If your intention really was to just focus on the evals, why mention their impact on your salary at all, especially in the conclusion?
Maybe his intentions were not to "just focus on the evals". Maybe he wanted to, oh, I don't know:
1) show that cheating is a lot more widespread than we think
2) describe several reasons why simply pursuing and punishing cheaters is a bad strategy
3) use that to point out that we need a better solution (such as designing better evals, perhaps, but it's not the only option)
I mean, he know best what his intentions were, but that's my interpretation of his posts, both of them, taken together.
But I agree with you, it was evidently poor judgment on his part to "mix up too many issues", since most of his readers can't be bothered to try to separate them ;)
Maybe his intentions were not to "just focus on the evals". Maybe he wanted to, oh, I don't know:
1) show that cheating is a lot more widespread than we think
2) describe several reasons why simply pursuing and punishing cheaters is a bad strategy
3) use that to point out that we need a better solution (such as designing better evals, perhaps, but it's not the only option)
I mean, he know best what his intentions were, but that's my interpretation of his posts, both of them, taken together.
But I agree with you, it was evidently poor judgment on his part to "mix up too many issues", since most of his readers can't be bothered to try to separate them ;)