"Marriage is linked to reproduction because sex is linked to reproduction.

The logical connection between marriage and children is that every study ever done has shown that having both of their parents around offers many benefits to children. As it turns out, men and women committed to one another and their offspring are what's best for their offspring.

Marriage is based on this logical commitment for the sake of childbearing. As it turns out, healthy people who find suitable mates tend to enjoy not only committing to them, but having kids and committing to their family as well. Who knew."

It is however not necessary for the man and woman to be connected to each other with vows exchanged in marriage for them to remain together, nor does marriage ensure that they will remain together forever. Then again some people marry because they feel the need to do so, simply because they love each other. Love holds priority, children and reproduction being the result of their relationship rather than their marriage.

"Redefining the word "marriage" to mean something that it never has would not bestow social position. Many people would still believe that homosexuality is dysfunctional. Redefining a word won't change minds any more than it will enable homosexuals to procreate.

Unless any ancient people ever used the same word for marriage to describe homosexuals, it's already been well-defined. I do not enjoy these linguistic acrobatics!"

During the ancient Greek, Romanand Egyptian civilisations, where homosexuality was abundant until Christianity became the state religion in the Eastern Roman empire, marriage was normally between man and woman, and the man-on-man contact was done outside of marriage (but still accepted). However, according to quote and source stated below, same-sex marriages were performed in the mesopotamic region.

"A marriage is a union between a man and a woman. It just so happens that such a union is capable of creating children and families. This differs from homosexual unions, which are not marriages capable of creating families. If you have examples of people referring to homosexual relations as marriages in history, I'd love to hear them. Because those relationships just don't serve the same function. They don't have the same status because they're not of the same sort or capacity or purpose."

Here I find that you make a rather strange conclusion. If marriage is intrinsically just simply the union of man and woman, why does the ability to reproduce (by form, as you stress out) have to be a logical consequence of this union? Using the wording "it just so happens" implies that the possibilty to reproduce is just a nifty by product to a union between a man and a woman, and not necessarily to marriage.

For examples of gay marriages/unions in history:
"Ancient evidence survives of kingdom-sanctioned, same-sex cohabitation, as in the tomb drawings of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep Evidence exists that same-sex marriages were tolerated in parts of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. Artifacts from Egypt, for example, show that same-sex relationships not only existed, but the discovery of a pharaonic tomb for such a couple shows their union was recognized by the kingdom. Meanwhile, accounts of the Israelites' departure for Canaan include their condemnation of Egyptian acceptance of same-sex practice. In actuality, same-sex marital practices and rituals are less known in Egypt compared to Mesopotamia, where documents exist for a variety of marital practices, including male lovers of kings and polyandry. None of the recorded laws of Mesopotamia, including the Code of Hammurabi, contain restrictions against same-sex unions despite the fact that marriages are otherwise well regulated (Eskridge)."

[...]

"Roman social customs are relatively well known, and same-sex unions existed as high in society as among Roman emperors. Roman statesman Cicero also documented legal rights of an individual within a same-sex marriage. Female same-sex unions seemed to have been less common, but only because women enjoyed less freedom in their economic and social endeavors (Eskridge)."

http://www.randomhistory.com/history-of-gay-marriage.html

"Amongst the Romans, there were instances of same-sex marriages being performed, as evidenced by emperors Nero and Elagabalus who married men, and by its outlaw in 342 AD in the Theodosian Code, but the exact intent of the law and its relation to social practice is unclear, as only a few examples of same-sex marriage in that culture exist." ("Emperor Nero is reported to have married at least two men in different occasions.")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_same-sex_unions

"I'm not sure what you're basing "widely practised" on. There were plenty of weirdo barbarians back in the day, but that didn't make them the norm."

Plato's Symposium is only one example. Another is the Trojan war, in which Achilles and Ajax (Major?) share a more-than-friendly relationship. In fact, Homerus's Iliad and Odyssey both contain multiple passages referring to homosexual sex. Another example is the duo of Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, although some people believe they may have just been brothers and it is based for a large part on speculation.
Other examples:
- King Neferkare of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and his General Sanset
- Ostraca from the Ramesside Period that depict homosexual sex

Marriage was around long before Christianity existed. The Romans practised marriage. So did the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. I can imagine the people from Asia minor practised marriage as well, just as the people from the Indus valley, the Mesoptamic region, and Eastern Asia. Some of these civilisations being around even before the Jewish, way before Jesus Christ had even been born.

