Comment by cperciva
10 years ago
My opinion is that if you use performance-enhancing drugs, you lose Olympic medals, even if it only happened because you accidentally took the wrong cold medicine while in a foreign country (see Silken Laumann). Maciej should have known that soliciting votes via twitter was against the rules; whether he did know is irrelevant to whether he should be excluded.
You didn't actually answer my question.
When you use a lot of phrases like: "Maciej cheated", "Maciej tried to game the system", "He tried to stack the deck", you don't make it sound like you think he accidentally took cold medicine - you're directly attributing malice to him.
He deliberately took a drug which he knew would improve his athletic performance. He may or may not have known that it was on the banned drugs list.
In that case, I'd recommend switching to phrases like: "Maciej may or may not have cheated", "Maciej may or may not have tried to game the system", "He may or may not have tried to stack the deck" and modifying the rest of the tone of your comments appropriately. tptacek, who knows Maciej personally, seems confident that he did not.
In the comments on the new guideline about gratuitous negativity, the intent seems to be "use the most charitable interpretation". Accusing someone of being dishonest falls outside that.
Nitpicking here: I don't think Silken Laumann lost any Olympic medals, only Pan Am medals if I remember correctly. Not that it makes any difference whatsoever to your point.
Huh, you're quite right. I guess I mentally conflated "Olympic athlete" and "lost medals" into "lost Olympic medals".