#badarguments — Public Fediverse posts

What Should We Call the “Appeal to Chatbot” in Latin?

The Latin language is always expanding. Sometimes this is easy, as when it picked up gladius “sword” from Celtic and sclopetum “arquebus, smoothbore gun” from Italian. Other times it is hard and you have to invent a new word or phrase. Sometimes you even think for a long time and decide that crisare “to shake one’s hips” is good enough substitute for to twerk. Trying to settle an argument by pulling out a dictionary is an argumentum ad dictionarium. What should we call trying to settle an argument by quoting a chatbot?

Slop (“fodder for a pig, output from a chatbot”) is clearly pabulum in Latin (Columnella de re rustica 7.9.7 Internet archive). Its not so clear what a Latinate take of words like bot, generative AI, or large language model would be. The obnoxious thing about these programs is that they emit vast amounts of stuff which sometimes seems plausible but should never be trusted. It does not matter how they work when you have to clean up after them. So after some tooing and froing I decided on fountain of lies or deceitful fountain. One good name would be fons mendacitatis. However, Greyor @[email protected] pointed out that Plautus has the adjective falsidicum “false-speaking.” The ancients did not have a sophisticated language to talk about lies, fiction, bullshit, and shared games, so I will chose the word that delights me and not worry about parsing different kinds of untrustworthy untruths.1

So a LLM chatbot is a fons falsidicus, and the “appeal to chatbot” is an argumentum ad fontem falsidicum. Botanists might have to wait for someone with enough Latin to name a new species, but bookandswordblog readers get this one straight away!

There are some sad things I could say about why some people feel the need to ask chatbots what is true, and about how the playful language games of New England hacker culture turned into the magical thinking and purposeless self-perfection of Bay Area tech culture (already skewered by Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus, 14.2-8). But the world does not need more sadness and it is a beautiful spring day in Victoria.

The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction is a great place to explore how robot became bot “diminutive name for a robot” then “automated computer program.” I don’t know of a good successor to the Jargon File since Eric S. Raymond was not a good steward.

PS. Some people call attacking the source of the information an argumentum ad fontem. If you use that, and you want to be clear to young people without Latin who might confuse fons “source of information” and fons “fountain of lies”, you could all the appeal to chatbot an argumentum ad automaton. Greek words were popular in working Latin although pagan writers avoided them in literature. But I think it important that every language have spicy words for the bad and malevolent technology which is American-style generative AI.

(scheduled 23 March 2026)

1. I read an article on true, false, and pseudo-true statements for the Cyrus’ Paradise conference in 2012, but lost access to my notes when a ‘free’ service ran out of money. I will edit this post if I ever find the reference again. Memento mori! And never ever trust a ‘free’ service hosted on someone else’s computer. ↩︎

What Should We Call the “Appeal to Chatbot” in Latin?

The Latin language is always expanding. Sometimes this is easy, as when it picked up gladius “sword” from Celtic and sclopetum “arquebus, smoothbore gun” from Italian. Other times it is hard and you have to invent a new word or phrase. Sometimes you even think for a long time and decide that crisare “to shake one’s hips” is good enough substitute for to twerk. Trying to settle an argument by pulling out a dictionary is an argumentum ad dictionarium. What should we call trying to settle an argument by quoting a chatbot?

Slop (“fodder for a pig, output from a chatbot”) is clearly pabulum in Latin (Columnella de re rustica 7.9.7 Internet archive). Its not so clear what a Latinate take of words like bot, generative AI, or large language model would be. The obnoxious thing about these programs is that they emit vast amounts of stuff which sometimes seems plausible but should never be trusted. It does not matter how they work when you have to clean up after them. So after some tooing and froing I decided on fountain of lies or deceitful fountain. One good name would be fons mendacitatis. However, Greyor @[email protected] pointed out that Plautus has the adjective falsidicum “false-speaking.” The ancients did not have a sophisticated language to talk about lies, fiction, bullshit, and shared games, so I will chose the word that delights me and not worry about parsing different kinds of untrustworthy untruths.1

So a LLM chatbot is a fons falsidicus, and the “appeal to chatbot” is an argumentum ad fontem falsidicum. Botanists might have to wait for someone with enough Latin to name a new species, but bookandswordblog readers get this one straight away!