Is it really Christianity's word, does Christianity have the right to define what marriage should be made up of?

Sidenote: Jesus Christ lived in a period of time during which homosexual sex was widely practised, and during which the love between two men was considered by some to be superior to the love between a man and a woman. It is not unimaginable to think that Jesus Christ himself had performed some of these deeds the Bible denounces as sins. Mind you, the Bible was written well after Jesus had died, and is a collection of texts that for years had been communicated and preserved for later generations by word, being at the mercy of the memory, imagination and interpretation of those who spread their knowledge to ultimately be bundled into what is called the Bible.

Why must marriage be intrinsically linked to reproduction? A hetero couple can reproduce without being married, can choose not to have kids when they are married, and individuals within the marriage can choose to have children outside of their marriage (although often ending up in divorce). The corrolation between becoming married and having children (where a majority of children may be born from a marriage) hold only statistical meaning, but not logical.

Instead, is a marriage not the union of two individuals who vow to remain together "until death may do them part"? Even with divorces being in the uprise in recent times, I thought this was still the most important principle on which marriage was based, the marriage showing them how they are committed to one another, giving them a certain social position.

With this reasoning, I would argue that two homosexuals who wish to vow to one another that they will spend the entirety of their lifes together, therefore being entitled to the social position, should be allowed to marry, as the civil union does not quite give this social position.

"- Van Bommel's position was also heavily criticised as he wasn't playing in his club. This was one of the rigorous rules Van Gaal imposed when he started but got rid of when it came to his son in law "

You mean Van Marwijk, right? Van Bommel was the son-in-law of Van Marwijk. He does not have any connection whatsoever to our current coach, Van Gaal

Go Louis!

> [TI] Primo wrote:

>
- You do not war/raid/op during exploration phase ( this will require explo to end after 2 weeks of round or so)

I would advocate not an absolute number of days/weeks, but rather a relative one, such as a % of  the amount of days in a round. In a galaxy such as mw, 2 weeks without wars/raids might be feasible as families are (compared to PW) far apart, have tons of systems to spread to, and the round is long (2 months). However, in a 6 week round, 2 weeks will quickly cover 33.3333...% of your round in which you are not allowed to war, raid or op. That'd be ridiculous.
Also, the notion that you are not allowed to do any ops during this period of time needs to be specified more as well. Of course self ops like SA and NF should not be affected (otherwise, for examplle, custom races with SA will be less evenly pitted against revalons as SA is one of their major advantages throughout the round). Ops such as pi/ip/infil/sot should not be affected either, as otherwise you'd just be clearing spread blindly leading to possible huge losses on bombers. CPFF's, Sabs, and DU's are very nice ops to help clear planets without having to jump loads of fleet during the early round, which should be considered keeping as well. I'd advocate only preventing the heaviest of heavy ops, such as nukes and hypnos, and possibly estorms, and OH's.

- You do not farm small families. If a family is significantly smaller than you, you do not war them, you do not raid them. Sure, you can take an occasional planet, you can clear them from your systems, and MAYBE you can clear a system you share with them. But you do not actively look for their planets and farm them.

I agree with Lee, you'd need to set up a specific borderline, perhaps a % of NW or planets, or a combination, under which you are not allowed to attack  on a grand scale by honor.

- You do not demand planets for a NAP, you take what you think is a fair amount (fair amount will be discussed later) and you NAP, in theory someone could offer planets for a NAP, but you do not demand.

Agree with Lee here. As long as you keep the planet demands resonable (so that the total of planets you've taken at the very least definitely does not cross the % talked about in your last point), you should still be able to demand planets, as this can save infra and time for both families and keep the losing fam in a competing position rather than ruining them through infralosses.

- You will not make Perm-NAPS without having had a proper war with the NAPPED family.

What about a family who's HS is 3 ticks from yours? That would be one hell of a messy war come cancellation time, ruining both fams.

- You honour NAP and other deals unconditionally. You (your family) agreed to the deal, so you stick to it.

Of course.

- You do not take over x% (to be discussed) of a families planets. Your enemy is playing this game too, don't ruin their fun by terminating them completely.

Of course, I always aim to maintain 15% of planets, unless I feel that the other fam has treated me dishonorably or negatively in any way, then I may go up to 30% (essentially ruining a fam's competing chances). There should still remain some leeway to ruin fams that beg to be ruined.

