How to win an argument

Discussion on Wikipedia

How to win an argument

stidmatt: wikipedia just stopped working
i think they need more servers
Friend: good! wikipedia sucks

stidmatt: no it doesn't why do you way that?

Friend: grr i just don't like it

stidmatt:it is true that msny old-fashioned publishers ahve created this sort of tribal distrust of peer-review, but wikipedia works the same way science has worked for hte past 500 years

Friend: if they took the edit button away i would be much for comfortable using it

stidmatt: i did a paper on it

Friend: me too

stidmatt: yeah, the edit button is the reason that it so successful. If you vandalize wikipedia the edit will show up on the recent changes which are patrolled by people who check for malicious edits. They are promptly removed practically all the time. Plus pages that are at risk of vandalism have a silver lock that only allows people with accounts to edit them.
this is why vandalizing wikipedia is a waste of time

Friend: see, I didn't know that

stidmatt: and the edit button is its strength because when something is wrong it can be quickly corrected and sourced which makes it superior to Encyclopedia Britannica which has been shrunk ten fold in the past few decades.

Friend: ok

stidmatt: which has made it the largest depository of knowledge in the history of mankind with more languages than anything else in history
that is why i trust wikipedia

Friend: ok

stidmatt: so yeah

Friend: ok you win

Tactics
See what I did? I gave my friend all the information I had on it and tied it all together with a strong conclusion at the end. My friend had not heard the full story and was probably writing her paper to get an A, I however didn't and got a lower grade, but my paper was accurate. Our elected officials, especially Obama, should use this tactic of providing all the information in a blitz to show all of the information on any topic to win the argument. Only then can the one who is correct win by having a fully formed argument.