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 | This page in a nutshell: Expressing a like or dislike for the issue in question is not a helpful or useful argument in a discussion. |
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I just don't like it, its inverse, I just like it, and their variants, are not arguments to use in talk page discussions.
In their book, Business Negotiation, Paul Steele and Tom Beasor recommend a tactic in business negotiation, which they characterize as a "trick of the trade", called "emotion trumps logic", thusly:
When faced with an incontrovertible fact use an emotional response to counter it. Expressions such as: "I just don't like it"[a] or "the deal just doesn't seem to appeal to me" often beat dozens of well-argued statements.
— Paul Steele and Tom Beasor, Business Negotiation[3]
At Wikipedia, we require the opposite to apply. Emotion does not trump logic. The point of an encyclopedia is to provide information, not to describe what you "like" or "don't like". We are not trying to "win" what Steele and Beasor characterize as a "game". Wikipedia is not a business deal. It is an encyclopedia. Well-argued statements beat personal, subjective tastes.
Wouter H. Slob, in Dialogical Rhetoric,[4] called "I just don't like it" a "feeble argument". In Wikipedia discussions, that argument, and its counterpart "I just like it", are feeble and should be given no weight whatsoever.
- ^ P. Kiparsky (1970). "Semantic Rules in Grammar". In H. Benedikktson (ed.). The Nordic Languages and Modern Linguistics, Proceedings of the International Conference of Nordic and General Linguistics, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, 1969. Reikyavik.
- ^ Howard Lasnik (1975). "On the semantics of negation". In Donald Hockney (ed.). Contemporary Research in Philosophical Logic and Linguistic Semantics. D. Reidel Publishing Co. p. 300. ISBN 9027705127.
- ^ Paul Steele and Tom Beasor (1999). "Practical Negotiation". Business Negotiation. Gower Publishing, Ltd. p. 81. ISBN 9780566080722.
- ^ Wouter H. Slob (2002). Dialogical Rhetoric. Springer. p. 127. ISBN 9781402009099.
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