Dear V. Kemp / Mister Spock,

This will be my last post on this subject as I do not intend to use too much of my precious summer time (or what is left of it) on these forums. I feel like I am repeating myself and that the true underlying issue is that you, V. Kemp / Mister Spock, do not see the point that in an ad rem discussion, one can make their points with ad rem arguments. There is no need to result to ad hominem arguments, nor insensitive remarks,  as they do not add anything to similar ad rem arguments content-wise, and they only take away from the discussion.

"In every case of my being accused of it, no such implication was made. I'm aware of the technical definition, and so we're both obviously aware that it doesn't apply to my case. I make arguments and accompany them with often lengthy explanations. Allegedly insensitive statements are nothing but a little insightful commentary on top of this."

I have shown you at least one example where you made ad hominem arguments, I can show you another:
- "When a troll "
Calling someone a troll does not add anything contentwise to just telling that someone is trolling. This is an argumentum ad hominem vs. an argumentum ad rem: an attack against a man vs. an attack against subject matter. The latter has a place in discussions as it reflects on subject matter, the former does not as it has already been established that one's actions  were marked as "trolling", therefore calling the person a "troll" gives little added information contentwise and only serves the purpose of abusing the person.

- "Not critiquing such juvenile practices just makes the forum worse for everyone, even if they don't know it and would love some meaningless validation of their beliefs. Critiquing such juvenile practices isn't inherently ad-hominem attacks, it's necessary if this forum isn't to be totally dominated by trolls and elementary school students with inflated egos who couldn't make a half rational argument to save their lives."
Here you start of with a few ad rem arguments: the practises of some on certain subject matter may be juvenile by the way we judge them. This is indeed not an ad hominem argument. However, when you say that those people are (again) trolls or just simply "elementary school students with inflated egos", you are making ad hominem attacks again. The point that the level of argumentation they used in their post is plenty, one does not have to add that the opponent is himself an elementary school student.

In your case, you do often make arguments with lengthy explanations based on ad rem arguments, however, you quite often add an argumentum ad hominem as well to boot it. And that is where your argumentation becomes unacceptable for a civilised debate. One can make insightful statements that provide little insightful commentary using ad rem arguments.

"Which does not preclude the likelihood that, in the absence of a decent discussion, talking about why it's lacking is probably a fair idea."

However, when you reply to an undecent discussion in an undecent way, you are just adding to the hopelessness of the overall discussion. As I've said before, it just increases the sum of fallacies. If you have real points to make, such can be done without the fallacies. If you are only posting so that you can reply in a fallacy-ridden way, you might as well just not post as it does not add much to the subject matter and its only purpose is to end the discussion.

"Simply pointing it out isn't.

Calling out a troll isn't an ad-hominem attack. I've done it with loads of examples. I even had someone read a troll's post referencing aliens and basing political philosophy on this faith. He smiled and left the room in less than thirty seconds, saying "he's trolling."

It's not an ad-hominem attack to point out such ridiculousness and ask for better."

Here again you show that you do not fully comprehend the idea of ad hominem arguments. Simply pointing out that the arguments are bad, is not, as you said, an ad hominem attack. However, resorting to calling a person a troll (rather than simply saying that what he is posting is trolling) is clearly directed to the poster, even if it does have a basis on the subject matter. There is a simple alternative to calling the person a troll (an argument ad rem that shows that the poster's arguments are trolling), and so is is not necessary to resort to those ad hominem arguments.
It does not have to be an ad hominem attack to point out ridiculousless and ask for better, but it is when you refer this ridiculousness back to a flaw in the opponent's character, or when you base the opponent's character based on these flaws and conclude that, because his posts are ridiculous, that therefore the poster must be ridiculous as well (which would discredit all his arguments due to a character flaw: a clear argumentum ad hominem).

"If he's trolling, I don't need an excuse. It's good and respectful to everybody to call him out. And if I'm just pointing out that a poster hasn't even participated in the debate, it's not an ad-hominem attack."

Here you bring up the matter that a poster may not even be participating in the debate, and that pointing that out is not necessarily an ad hominem attack. That is true, as one can point out with ad rem arguments that the poster's arguments do not add anything to the debate. However, when one starts to call out the poster for not participating, that point (the opponent does not participate in the debate) becomes an ad-hominem attack.
I do not understand where you get the idea that countering someone's fallacies with more fallacies of your own is justified and respectful to anyone else, as you are simply disrespecting the course of the debate by using such fallacies, when you could've made your point without them.

