Should posters on askaboutmoney be non-judgemental?

I've always noticed a pretty firm consensus on people being told to pay their debts and pay their taxes.

This is a good thing, but it shouldn't descend into rudeness.
 
The Horseman said:
I don't agree with personal attacks nor using abusive language etc but in the specific thread you referenced in my opinion this person did not show any genuine remorse for the situation they were in.
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But this is the judgemental issue.

Most people here see a loan as a contract between a willing borrower and a willing lender.

Many others take the view that if they can get one over the lender by not paying their debts, they should do so. And they have no remorse for this.

The law allows people to go bankrupt. We use taxpayers' money to help MABS and PIPS advise them on how to best exploit that law. Should we criticise people for availing of the law?

Brendan
 

Yes a loan is a contract which both parties are expected to fulfil. So let me ask you if you purchased for example an investment property for say €100k and got a mortgage for €100k and sold it for €150k two months later (having not spent a cent to justify the increase in value) do you think the bank should get more than the €100k it lent to you? The answer is no. A contract even a mortgage is a business trans pure and simple.

This is reason we are were we are in Ireland. The majority of people pay their taxes make mistakes and try to atone for their mistakes. Again I will use the specific post to justify my posts (as opposed to other posters responses).

The law does indeed allow people go bankrupt but in this specific instance the poster emigrated and did not "face the music" but left his ex partner too. MABS and PIPS do indeed best exploit the law as you put it. However people who use these services do suffer some loss/pain whether it be financial/reduced lifestyle etc.

This specific poster is now in a position to make some amends for the decisions they took. But rather than accept even some responsibility chooses not to and leaves it to others to "take the hit".
 

The issue is that many new posters aren't transparent about their motives or full circumstances.

In some cases when they share more it becomes clear that a debt is unsustainable and they've had a bad run of luck.

In others it becomes clear that they are trying to get away with paying as little as possible.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
The law allows people to go bankrupt. We use taxpayers' money to help MABS and PIPS advise them on how to best exploit that law. Should we criticise people for availing of the law?
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But the law cant tell if the person is using it for genuine reasons or exploiting it for personal gain
That is where we the people get to make that "judgemental" call or decision
with the thread yesterday the OP made no secret of their intentions for personal gain at the expense of others

Yes I totally agree that the standard of posting did drop including my crawl back under comment but at that stage I believed and I presumed others that this poster was a Troll and only started the thread to get a reaction, this to me was obvious from the phrasing and wording of the title and first two posts compared the the OPs later posts
 
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Sometimes it can be very difficult to be non-judgemental in answering questions on financial situations that people find themselves in. Seems to run into the quagmire of, avoidance v evasion, and some posters are of the opinion that there's no difference between the two. Thereafter starts the argument/debate.
 
The consensus seems to be "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and I'd go with that. Advice, opinions and suggestions given in here come from places within our moral compasses and unwittingly, travel with our responses. Such is life.
 

Some people would probably find legal tax avoidance by some (e.g. "the rich" = the person with more than me) as objectionable as illegal tax evasion so it's difficult to come up with any moral absolutes here. I think that the best that you can do is what Gordon Gekko suggest above.

Even when advice one some dodgy strategy is sought perhaps the best way to deal with it with a simple cost/benefit analysis rather than by moralising or berating the poster? Sometimes easier said than done though.
 
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If I like a post I click like.

I suppose a recent post has certainly brought up the subject of personal attack.
What is considered to be a personal attack?
What very well maybe a suggestion/advice/opinion made by one person may very well be perceived as a personal attack by another.
Should changes be made to AAM would they be counter productive? Would they destroy debate opinion etc?
How would any changes to AAM decide/police such situations?

Should I like a post I click on the Like.

Should Administrators or regular contributors to AAM consider that posts are overly critical/personal could they hit the OC (overly Critial) key and after a certain amount of hits Moderators take down the post?
 
Agree with Gordon Gekko's suggestions also.

And if the behaviour is morally dubious but legal, then if you don't like what someone is doing just don't reply to the OP.
Posters should still be free to comment on such behaviour in general issues topics, just not ones where an OP has asked a specific query.
 