There are some sad things I could say about why some people feel the need to ask chatbots what is true, and about how the playful language games of New England hacker culture turned into the magical thinking and purposeless self-perfection of Bay Area tech culture. But the world does not need more sadness and it is a beautiful spring day in Victoria.

The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction is a great place to explore how robot became bot “diminutive name for a robot” then “automated computer program.” I don’t know of a good successor to the Jargon File since Eric S. Raymond was not a good steward.

(scheduled 23 March 2026)

1. I read an article on true, false, and pseudo-true statements for the Cyrus’ Paradise conference in 2012, but lost access to my notes when a ‘free’ service ran out of money. I will edit this post if I ever find the reference again. Memento mori! And never ever trust a ‘free’ service hosted on someone else’s computer. ↩︎

What Should We Call the “Appeal to Chatbot” in Latin?

The Latin language is always expanding. Sometimes this is easy, as when it picked up gladius “sword” from Celtic and sclopetum “arquebus, smoothbore gun” from Italian. Other times it is hard and you have to invent a new word or phrase. Sometimes you even think for a long time and decide that crisare “to shake one’s hips” is good enough substitute for to twerk. Trying to settle an argument by pulling out a dictionary is an argumentum ad dictionarium. What should we call trying to settle an argument by quoting a chatbot?

Slop (“fodder for a pig, output from a chatbot”) is clearly pabulum in Latin (Columnella de re rustica 7.9.7 Internet archive). Its not so clear what a Latinate take of words like bot, generative AI, or large language model would be. The obnoxious thing about these programs is that they emit vast amounts of stuff which sometimes seems plausible but should never be trusted. It does not matter how they work when you have to clean up after them. So after some tooing and froing I decided on fountain of lies or deceitful fountain. One good name would be fons mendacitatis. However, Greyor @[email protected] pointed out that Plautus has the adjective falsidicum “false-speaking.” The ancients did not have a sophisticated language to talk about lies, fiction, bullshit, and shared games, so I will chose the word that delights me and not worry about parsing different kinds of untrustworthy untruths.1

So a LLM chatbot is a fons falsidicus, and the “appeal to chatbot” is an argumentum ad fontem falsidicum. Botanists might have to wait for someone with enough Latin to name a new species, but bookandswordblog readers get this one straight away!

There are some sad things I could say about why some people feel the need to ask chatbots what is true, and about how the playful language games of New England hacker culture turned into the magical thinking and purposeless self-perfection of Bay Area tech culture. But the world does not need more sadness and it is a beautiful spring day in Victoria.

The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction is a great place to explore how robot became bot “diminutive name for a robot” then “automated computer program.” I don’t know of a good successor to the Jargon File since Eric S. Raymond was not a good steward.

(scheduled 23 March 2026)

1. I read an article on true, false, and pseudo-true statements for the Cyrus’ Paradise conference in 2012, but lost access to my notes when a ‘free’ service ran out of money. I will edit this post if I ever find the reference again. Memento mori! And never ever trust a ‘free’ service hosted on someone else’s computer. ↩︎

What Should We Call the “Appeal to Chatbot” in Latin?

The Latin language is always expanding. Sometimes this is easy, as when it picked up gladius “sword” from Celtic and sclopetum “arquebus, smoothbore gun” from Italian. Other times it is hard and you have to invent a new word or phrase. Sometimes you even think for a long time and decide that crisare “to shake one’s hips” is good enough substitute for to twerk. Trying to settle an argument by pulling out a dictionary is an argumentum ad dictionarium. What should we call trying to settle an argument by quoting a chatbot?

Slop (“fodder for a pig, output from a chatbot”) is clearly pabulum in Latin (Columnella de re rustica 7.9.7 Internet archive). Its not so clear what a Latinate take of words like bot, generative AI, or large language model would be. The obnoxious thing about these programs is that they emit vast amounts of stuff which sometimes seems plausible but should never be trusted. It does not matter how they work when you have to clean up after them. So after some tooing and froing I decided on fountain of lies or deceitful fountain. One good name would be fons mendacitatis. However, Greyor @[email protected] pointed out that Plautus has the adjective falsidicum “false-speaking.” The ancients did not have a sophisticated language to talk about lies, fiction, bullshit, and shared games, so I will chose the word that delights me and not worry about parsing different kinds of untrustworthy untruths.1

So a LLM chatbot is a fons falsidicus, and the “appeal to chatbot” is an argumentum ad fontem falsidicum. Botanists might have to wait for someone with enough Latin to name a new species, but bookandswordblog readers get this one straight away!

