An argument is a reason or set of reasons given to persuade the other person that an action is right or wrong.

An argument is not the same thing as a quarrel.
The goal of an argument is not to attack your
opponent, or to impress your audience. The goal of an argument is to offer good reasons in
support of your conclusion, reasons that all
parties to your dispute can accept.
Nor is an argument just the denial of what the
other person says. Even if what your opponent
says is wrong and you know it to be wrong, to
resolve your dispute you have to produce
arguments. And you haven't yet produced an
argument against your opponent until you offer some reasons that show him to be wrong.
When you're arguing, you will usually take
certain theses for granted (these are the
premises of your argument) and attempt to
show that if one accepts those premises, then
one ought also to accept the argument's
conclusion.

In Nairaland, when people argue, they attach emotions thereby making their points invalid. These are the few examples:

"If it's your sister, what will you do?" :- This is a very bad way of arguing with someone. You are trying to attach emotion to a particular scenerio when you know that the person you are arguing with, will soften because it's his sister. People should learn to face the problem and stop trying to put emotions in arguments.
Arguments should be based on reasons and points.

Attacking the personality: Nairalanders are used to attacking the person they have arguments with. For example, someone brings a point about a particular issue, the next thing the other person will say is "shut up! bigot". This is a bad move when arguing with a person, it leads to personality combat, thereby derailing the topic being discussed. This pattern of argument shows insecurity and lack of points on the part of the person. An argument should be a flow of reason and counter-reason and not a flow of insults.

Attacking the Person's tribe: These people are called e-tribal warriors. They don't have anything to contribute to the topic but they will just write "it's because she is igbo/yoruba/hausa/etc" or "this is what yoruba/igbo/hausa are known for". This is a very stupid way of arguing. If you want to argue on a particular topic, stay in-line with the topic and don't derail the topic. You don't expect the people from the tribe you are bashing to clap their hands and say "welldone".

Politically Biased: This is the silliest thing nairalanders love doing. Jonathan commissioned a power station, instead of writing "good job", the person will leave the topic and attack PDP. For goodness sake, when did you see PDP in the topic? There are things that should not be said outside based on the level of education we've gained both in school and our environment. What the person did is "fallacy of the negative sense". The only reasonable argument in support/against the above topic is saying "the project was slow" or "the amount of money spent on the project is very high" not attacking the political party nor the personality. That's being irrational.

Instead of Advice, you Insult: some people come to nairaland to get reasonable advice because they feel:
1. Its a faceless forum.
2. We are matured.
3. We are not emotionally involved with him/her.
4. We are not related.
So, they feel they will get a rational advice devoid of bias. But, due to some people refuse to see the emotional turbulence the person is going through, they still insult the person. People should learn something; insulting someone doesn't stop the problem from being there. You can only solve a problem by analysing the problem and look for a solution to the problem. If you want to advice a person, put yourself in that scenerio and reason it. After reasoning it, you can give a very good advice.

Religious Bias: This is another problem we are facing in nairaland. Christians, Muslim and Atheists are always in a tug-of-war. If something is wrong in your religion, condemn it or better still don't comment. You see a muslim thread, you'll go there and cause turbulence. What kind of human being are you? This little things we do online go a long way in our normal lives because the internet has in the last decade fashioned our lives in many ways than one. We should learn to respect people's belief and stay away from their private lives.

People come here to form this perfect being with no trace of life mistakes, but they know they are not perfect.

We have teenagers in this forum. The way you approach arguments is the way they will likely want to approach it because since they are still coming up with little experience, they feel its logical to approach arguments your way. Its easy for a yoruba man to amass yoruba fans online by supporting the yoruba man in a topic that didn't mention any tribe. This is not being patriotic to your tribe, its being irrational in your approach to a topic.


From

Concerned Nigerian

I wanted to open a thread on this before but I stopped. These e-bashers, e-warriors, e-tribalists are very annoying. They come like minions and what they do next is cause trouble here and there.
They know themselves.

Op, get ready for war

chinziaski: I wanted to open a thread on this before but I stopped. These e-bashers, e-warriors, e-tribalists are very annoying. They come like minions and what they do next is cause trouble here and there.
They know themselves.

Op, get ready for war

It is important we trash issues like this so that future occurence will be limited. For goodness sake, if these are only doing this for the sake of humour, I quite understand but attacking someone's personality and tribe is way-off and not good.
Arguments should be devoid of any emotional statement or attachment. You are here to argue with points not with the personality. No wonder some nairalanders will complain that "I found out I insulted by friend's dad"
Some nairalanders are looking for the heads of some of their e-bashers in real life to break their heads

vickitor:



It is important we trash issues like this so that future occurence will be limited. For goodness sake, if these are only doing this for the sake of humour, I quite understand but attacking someone's personality and tribe is way-off and not good.
Arguments should be devoid of any emotional statement or attachment. You are here to argue with points not with the personality. No wonder some nairalanders will complain that "I found out I insulted by friend's dad"
Some nairalanders are looking for the heads of some of their e-bashers in real life to break their heads

I was not here

good points...

Thank you OP. The personality attack is the most rampant here. I just hope they will listen and change.

NICELY SAID OP.....I FEEL U

So on point at OP

Mod pls move to front page

I wish you could tell this to the House of Reps.
The thing is it can never end especially the tribal ish, since the begining of the world most things have been about dominance and relevance leaving unity to die on its own. Forgeting the level of dominance and relevance one can reach with unity.
I believe most of us here are still growing and changes will set in when it's due.

Arguments will continue as long as they have to and sentiments will be involved so will emotions, gender, money and any other freakin idea you can think of because this is not a court room.
Just as you said we're not all matured in here so the major P should be before you engage in an argument think,type, think again then post. If you're trying to be sarcastic, try to make it obvious enough.
Another thing you should know is some of us are cooling venoms 'don't Bleep with me and i won't Bleep with you. I don't freakin turn the other chick.

Well I have to say the most important thing that will reduce irrational argument on this forum is a complete reassessment of each topic before moving the post to front page. Reason being that most people don't read the post before commenting and at such will argue unnecessarily.

This is thesame problem we have been facing since our pre-independence era. Awolowo wants to fight for the Yoruba interest, Tafawa Balewa for the Arewa interest while Nnamdi Azikiwe for the Igbo interest. But they forgot that, we are first Nigerians before our tribes. They also fail to understand that, we are first humans before we believe in any religion.
The best way to achieve a reasonable end to an issue is to face the issue and stop being bias. It goes a long way in helping our sense of judgement in our daily lives.
Igbos are afraid of doing business with a yoruba/hausa man because he has been fed with numerous stupid lies about the yoruba/hausa people, this also goes to the other tribes. This has hampered the rate of growth of businesses in our country. Deaths and partiality everywhere.
if we can stop these things here on nairaland and embrace this beautiful word "Nigeria", the better for us because we can never go back to 1914 but we can make good use of 2014!

Thanks

Ruq: Arguments will continue as long as they have to and sentiments will be involved so will emotions, gender, money and any other freakin idea you can think of because this is not a court room.
Just as you said we're not all matured in here so the major P should be before you engage in an argument think,type, think again then post. If you're trying to be sarcastic, try to make it obvious enough.
Another thing you should know is some of us are cooling venoms 'don't Bleep with me and i won't Bleep with you. I don't freakin turn the other chick.

Spot on, bro