KOW said:
Should Administrators or regular contributors to AAM consider that posts are overly critical/personal could they hit the OC (overly Critial) key and after a certain amount of hits Moderators take down the post?
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OK, just for demonstration purposes, I hit the "angry" button on your post.

That button is ambiguous. You could have a post about a topic which makes me angry but it's not you making me angry.

I presume we could adapt those buttons.

"This post is a personal attack and should be edited"

Anyone got the skills to design an emoji with a hatchet?
 
Hello,

For what is worth, I think things should be left as they are.

This website is extremely well moderated already, in fact, in some ways maybe too much so.

If someone starts a thread asking for assistance with doing something illegal, then it should be reported and closed.

If someone is doing something that is immoral, or not in the spirit of the law etc. then let fellow members of AAM call that out in the discussion thread, but let the discussion continue.
 
Gordon Gekko said:
“Do not seek advice regarding potentially illegal behaviour; e.g. ‘How can I evade tax?’, ‘How can I renege on my debts?’, or ‘How can I hide assets from my former spouse?’.”
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I think that would be a very useful addition to the posting guidelines.

Perhaps it could be phrased - "Do not seek or offer advice regarding potentially illegal behaviour...".
 
KOW said:
What is considered to be a personal attack
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Step 1.
Does the sentence contain the word "you"?

Step 2a
Does the sentence refer to the character or personal attributes of the other party?

Or

Step 2b
Does the sentence refer to the behaviour(s) of the other party?

Examples:

Not a personal attack:
When you hit that person on the street you committed an assault.

Personal attack:
You are a reprehensible blackguard for hitting that person.
 
Leave things as they are imo. The entertainment value of the pile ons is hilarious. The funniest one of all was the Ryan /Flood case. The gas thing about these debt/ Insolvency threads is that the heaviest criticizers in often don't seem to realize that for a PIA to be put through the PIP has to show that the creditors would be worse off if the debtors went bankrupt. But nope manners must be seen to be put on the debtor !

Was there ever a thread started on here lambasting the Anglo bond holders who got paid and shouldn't have been ?
 
demoivre said:
Was there ever a thread started on here lambasting the Anglo bond holders who got paid and shouldn't have been ?
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Sort of. I said that the depositors in Anglo and INBS should not have got more than the initial guarantee of €20k.

I didn't lambast them.

Brendan
 
Well, we all know what thread gave life to this discussion.

Like most debates, I come at it well into the discussion as I don get much of a chance to log in, (to many posters relief) and would agree to a lot of whats already been said here.

I wouldn't be a fan of changing things tbh. A lot of the well seasoned posters bring their personality with them when responding and sometimes a sharp tongue is needed to point out certain errors. But there's a difference to a sharp tongue and a mauling.

I have a fair few posts to my name, and if I articulated a scenario like yesterday, well, as I've lashed others before for what i believed were grave indiscretions, I would accept it were fair game to get taken down without much sympathy.

I'm not saying there is a waiting period before you send in the hounds, but how many times do you need to pile in on top of whats already been said.

When I joined AAM, I thought I was the bees knees, that I knew a lot about a lot of things. I was soon put in my place by Brendan, Club Man, Scaranco and Gordan Gekko etc. I remember being asked to justify what I said, My thoughts turned to (screaming part of the male anatomy). Turns out, I knew a little about a lot of things. I also realised, the bull manure threshold was set quite low on this site, and that's the reason I've stayed, even with sometimes invoking the wrath of the Mods..

The reason I say above, is, I could take a good hammering now, if I come on here with a wayward view, it would be right to analyse it, and call me out on it if its wrong, rightly so, but without judging me. You don't know what life experience I had or entailed, in coming to that reasoning.

We all read things differently as well, I doubt a debate like yesterdays would have gotten as far a it did, had it not been for the rawness of the topic, but if ever there were two sides to a story, that could have been it.

I cant really see a debacle like that happening again, and its for that reason I wouldnt change . But as I said in the beginning, we all bring a certain personality to the table when giving our views, and if GG had to be nice to someone, or if Purple, NRC and other seasoned posters didn't throw out their brilliant one liner put downs, well, it there's a danger it may become sterile a platform for discussion, and that just wouldn't do.
 
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