There are some sad things I could say about why some people feel the need to ask chatbots what is true, and about how the playful language games of New England hacker culture turned into the magical thinking and purposeless self-perfection of Bay Area tech culture. But the world does not need more sadness and it is a beautiful spring day in Victoria.

The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction is a great place to explore how robot became bot “diminutive name for a robot” then “automated computer program.” I don’t know of a good successor to the Jargon File since Eric S. Raymond was not a good steward.

(scheduled 23 March 2026)

1. I read an article on true, false, and pseudo-true statements for the Cyrus’ Paradise conference in 2012, but lost access to my notes when a ‘free’ service ran out of money. I will edit this post if I ever find the reference again. Memento mori! And never ever trust a ‘free’ service hosted on someone else’s computer. ↩︎

Changing minds.: Kristyn

https://www.answers-in-reason.com/comics/changing-minds/

Made by Kristyn. KristynAutistic, queer, D&D devotee, pun peddler, meme
dabbler, home-brew hero. Downton Abbey Diogenes! www.answers-in-reason.com

The post [Changing minds.](https://www.answers-in-reason.com/comics/changing-
minds/) appeared first on [Answers In Reason](https://www.answers-in-
reason.com).

#Comics #Philosophy #BadArguments #AnswersinReason

Changing minds.: Kristyn

https://www.answers-in-reason.com/comics/changing-minds/

Made by Kristyn. KristynAutistic, queer, D&D devotee, pun peddler, meme
dabbler, home-brew hero. Downton Abbey Diogenes! www.answers-in-reason.com

The post [Changing minds.](https://www.answers-in-reason.com/comics/changing-
minds/) appeared first on [Answers In Reason](https://www.answers-in-
reason.com).

#Comics #Philosophy #BadArguments #AnswersinReason

Changing minds.: Kristyn

https://www.answers-in-reason.com/comics/changing-minds/

Made by Kristyn. KristynAutistic, queer, D&D devotee, pun peddler, meme
dabbler, home-brew hero. Downton Abbey Diogenes! www.answers-in-reason.com

The post [Changing minds.](https://www.answers-in-reason.com/comics/changing-
minds/) appeared first on [Answers In Reason](https://www.answers-in-
reason.com).

#Comics #Philosophy #BadArguments #AnswersinReason

Changing minds.: Kristyn

https://www.answers-in-reason.com/comics/changing-minds/

Made by Kristyn. KristynAutistic, queer, D&D devotee, pun peddler, meme
dabbler, home-brew hero. Downton Abbey Diogenes! www.answers-in-reason.com

The post [Changing minds.](https://www.answers-in-reason.com/comics/changing-
minds/) appeared first on [Answers In Reason](https://www.answers-in-
reason.com).

#Comics #Philosophy #BadArguments #AnswersinReason

A Response to YouTuber Kristopher Mann by Dave Rowlands
https://www.answers-in-reason.com/?p=5268?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=Automation&utm_campaign=PAD
#Agnosticism #Agnostic #Atheist #Atheism #BadArguments #Philosophy

Hitchens on Antitheism by Davidian
https://www.answers-in-reason.com/?p=11078?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=Automation&utm_campaign=PAD
#Agnosticism #Agnostic #Atheist #Atheism #BadArguments #ConflatedandMisunderstoodTerms #Language #Antitheist #Antitheism

Belief: Don’t Believe, Lack of Belief, Absent of Belief – CMT Vol: 11 by Davidian
https://www.answers-in-reason.com/?p=9044?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=Automation&utm_campaign=PAD
#Atheist #Atheism #BadArguments #Belief #ConflatedandMisunderstoodTerms #Language #Philosophy

In response to Ra’s ‘What is Atheism?’ by Davidian
https://www.answers-in-reason.com/?p=8595?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=Automation&utm_campaign=PAD
#Agnosticism #Agnostic #Atheist #Atheism #BadArguments #Belief #BurdenofProof #BoP #EpistemicJusticfication #Justificiation #Fallacies #Logic #Justification #Language #Philosophy #Rationality

Can you prove a negative? by Davidian
https://www.answers-in-reason.com/?p=7915?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=Automation&utm_campaign=PAD
#Atheist #Atheism #BadArguments #BurdenofProof #BoP #EpistemicJusticfication #Justificiation #Fallacies #Justification #Logic #Philosophy #Rationality #Truth #Epistemic#Justification #RationalBelief #BoJ #BurdenOf#Justification

