Original Position Fallacy and Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment?

Looking at the Real Life section of the Original Position Fallacy page, most of the examples seem to be uncited assertions that various groups (feminists, communists, libertarians, socialists, wealthy people...) are guilty of this fallacy. These examples mostly are presented as broad generalizations, mostly don't reference specific individuals and statements, and generally don't provide strong evidence that this fallacy is really in play. Purely as an example, the instance describing this trope for socialism might say that socialists don't consider that they might have to give up their money, without qualification or evidence that this is true (maybe it is, maybe not - but the example, like many of the others, doesn't establish that fact and seems ripe for flaming).

Does that page need these sorts of subjective Real Life examples? While they encompass a broad portion of the political spectrum, I suspect that's because different posters have been adding the positions they don't like as examples.

Edited by Jman543 on Dec 24th 2018 at 12:41:14 PM

Honestly, it doesn't. I'm not against discussing politics, but it's flamebait incarnate, and linking zero sources doesn't help, nor is making broad generalizations.

Here's one nasty example I pulled from that page:

Holy sweeping generalizations, Batman! The wording doesn't exactly help, either, especially when it starts out with "every". It reads like it was written by either one of the rare actually-man-hating radical feminists or someone who is anti-feminist.

So yeah, the Real Life section really needs a clean-up, alongside a Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgement warning at the top of the page. It's less examples and more "discussing stuff I don't like".

ETA: Grammar.

Edited by CustardAndPie on Dec 24th 2018 at 5:53:31 AM

Examples are not General. If there's no specfic person or event the example refers to, it's not an example. Plain and simple as that.

I know I stated in my previous post that we should at least clean it up and put a Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgement on top of the page, but after reading through the Real Life section on the page more, I'm starting to feel that it needs to go before it devolves into more Complaining About Shows You Don't Like and other kinds of Natter. I motion for No Real Life Examples, Please! if editors are that incapable of providing specific, non-biased Real Life examples of this specific trope.

Edited by CustardAndPie on Dec 25th 2018 at 5:16:55 AM

In general I do not trust the troper body to avoid ROCEJ issues for any of the Fallacy pages, and have never understood why any of them allow real life example sections.