I may be starting to sound like a broken record but I am realizing that one of my pet peeves is that so many people in these discussion groups are unable to recognize the difference between true philosophical differences and semantic differences. There are many people who seem to think that philosophy is all about coming up with new definitions for existing words (VeniCreatorSpiritus at MOL was notorious for this). And there are others who commonly insist that their own pet definition of a word is the only proper definition (Bob39 is notorious for this). This is a similar problem because the root is they think that philosophy is all about assigning the correct definitions to words. How many times have you heard someone in these philosophy groups say "Well, I think that X means this" and then go on to list one of the accepted meanings of the word with the assumption that that's the only meaning it should have? And how many times have you heard people go on arguing for days and days thinking that they had some philosophical disagreement when really, at the root of it all, they were just defining a particular word differently?
I think everyone should add this to the list of things they need to think about if they want to become better critical thinkers - learn to distinguish the difference between true philosophical differences and semantic differences. True philosophical discussion is generally not about differences in opinion regarding what words should mean. It is about differences in what we believe - our ideas. But we have to use words to stand for those ideas, to explain what we believe, because that's the only way we have of communicating those ideas. But, we must realize, that verbal communication only works properly when the person saying (writing) a word and the person hearing (reading) a word are using the same definition of the word. And, unfortunately, a major obstacle to this is that the great majority of our words have more than one commonly understood meaning - some of the meanings being very similar, some of them very different. But, I believe we can get around that problem, not by insisting that our own particular favorite definition of a word is the only proper definition, but by accepting that in reality words have more than one meaning and explaining which particular definition of a word we are using in any given statement.
Also, it is good idea to learn to watch for the problem of equivocation - using more than one definition of a word simultaneously or interchangeably within an argument. This problem is more common than people realize. It exists within the first paragraph of the initial post of this thread.