Reason in the Face of Public Opinion by Davidian
https://www.answers-in-reason.com/?p=8875?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=Automation&utm_campaign=PAD
#Atheist #Atheism #BadArguments #Fallacies #Philosophy

Is The ‘lack of belief’ Definition of Atheism The Most Common One Used? by Davidian
https://www.answers-in-reason.com/?p=11289?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=Automation&utm_campaign=PAD
#Atheist #Atheism #BadArguments #ConflatedandMisunderstoodTerms #Language #Philosophy #Belief

If There’s No Evidence, It Doesn’t Exist by Dave Rowlandshttps://www.answers-in-reason.com/?p=14201?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=Automation&utm_campaign=PAD#Bad#Atheist #Atheism #BadArguments #Atheist #Justification #Philosophy #Sceptic #Scepticism #Skeptic #Skepticism #Belief

If There’s No Evidence, It Doesn’t Exist by Dave Rowlandshttps://www.answers-in-reason.com/?p=14201?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=Automation&utm_campaign=PAD#Bad#Atheist #Atheism #BadArguments #Atheist #Justification #Philosophy #Sceptic #Scepticism #Skeptic #Skepticism #Belief

If There’s No Evidence, It Doesn’t Exist by Dave Rowlandshttps://www.answers-in-reason.com/?p=14201?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=Automation&utm_campaign=PAD#Bad#Atheist #Atheism #BadArguments #Atheist #Justification #Philosophy #Sceptic #Scepticism #Skeptic #Skepticism #Belief

If There’s No Evidence, It Doesn’t Exist by Dave Rowlandshttps://www.answers-in-reason.com/?p=14201?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=Automation&utm_campaign=PAD#Bad#Atheist #Atheism #BadArguments #Atheist #Justification #Philosophy #Sceptic #Scepticism #Skeptic #Skepticism #Belief

If There’s No Evidence, It Doesn’t Exist by Dave Rowlandshttps://www.answers-in-reason.com/?p=14201?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=Automation&utm_campaign=PAD#Bad#Atheist #Atheism #BadArguments #Atheist #Justification #Philosophy #Sceptic #Scepticism #Skeptic #Skepticism #Belief

@onan @ajroach42
I find it interesting that until a few months ago, this video was the most recent one published by Bedfordshire in years. I'm hoping there's been a change in leadership and philosophy there. And at other archives.

8/end/

#BedfordshireArchives #libraries #BadArguments #DigitalArchives #digitisation #copyright #Archival #Archives

@onan @ajroach42
I find it interesting that until a few months ago, this video was the most recent one published by Bedfordshire in years. I'm hoping there's been a change in leadership and philosophy there. And at other archives.

8/end/

#BedfordshireArchives #libraries #BadArguments #DigitalArchives #digitisation #copyright #Archival #Archives

@onan @ajroach42

So, yeah, no, I find the arguments given highly unpersuasive.

There are other arguments which could be made:

• Authors restricting access to works. Here my feeling is that peer pressure form dead people should have an expiry date. The argument largely stems from copyright. Either an author should take responsibility for deleting works, or it becomes the common heritage of later generations.
• Cataloguing and classification. I'm surprised this didn't feature in the video. It's a huge problem with current online archives. Essentially, the problem should already be a major part of an archive's work, and translating metadata to digital formats already a part of existing practice.
• Integrity and control. This is the elephant in the room for much of the talk. Again, ultimately the works from the past belong to all of the current generation, and future ones. Archivists are their custodians, but not the gatekeepers to them.

7/8

#Archives #Archival #copyright #digitisation #DigitalArchives #BadArguments #libraries #BedfordshireArchives

@onan @ajroach42

So, yeah, no, I find the arguments given highly unpersuasive.

There are other arguments which could be made:

• Authors restricting access to works. Here my feeling is that peer pressure form dead people should have an expiry date. The argument largely stems from copyright. Either an author should take responsibility for deleting works, or it becomes the common heritage of later generations.
• Cataloguing and classification. I'm surprised this didn't feature in the video. It's a huge problem with current online archives. Essentially, the problem should already be a major part of an archive's work, and translating metadata to digital formats already a part of existing practice.
• Integrity and control. This is the elephant in the room for much of the talk. Again, ultimately the works from the past belong to all of the current generation, and future ones. Archivists are their custodians, but not the gatekeepers to them.