"If pointing it out were supposedly an argument on content, then yes. But as we well know, I give explanation on content abound. As we've established here, the fallacious logic is presenting ad-hominem attacks as arguments, not criticizing people for not even making arguments. The criticism that people are absolutely ignoring major points without rebuttal or explanation of any kind is not, in fact, an ad-hominem fallacious attack. Yet it is constantly presented as such on this forum. **The crying that resulted in the forum disappearing for 3 days did not even differentiate between language used to describe arguments and language used to describe people.** Just a little minor point."

Of course one can critisize the argumentation of their opponent when it ignores major points that one himself has made. It does indeed not have to be an ad hominem attack when it is based on content matter rather than character flaws of the opponent (i.e. the opponent being a troll by purposefully ignoring major points, the opponent being juvenile by not being able to come up with a counter a major point, etc.). Just pointing out that there is a lack of a counter would have sufficed, the comments on the opponent's self are not necessary.
I believe that a lot of the crying that resulted in these fora is not focussed on the ad rem arguments, rather that when someone posts a counterargument full of (content-based) ad rem arguments, that person then adds an ad hominem argument, perhaps to weaken his opponent's point by discredeting his opponent (abusive ad hominem, or guilt by association), or because of habit, both being fallicious arguments to add these ad hominem attacks as contentwise the person has already countered his opponent with his ad rem arguments.

"This is an ad-hominem attack because you're refusing to address the ridiculousness of what you proposed in your initial post. You argued essentially that I shouldn't call communism communism but rather I should list 5+ communist ideals championed by a poster every time I want to refer to their communist ideals. This is just silly.

You nit picked over "true communism" like that's ever even supposedly been a point of contention here. These shenanigans are part of the problem of the garbage that passes for discourse around here.

Nobody ever debated the purity of communism. I simply mentioned a communist as a communist. He claimed offense, yet failed to differentiate his beliefs from communism in months. Then he cried about it. The problem was the absolute drivel level of [lack of] dialogue and crying, not my use of the word "communist" to describe a poster's beliefs.

If I had name-called someone a communist and they rebutted me, your criticism would be legitimate. But I didn't name-call. And nobody ever rebutted my descriptor. Discussing things as they are not is pointless."

I do not see how the use of linguistic tools would be an ad hominem attack, nor how me not adressing the fact that one should not call a set of ideas that overlaps with communism, communism. One is not a communist unless oneself presents himself as being a communist and comes out for it. Unless this is the case (or the very unlikely event that the opponent shares ALL of his ideas with communism and has NO other ideas that would differ from communism), an argument referring to the opponent as a "communist" rather than to his ideas as being part of communist ideology, is in fact, a guilt by association ad hominem argument, and accusing the opponent's person of being part of the communist ideology (rather than argumenting that his arguments were communist ideology, and then why these particular communist ideas (and not the fact that they are communist: overgeneralisation, guilt by assoctiation) are incorrect. You do not need to refer to a poster's communist ideals, they are not the subject matter on hand and therefore only are used to make guilt by association arguments. This is not silly, it is just a civilized, well-structured discussion with sound argumentation.
I believe the person who is the subject of this matter has never implied that he would want to introduce a 100% tax rate, where the individual does not own anything, and the government owns all. He may have advocated a 90% tax rate, and little individual ownership. The fact that these ideas may still be like communism, and are in contrast with several ideas that counter communism, does not mean that these ideas are intrinsically communist. The nitpicking is necessary on this point, as otherwise the term "(over)generalisation" would be applicable.
Aside from the fact that the ideas may not be 100% according to communist ideas, there still remains the fact that even if they were, one can make the argument that the ideas are communist, but does not have to resort to calling the person who has those ideas a "communist". He had all the reason to cry about your guilt by association ad hominem attacks when you call him a communist, he would not have had these reasons had you simply called his ideas communist. When you are making such an ad hominem argument, it is in fact you who is unnecissarily undermining the fundaments of discussion, with your opponent responding in a way that I do not agree with either, but that may have been caused by your ad hominem argument.
One does not have to rebutt an ad hominem argument, as they simply have no place in an ad rem discussion.

"If it's a large number of views and **nobody claiming offense differentiates their views from Communism in a matter of months,** it's just succinct language. Sure, arguments could be made that it wasn't an apt descriptor. But, given months, the absence of ANY such arguments is substantiation that it was, in fact, just a logical, respectful, succinct descriptor."

[...]

"Again, large number of views. No exceptions which contradict Communist ideals. No argument whatsoever claiming such."

