Sunday, February 23, 2020

Qui tacet consentit

Sir Thomas More (1527) by Hans Holbein the Younger

Qui tacet consentit


Ah, Latin.... This was the email signature from an inquiry to a For Sale ad I'd posted on Craigslist, and I was curious. Ot course, I turned to Wikipedia...

In a nutshell: Consensus is assumed when there's no evidence of disagreement.

Qui tacet consentire videtur, ubi loqui debuit ac potuit (He who is silent, when he ought to have spoken and was able to, is taken to agree) — Latin proverb

AKA if you disagree, the onus is on you to say so.

The maxim is "Qui tacet consentit": the maxim of the law is "Silence gives consent". If therefore you wish to construe what my silence betokened, you must construe that I consented. — Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) in A Man for All Seasons

I actually found all this on a resource page for Wikipedia edits, who apparently go mad with both editing and silence about their edits. I found the following of particular interest:

Warnock's dilemma, named for its originator Bryan Warnock, is the problem of interpreting a lack of response to a posting in a virtual community. The term originally referred to mailing list discussions, but has been applied to Usenet posts, blogs, Web forums, and online content in general. The dilemma arises because a lack of response does not necessarily imply that no one is interested in the topic, but could also mean for example that readers find the content to be exceptionally good (leaving nothing for commenters to add). [more here]

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