Armond Perretta wrote:

Ronald Raygun wrote:

What I'm saying is that you should be able to judge (i.e. agree or
disagree with) the suggestion on its own merit, irrespective of who
made it, or even of whether anyone actually made it at all ...

Your statement leads me to suppose that the US and the UK really _are_ two
bodies of land separated by both a different language, _and_ different
credibility standards. It has been my experience here in Leftpondia that
the utility and reliability of a suggestion is _strongly_ related to the
source. Would you, for example, give much credence to anchoring
recommendations from someone who has never used an anchor?

Well, one might think the immediate answer would have to be "probably
not", but after a few moments' thought one would have to admit that
there could be circumstances in which one might. It would depend on
the nature of the recommendation, but even if it came from someone
experienced, one wouldn't accept it blindly without thinking about
it to see whether it makes sense, and why. Things suggested by
non-experts can often make sense too.

The point is that at the end of the day it isn't really about source
credibility at all (as it would be if you were trying to assess the
truth or falsehood of a disputed statement of fact), but primarily
about credibility of the material itself.

We had a suggestion on the table that you can slap on enough
antifouling in one session to last 4-5 years of no hauling out.

I completely fail to understand why you believe you cannot form
a view on that suggestion without knowing who made it.

Admittedly, the fact that it was our friend Wilbur who made the
suggestion might make it easier for you to condemn it, and if I
wanted you to condemn it for that reason, then you are being very
fair indeed to reserve judgement when you didn't see him make it
and only have my word for it that he did.

But I'm not asking you to condemn it for that reason, nor do I
disagree with it for that reason. I disagree with it because I've
thought about it and my intuition tells me that it won't work (at
least not in general - there may be some locations where fouling
is so light that you'd get away with it).

It isn't my real name. It's a pseudonym I've been using for many
years ... in order to limit the amount of spam I get ...

Unless you receive email addressed to your name rather than your email
address, this justification is invalid.

You're perfectly right on that point, I could have coupled my real
name with an invalid email address, but that strikes me as somewhat
half-hearted. Besides it's not the only reason. The extra anonymity
gives me the confidence to be at times a little more, er, forthright
than I might otherwise be. If that's naughty, I hold my hand up to it.

But since you, like most of our readers, don't know me anyway, it
wouldn't serve any useful purpose from the credibility standpoint
if I did use my real name. The only benefit would be, as you seemed
to imply, that it would make me more careful of what I say, in case
someone who knows me in real life happens to drop in here and saw me
make an arse of myself.

But I do notice that while many people use what appears to be their
full real name, quite a few use what is probably their real name, but
not enough of it to identify them (they might use only a forename), so
they enjoy a certain amount of anonymity too. I note also that on many
web forums it seems to be the norm rather than the exception to use a
handle which is totally anonymous.

I accept your criticism as valid. My defence is that I'm not completely
at odds with widely accepted practice.

BTW, would you not agree that this discussion is a bit far afield from my
original intention of trying to save a few bucks on antifouling?

Indeed. Good idea to try saving a few bucks. But your credibility
suffered when you claimed to "save half" by using 25% less. I didn't
judge you by your name, but by what you wrote. :-)