[...]

"I never claimed character flaws. And I absolutely never depended on such a label as a basis for an argument. I think that should be ridiculously evident from the past 12 years. *ad-hominem attacks anyone who thinks otherwise*

Again, this is not the subject matter of this discussion, as this discussion revolves around ad hominem attacks and other fallacies. If the ideas the person bring forward are used by communists and perhaps based on communists foundations, that may be worded in an ad rem argument. When you use these ad rem arguments to form an ad hominem argument, using the ad rem arguments as a descriptor of the poster, THAT is when you are committing a fallacy. These fallacies may seem logical, but (I repeat myself) hold no place in an ad rem discussion and add nothing to the ad rem arguments other than the ad hominem aspect. In that way, using these ad hominem arguments is neither logical, nor respectful, and as mentioned before it is not a succinct descriptor.
If you are not claiming character flaws, nor using labels as a basis for argument, then why do you even have to add such a label to a person? Again, I stress the fact that this adds nothing to the ad rem arguments, and are therefore unnecessary and should be avoided because people can feel offended and can claim abuse (communists are a group that are normally viewed negatively, especially in the USA. Of course, implying that you would mean them negatively would be a generalisation, but I mean to imply the possibility that the opponent or readers may have these negative associations and therefore claim abuse) or guilt by association/generalisation (you denounce (some of) the opponent's ideas as communist, and therefore call him a communist).

"Yes, lines which we have established are not ad-hominem attacks. Lines which are not the basis for a single argument I've ever made in my lifetime. Lines which are accurate and have not been disputed by anyone, ever, with an actual argument of any size, type, or complexity. Or even a feeble attempt.

You claimed 3 fallacies. I have stated my disagreement. I am, of course, open to being told where you disagree with my responses to your three claims. I can respect disagreements just fine, but what I'm used to around here is vague claims without any responses disputing a word of what I've said."

The fact that the (ad hominem) fallacy is based on actual ad rem arguments, even if they are logically perfect, accurate, and undisputed,, does not change the fact that it remains an ad hominem attack. The conclusion that ad rem + ad hominem =/= fallacy, is wrong. It is not the use of the line that makes it a fallacy, it is the intrinsic qualities of the line.
I think this quite accurately debunks your disagreement with the fact that the points I made about that line. I hope I am being clear enough now, if not, I am perhaps not understanding the arguments you use to disagree with my points. Could you outline them in a clear, punctual way, such as I used to dissect that one line?

"It's neither fear or a prediction. It was a simple assessment of the current state of affairs. When most people who disagree with someone just call them names and **literally** dispute/respond to **nothing** they said, that's not dialogue or debate. When people talk about their faith in alien technology held hostage by the elite like we can possibly have any sort of discourse based on their wild, baseless theories, that's not dialogue or debate.

We're already there."

If we have already reached the point where these forums have deteriorated to a garbage bin, then clearly your strategy of using fallacies to counter fallacies has not worked as you had expected it to (to prevent these "trolls" from running amok, as you stated), or at least not optimally. The fallacy-ridden posts (I think we can establish that at this point?) you have used at times in the past, only contribute to this situation without dialogue or debate, with all of the namecalling.

"Aside from the fact that others--including juvenile moderators--respond to them, rather than ignore them (or delete obvious trolling, in the case of the moderators), I agree with you on this one. The fact is that they still get enough attention to encourage sustained trolling, as is obvious from the fact that we have trolls who've dwelt here for long periods (even when I ignored them for months)."

[...]

"As I said, they appear to get enough encouragement anyway. I don't discourage them with ad-hominem attacks and name-calling in place of arguments, I argue the crap out of their nonsense and occasionally, allegedly, am slightly insensitive."

Yes, you point out a very clear fault in the ignoring strategy, that I had forgotten to account for. I have myself wasted some time on tiring discussions with people not willing to give way on any of their arguments, not even when logically and accurately countered. Warning other users before they waste their time may be a valid reason to post, but I still feel like responding with fallacy-ridden counters is not the best way.
Perhaps we could introduce some kind of rating system on these politics forums, such as many other political forums (and just forums in general) use. Of course we have the tag system, which apparently was being worked on (although I have not heard any news of recent developments in quite a long time). Still, maybe we could use this in the future.
This is however just theorizing and does not give a solution to the problem at hand of the time-wasting discussions without content. But with the mods' more serious stance on the advocating and control of the politics forum, perhaps certain fmods who have knowledge of political debate can warn people when a discussion is going nowhere, saving valuable time.