7/8

#Archives #Archival #copyright #digitisation #DigitalArchives #BadArguments #libraries #BedfordshireArchives

@onan @ajroach42

Funding and its impacts is another legitimate concern, though past experience strongly suggests that increased access and awareness should improve the argument for preserving archives, facilitating sharing and replication, and even in tackling some of the other concerns such as copyright impediments to providing greater access.

6/8

#BedfordshireArchives #libraries #BadArguments #DigitalArchives #digitisation #copyright #Archival #Archives

@onan @ajroach42

Funding and its impacts is another legitimate concern, though past experience strongly suggests that increased access and awareness should improve the argument for preserving archives, facilitating sharing and replication, and even in tackling some of the other concerns such as copyright impediments to providing greater access.

6/8

#BedfordshireArchives #libraries #BadArguments #DigitalArchives #digitisation #copyright #Archival #Archives

@onan @ajroach42
Fidelity to the original is another "perfect as the enemy of the good" objection. True, no copy will ever fully reproduct all aspects of an original, but ... Porquay no los dos? With both the original and multiple copies (perhaps deep scans --- multiple wavelengths, microscopic resolution, penetrating images, chemical analysis), ever-better fidelity can be achieved. And many works within archives are themselves copies, often by hand, of originals. Duplication through time, and the issues it presents, is already integral to archival, and itself plays a key role in historiography and tracing the spread of documents throughout the ancient world.

5/8

#Archives #Archival #copyright #digitisation #DigitalArchives #BadArguments #libraries #BedfordshireArchives

@onan @ajroach42
Fidelity to the original is another "perfect as the enemy of the good" objection. True, no copy will ever fully reproduct all aspects of an original, but ... Porquay no los dos? With both the original and multiple copies (perhaps deep scans --- multiple wavelengths, microscopic resolution, penetrating images, chemical analysis), ever-better fidelity can be achieved. And many works within archives are themselves copies, often by hand, of originals. Duplication through time, and the issues it presents, is already integral to archival, and itself plays a key role in historiography and tracing the spread of documents throughout the ancient world.

5/8

#Archives #Archival #copyright #digitisation #DigitalArchives #BadArguments #libraries #BedfordshireArchives

@onan @ajroach42

Changing digital formats has greater legitimacy. Both file formats and physical media change with time, though that rate of change seems to have slowed. (Physical media similarly went through several stages of evolution though again, eventually settled on a fairly stable set of formats.) Major file formatss (TIFF and RAW uncompressed images, JPG, GIF, and PNG, Postscript and PDF) are now decades old, and remarkably stable. Digital archivists are looking at long-term storage. Phyiscal media are similarly being designed for long-term archival, on the order of millennia, and there's a pretty good possibility that they'll succeed in this. Meantime, online or nearline storage (disk and tape) can be replicated and upgraded with reasonable ease. Raw storage costs for the entire US Library of Congress is on the order of a few thousand dollars of physical media, and is falling by an order of magnitude every decade. (Provisioning, maintenance, and access costs add to this, but again the sums are quite suprisingly reasonable.)

4/8

#BedfordshireArchives #libraries #BadArguments #DigitalArchives #digitisation #copyright #Archival #Archives

@onan @ajroach42

Changing digital formats has greater legitimacy. Both file formats and physical media change with time, though that rate of change seems to have slowed. (Physical media similarly went through several stages of evolution though again, eventually settled on a fairly stable set of formats.) Major file formatss (TIFF and RAW uncompressed images, JPG, GIF, and PNG, Postscript and PDF) are now decades old, and remarkably stable. Digital archivists are looking at long-term storage. Phyiscal media are similarly being designed for long-term archival, on the order of millennia, and there's a pretty good possibility that they'll succeed in this. Meantime, online or nearline storage (disk and tape) can be replicated and upgraded with reasonable ease. Raw storage costs for the entire US Library of Congress is on the order of a few thousand dollars of physical media, and is falling by an order of magnitude every decade. (Provisioning, maintenance, and access costs add to this, but again the sums are quite suprisingly reasonable.)

