I can only ever see this principle hold true is a highly formal setting and not a plain informal setting, much like the forums are. My main problem with your argument here is that you are trying to make it sound like the word which you choose to fixate on in someone’s post is the crux of their case, in which case I would applaud you for making them understand why their case is build on faulty and factually untrue reasoning but this is rarely the case.
As per my examples above, the words you choose to challenge people on have had nothing to do with the topic or their opinions on the topic. As I’ve said, more often than not, you choose to nitpick on the grammatical mistakes of the argument and not the key word itself upon which the argument was built.
Allow me to give an example of how you could have done this correctly:
Take for instance the “Imperius’ trait is a gimped compy of Orphea’s, change my mind” thread. In this case, a proper usage of your tactic to debate semantics would have been used far more effectively to discuss the word “gimped” and point out the unique properties of his trait (such as multiple activations of it through molten armor), which would allow you to discredit his argument AND stay on point to the topic of the thread.
Instead you choose to fixate on the phrase “Change my mind” and go into tremendous detail as to why you believe that phrase is a lazy attempt to get people to engage with material without much effort on the OP’s end. Ironically, the exact opposite happened with you in that you did not engage with the source material and you put in way more effort than the OP anyway, but that is besides the point.
You claim that changing the way someone uses a word will help them better understand why their argument is faulty but in all of the examples I have listed, including mine with the “fair” one, it has never been the case. For my example, correcting me on the literal definition of the word “fair” did nothing to change my argument since it was evident to everyone in the thread (except you) that my usage of the word fair was used in the context to portray inequality.
Meanings of words can go beyond the literal definition. If you’re at work and you find out your hours have been cut and given to the new guy even though you’ve been there for years, you would say “that’s not fair”. But hold on a second? Your trusty dictionary clearly specifies that “fair” means no rules were breached and the action was legit.
Your boss has every right to switch the hours around however he deems is most effective for the company. “fair” was not violated in any way and your usage of the word “fair” was incorrectly applied. As you suggested, maybe if you just educate yourself on why your usage of the word was incorrect you’ll understand you had nothing to be worried about, right? Wrong.
In an informal setting, grammatical correctness is not a prerequisite to conveyed intent. The usage of the word “fair” with the boss example, the football example, and my example in the ‘gg vs bg’ thread all had the same meaning; which was to express an observation of inequality or injustice.
The idea that proper grammar will help change someone’s opinion on a topic is a laughably ridiculous claim that has no basis in the facts and no practical application. Again, I can only ever see this being true in a highly formal setting like a university, lecture, or seminar. If you’re at a party with your friends watching sports and your friend says “we ain’t got no defense”, you could point out that A) “ain’t” is an incorrect substitute for “don’t” and B) “don’t got no” is a double negative, so he’s actually saying the opposite of what he tried to convey.
In this situation, would correcting him seriously change his opinion on the matter? No. Did correcting me on “fair” change my opinion of the matchmaking system? No. Did correcting Hailfail on Khaldor change his opinion about Li Ming? No. Are you starting to see the pattern yet? You’re continuing your crusade on the false notion that the people you come across will change their ways if they understand the faults in their grammar. That is ridiculous.
You are changing nobody’s opinion. The only way you can change someone’s opinion is to refute their argument with facts and evidence, which I understand even then sometimes doesn’t help, but still is better than the alternative of what you are doing.
If someone makes a thread saying “Butcher is overpowered and this has had a large affect on the community.” I would completely expect you to be the person to point out “affect” was inappropriately used in the place of “effect” instead of doing the right thing and arguing the word “overpowered” was misapplied and easily disproved through statistical evidence that points to the contrary on almost every level of play.
Please give me one single example where you corrected someone’s grammar and in turn they said “Gee, you’re right. Now I see my complaint was wrong all along. Thanks, Xen.”
The point I’m trying to get across is that you need to pick your battles more wisely. Fixate on words such as “overpowered” that are key to the opponents argument instead of on words that have nothing to do with the spirit of the topic.
You noted in your post that:
I wonder why? Do you think that maybe your attempts at correcting people’s grammar can lead to the thread being sidetracked? Do you think that making a debate of “lore-friendliness” in a thread about the current balance of Tyrande might get sidetracked and shut down? Do you think that arguing the context of the word “Tone” in a thread about Sylvanas’ gameplay might end with the topic getting locked? Do you consider any of these factors before you decide to get into it with someone?