"I don't claim knowledge of probability, but the sure logical certainty is that more educated, intelligent readers of the forum are sure to abandon any interest much quicker given a volume of completely garbage selective-responses and references to alien technology which certainly has no place on a politics forum. That moderators respond as if there's any legitimate content in talk of alien technology held hostage by the wealthy is just sad and certainly doesn't encourage a positive trend for the forum, whatever the chances that it has negatively impacted X number of potential participants."

I myself used to be a bit active on these politics forums, for a short period of time. However, for me, not only the waste of time when responding to some arguments, but also (if not even more so) the ad hominem arguments made to counter some of my own (even if accompanied by ad rem arguments) made me to ignore these forums, only posting on occasion.
Of course this is just speaking from personal experience, which is never a solid argument, but I hope you see my point of how ad hominem attacks made against serious debaters may scare them away and therefore be detrimental to the debate.
And as the "trolls" towards whom you may direct the most of your ad hominem arguments or "insensitivities", may seem to be resilient to them (continuing posts, perhaps only changing their subject matter to cries about how you made ad hominem arguments, neither being constructive to the debate), they may cause more harm to the debate in the form of scaring away possible serious debaters, rather than doing good in the form of making the "trolls" stop making content-less posts.

"Perhaps. I'm sure it's the mature thing to do. But maturity is not required, nor can it be moderated (examples abound!). It's for the good of the forum. Somebody's got to do it. And it's always accomplished with content, not ad-hominem attacks in place of logical arguments and reasonable questions.

I'm pretty sure I addressed the crap out of this one by now. Are you seriously claiming I don't fill my posts with arguments in response to what people say? Are you seriously claiming that my supposed occasional insensitive comments are given in place of arguments? That's just silly."

I have never said, nor even implied, that you do not use ad rem arguments. What I am implying and saying, however, is that in conjugation with those ad rem arguments, you use ad hominem arguments. I have shown proof of how you use ad rem arguments to form an ad hominem argument, and that exactly is the tilting point where your post goes from constructive to being (partly) detrimental to the debate.

"I never claimed others' use of fallacious justified me doing the same. I simply point out when they do it. Sometimes, allegedly, it's not the most sensitive way that I do it. This does not equate with me using ad-hominem attacks. Remember your definition you posted? Its very important here. I base no arguments or claims on supposedly insensitive remarks. I fill my posts with actual discussion of content. These supposedly insensitive remarks are a tiny portion of my posts. Ignoring this fact is just ridiculously fallacious. "

You say you do not use those "insensitive remarks" to form new arguments. If this is the case, then why do you even make these remarks? If you only objective is to scare off certain posters, because you feel like their posts do not hold any content and they are just wasting everybody's time, do you not see the possible harm you inflict to the discussion by scaring off possible serious debaters? Even more so as the trolls continu posting regardless of those remarks. Even if they make up a tiny portion of your (otherwise) ad rem posts, could you consider the possibility that they inflict more harm than good?
And do you conceive that these remarks are not necessary when you can  argue that your opponents actual post is nonsense? A purely ad rem argumentation without these remarks would perfectly show it.

Dear V. Kemp / Mister Spock,

Firstly I would like to adress the grasp that my opponent seems to have of the meaning of the term "ad-hominem", or rather "argumentum ad hominem". Allow me to dissect this term so that we can all agree on the definition and further use this for the sake of arguement:
"ad hominem" literally would mean "towards [the] man ", in proper English meaning "against [the] man". Basically and generally, what is meant by an argumentum ad hominem, is that an argument is made on basis of a quality of the opponent, and that because of said quality the argument the opponent has previously made is declared null and void. Argumenta ad hominem are per definition a fallacy, because these arguments are based on the person of the opponent, rather than the subject at matter in the discussion. A decent discussion should always go about the ideas and arguments one makes, not about one self.

Forms of these arguments that are most prominent on these forums include:

- Abusive: this includes not only the direct insults, but also the act of remarking that the opponent may have a certain character flaw, and therefore declaring the argument null. Therefore, even if a person were to act in a childish manner, dismissing his argument "because he is childish" remains a fallacy. The same goes for when the opponent is strange, or even weird [4]. The fact the opponent acts that way, does not allow you to dismiss his arguments on that simple notion.