4/8

#BedfordshireArchives #libraries #BadArguments #DigitalArchives #digitisation #copyright #Archival #Archives

@onan @ajroach42

Quality is the second pink fish. Even low-quality digitisation is better than none for billions of people worldwide. And reasonably quality scans are readily attainable. Several false objections are raised (colour scanning is possible and widely practised). And the best way to improve a process is to practise it, see what works, what doesn't and improve it as you go. So long as the originals exist, they can be re-scanned if technology improves sufficiently that this is justified.

Odd Formats is another canard. If standard formats are easiest to process, work on those first. Categorise and clasify exceptions. Come up with reasonable mechanisms for addressing them. One thing about publishing, and even manuscripts, is that formats tend settle into a reasonable set of widely used formats in large part. Again, with practise comes improvement.

3/8

#Archives #Archival #copyright #digitisation #DigitalArchives #BadArguments #libraries #BedfordshireArchives

@onan @ajroach42

Quality is the second pink fish. Even low-quality digitisation is better than none for billions of people worldwide. And reasonably quality scans are readily attainable. Several false objections are raised (colour scanning is possible and widely practised). And the best way to improve a process is to practise it, see what works, what doesn't and improve it as you go. So long as the originals exist, they can be re-scanned if technology improves sufficiently that this is justified.

Odd Formats is another canard. If standard formats are easiest to process, work on those first. Categorise and clasify exceptions. Come up with reasonable mechanisms for addressing them. One thing about publishing, and even manuscripts, is that formats tend settle into a reasonable set of widely used formats in large part. Again, with practise comes improvement.

3/8

#Archives #Archival #copyright #digitisation #DigitalArchives #BadArguments #libraries #BedfordshireArchives

@onan @ajroach42
Copyright is the most legitimate complaint, though even it applies largely to only 20th century works, nearly all published after 1925. (There are exceptions, this is law, jurisdictions differ. But as a rule that holds.) Copyright is indeed hugely culpable for restricting rather than enabling access to works, as UC Berkeley Law Prof Pam Samuelson has said.

Quantity is the first of the red herrings. If you've a lot of something to do, and actually do want to do something with it, doing something is more likely to get you there than doing nothing. This means devising a plan, prioritising works to process, perhaps setting up processes for new aquisitions such that they're archived on arrival. Even a random sampling is better than nothing. Roughly 140 million books have ever been published, unpublished media (manuscripts, notes, etc.) expand that, but the set is finite.

2/8

#BedfordshireArchives #libraries #BadArguments #DigitalArchives #digitisation #copyright #Archival #Archives

@onan @ajroach42
Copyright is the most legitimate complaint, though even it applies largely to only 20th century works, nearly all published after 1925. (There are exceptions, this is law, jurisdictions differ. But as a rule that holds.) Copyright is indeed hugely culpable for restricting rather than enabling access to works, as UC Berkeley Law Prof Pam Samuelson has said.

Quantity is the first of the red herrings. If you've a lot of something to do, and actually do want to do something with it, doing something is more likely to get you there than doing nothing. This means devising a plan, prioritising works to process, perhaps setting up processes for new aquisitions such that they're archived on arrival. Even a random sampling is better than nothing. Roughly 140 million books have ever been published, unpublished media (manuscripts, notes, etc.) expand that, but the set is finite.

2/8

#BedfordshireArchives #libraries #BadArguments #DigitalArchives #digitisation #copyright #Archival #Archives

@onan @ajroach42
Ugh.

Her argument largely boils down to "copyrights", "cost", and "the perfect is the enemy, and in this case, righteous vanquisher, of the good". The first two have some validity, the last is sheer obstructionism.

As Bedfordshire's SM states things, the existence of the archive is more important than access to it, and the argument reads (whether it's intended to or not) as one for doing nothing rather than a best or reasonable effort.

Let's look at the objections ...

1/8

#Archives #Archival #copyright #digitisation #DigitalArchives #BadArguments #libraries #BedfordshireArchives

@onan @ajroach42
Ugh.

Her argument largely boils down to "copyrights", "cost", and "the perfect is the enemy, and in this case, righteous vanquisher, of the good". The first two have some validity, the last is sheer obstructionism.

As Bedfordshire's SM states things, the existence of the archive is more important than access to it, and the argument reads (whether it's intended to or not) as one for doing nothing rather than a best or reasonable effort.

Let's look at the objections ...

1/8

#Archives #Archival #copyright #digitisation #DigitalArchives #BadArguments #libraries #BedfordshireArchives