all one big rebuttal. And all the wording and grammar and ideas are Neopian Times quality, no questions asked. So... would thius not make two great articles, each opposing one another? Or are you guys a little too... erm, mad about each other's opinions?  My opinion is: if it's well-written and poses some good ideas, it's fine. It doesn't get too much more complicated in my mind. |
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Post by Princess Ember Mononoke on Jan 13, 2003 12:43:28 GMT -5
As silly as I may sound now, I am laughing my butt off. Do you realize what this board is? It's all one big rebuttal. And all the wording and grammar and ideas are Neopian Times quality, no questions asked. LoL! Go Fuzzy! |
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Post by aachewwthree on Jan 15, 2003 7:34:16 GMT -5
Hah! I just noticed that!
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) Still, I think you actually did have a few good points in there, which just goes to show that that issue (and almost any other) isn't just black and white-- but then, again, that's why I try to admit counterarguments when I'm writing something like that.