- Guilt by association:  by this we mean that due to the fact that the opponent and a certain group of people share a simliar or even the same idea, that when that group is wrong in its conviction on another idea, that therefore your opponent must be wrong as well. This can be combined with another fallacy, the overgeneralisation, to form arguments such as: "my opponent subscribed to idea A, which group B also subscribes to, and therefore my opponent must be part of group B: and thus he is wrong on idea C," the overgeneralisation being that because the opponent subscribes to one, or several, ideas that a certain group subscribes to (but not all of their ideas), that he therefore must be part of that group; the Guilt by  association being that because said opponent shared an idea with a certain group, that is viewed negatively by yourself, he must therefore be wrong about the subject at hand.

Perhaps your understanding of the term "argumentum ad hominem" is not quite optimal, as you state the following:
"People often complain that having their illogical, no-thought-given garbage fallacious posts torn apart is mean. It wasn't flattering so it must be ad-hominem to explain why it's off-topic, misses key points, and illogical anyway. **What these people continually ignore is that not calling out bad form (or, usually, a complete lack of any) is disrespectful to readers and possible responders."

When one "tears apart" an "illogical, no-thought-given garbage [...] post", one can do this in a completely correct "ad res" argumentation without having to rely on "ad hominem" arguments, as debunking one's post refers to the matter that is discussed in the post and not to the person who has written the post. Therefore, there is no need for any ad hominem arguments to be made. However, a mention is made on "calling out bad form". I presume that hereby the bad form of the writer of the post is meant? Using the bad form of the writer to discredit his writings would in fact be an ad hominem argument, as this is directed towards the writer and not the actual content of the post. One can rip a post apart without resorting to ad hominem arguments easily, just by not even bringing up the writer nor the writer's form. This way one would do a much bigger respect to readers and possible responders, by himself not adding to the total number of fallacies in the thread.

I hope you are still following me and my "linguistic tools".

Secondly, I would like to provide proof that you do, in fact, use the above mentioned forms of the "argumentum ad hominem" type. If I were to, for example, dissect one of the lines you posted:
"If you get upset that someone brushes off your views as "communist" but refuse to correct them in any way for months, face it: Your views are, as far as anyone knows, communist. And you're the problem."
1. Brushing off one's views as communist may be actually based on arguments, however are communists the only group who subscribe to these views? If not, this is an overgeneralisation: Communists hold these views, and therefore everyone who holds these views is a communist.
2. Let us say you have proven that one of your opponent's views is communist, just for the sake of argument. Saying however that, because this single view (or even a handful of views) is (/are) communist, that therefore your opponent's other argument(s) are also communist, is a fallacy, falling under the header "Guilt by association".
3. Now let us say all of your opponents views were to subscribe to Communist ideals, ideals that in this combination are held by no other ideological group. Perhaps, even that the person you are debating with is communist. It matters not, as using these "character flaws" as arguments to nullify your opponents arguments, still is an argumentum ad hominem (namely an abusive argumentum ad hominem).

That is 3 fallacies in 1 line. Of course, I picked quite a juicy one, but I hope you realise that this is not an exception in any way, shape or form. Lines like these are quite common in your posts.

Thirdly, I would like to adress the use of several other fallacies. Most importantly, I would like to discuss the following lines:
- "It's not the ideal, but trolls and completely irrational children (let's hope they're children) crap all over forums if they run amok. If you're arguing that this forum should be a completely embarrassing garbage bin, I guess I can respect that argument. But let's be clear: That is the alternative to never calling someone out on trolling or otherwise demonstrating absolutely no interest in discussing or debating anything, ever."
In these lines you express the fear that when you do not keep these "trolls" in check, the forums would deteriorate to a completely embarrassing garbage bin. This, in fact, is an "appeal to probability": the fact that there is a chance that the forums may deteriorate to said garbage bin, in your argument, equals that they inevitably will. This is not necessarily so, as opponents who like to "crap all over the forums" as you say can also be held in check through a different manner than countering their arguments with ad hominem arguments: simply ignoring them. This will deprive the poster of any attention, and a one-sided discussion will quickly die out. One of the posters on these fora has quite nicely and effectively used this art of ignoring, with perhaps only one persistant "troll" as you call them, still continuesly posting in response to him: perhaps this instance could be used as an example.

Fourthly, I would like to adress how you think that you are allowed to use fallacies, because your opponent uses them. This, in fact, is also an "ad hominem" argument, one of the type of "Tu quoque"("and/also you", or "you too"). Your point that the opponent is making fallacies, does not disprove my point that your argument contained a fallacy. One may even call your argument hypocritical (on the premise that you are correct in your criticism), as you are critisizing a fallacy while using fallacies yourself.

I hope I have helped you come to the insight that even though your opponent may not be discussing in a proper manner, this does not give you an excuse to make ad hominem arguments. Even in the worst cases, when your opponent writes up the biggest, most horrific abomination of a fallacy-ridden post that you have ever seen, there are other options than to respond with a post of yourself that would just add to the sum of fallacies, for example writing a post without fallacies. If this still does not work, one may try the strategy of just ignoring the opponent.

Oh and that link you posted goes nowhere due to the way that the IC forums shorten links.

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> Lee wrote:

> ur calculations are off for my fam rd, since all 3 attackers make a shit ton of resource atm 

As all attackers should be atm , so there's basically a fault in all of the calcs . Hopefully they can cancel each other out! (although I doubt it since your am hasn't done anything than infra for ages and therefore has no need for fleet...)

I was playing around with excel a bit and came up with the following...

I tried to determine the strength of the economy of the families that are currently in the top 6 of NW. To do this, I wanted to account for several annoyances that make plain NW not a good determinant of a families economy.

These annoyances included planets and attacker NW, so I decided to make the following categories
- NW per planet
- Pure NW: NW with all planets deducted (so NW - 800*[number of planets])
- Attackerless Family NW: the plain NW of families with the (combined) attacker NW deducted from it. For this I had to determine who were attacking in what fam (which I may have been wrong on) to find out what the combined attacker NW of each family was.
- Attackerless Pure NW: same as "Attackerless Family NW", but instead of using the plain NW of a family, I used the Pure NW. I think this is the best determinant for a family's economy, as it accounts for attackers and for planets.

*** Do note that some attackers may be producing resources, and that there is a chance that I used the NW of an attacker that was doing a jump for another planet right when I took these ranks. These may make these calculations less accurate than I'd like them to be ***

The results were the following:
As of Week 12, 11

Family    Family Networth    Planets    NW/planet    Pure NW    Attackers    Combined Attacker NW    Attackerless Fam NW    Attackerless Pure NW
6560    13967128    1388    10062,77233    12856728    2    4174773    9792355    8681955
6558    12988536    1487    8734,72495    11798936    3    2123072    10865464    9675864
6563    11331278    1590    7126,589937    10059278    4    2390919    8940359    7668359
6553    9579293    1251    7657,308553    8578493    3    2125944    7453349    6452549
6555    8632883    1190    7254,523529    7680883    3    1859796    6773087    5821087
6561    8607332    696    12366,85632    8050532    1    196919    8410413    7853613

With these date I will attempt to write a mini-PvC:
1    Fun is Infectious! (6560)
NW per planet: 10 063
Pure NW: 12 856 728
Combined Attacker NW: 4 174 773
Attackerless Pure NW: 8 681 955

Their plain NW, NW per planet, and pure NW are impressive, however a lot of this is in their attackers: this is the highest amount amongst the top 6, almost twice as much as 58 and all other fams. However, their Economy may still not be as bad, judging by their Attackerless pure NW. Having only 2 attackers, rather than 3 like most other top 5 fams, may become problematic when they get into real cancellation wars as well (one can hardly call the target practise they did on 51 a cancellation war).

Contenders top 3, if not FTW

2    Serial Killers #Amateurs (6558)
NW per planet: 8 735
Pure NW: 11 798 936
Combined Attacker NW: 2 123 072
Attackerless Pure NW: 9 675 864

Very impressive economy, definitely the best in the galaxy. Attackers aren't sitting on strangely-large amounts of NW, and the fact they have 3 solid attackers gives them stability.
I do not have a lot else to say about them, although it seems they just got Templare as well... like they needed ANOTHER good player :\.

Contenders FTW

3    Thr let wor (6563) [60,59]   
NW per planet: 7 127
Pure NW: 10 059 278
Combined Attacker NW: 2 390 919
Attackerless Pure NW: 7 668 359

The comeback kings, perhaps a bit planet fat due to their recent comeback, boasting the lowest NW per planet of all the families in the top 6 (although by a small margin). 4 attackers gives a lot of flexibility in wars, and provides this fam with a lot of usable morale for the first few ticks of a cancellation war and possibly large surprise raids without declaring war (although with the new pmode mechanics this is a lot less of a problem, and declaring war isn't that big of a hassle).

Contenders FTW

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