Please try to help out- this is a serious issue — Page 3

If this summer ends up being anything like last summer, it won't be much of an issue anymore by September. We lost a lot of "adult" posters last summer; some returned and some did not. I know this is coming across as age-ist, and truly, that is not how I mean it. But last summer, the board took on the look and feel of a teenage chat room...and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. Quite a few younger posters, home from school for the summer, were racking up hundreds of posts in a single day. ( And yes, there are adults who have done that, too.) It became so frustrating looking for a thread I might possibly be appropriate for or interested in, that I stopped logging in. And I wasn't alone. I'm not saying that threads started by people my age are better than threads started by people my kid's age. But I *am* saying that frequently, what happens to be of interest to one group, is not at all to the other. With school out for summer, the ratio of "student" threads to "adult" threads gets even more out of balance. When I would come home from work and find that the entire board filled with stuff I couldn't relate to, I wondered what the hell I was doing and logged off.

I don't know. The suggestion of a third board, as I see it, shouldn't be seen as an insult to anyone...just as another option.

And for what it's worth, Penguin, I DO see your point. I'm not sure what the answer is.

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I see your point as well ifiltifloat, I will be working all summer and not in much, but I can see it being discouraging to see the entire board filled with threads you have no interest in (like one of Namos bizzare thread attack days). Though I don't see this particular issue being solved by a "student board."
Maybe if regardless of age we had more restrictions on what can be posted at all? I don't like how that would change the dynamic of the board, but if large numbers of the members are indeed being driven away a non-agist solution like that would at least treat us all equally.

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"Although I suspect at this point I speak for many others when I say that, I won't say that I do. It's my own personal feeling. Mine alone. But probably not."

How unlike Rath to want to have it both ways! Ahahahahahaha! It goes without saying I think Rath is a bit dim. Oh look! I said it. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

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I'd take that under advisement if it were coming from somebody I respect in the least.

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Come on. How hard is it to try to come up with something original? Even by your standards, which are pretty low, Right back atcha about every piece of "advice" and "counsel" you've tried to throw at me, is completely Rathetic.

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Namo, what makes you think I give a crap about what you think of my posts? It's a freakin' MESSAGE BOARD. Get the f over it. Give us your opinions on the topics and don't spend so much damn time criticizing everyone's posting styles/topics/etc. Perhaps you should start your own board where you can make up all the rules.

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Updated On: 5/15/05 at 07:14 PM

Well, it just keeps going around in circles. People are worried that other people will feel that certain people are trying to completely exlude other people, not necessarily themselves, but some "other" people from some other "other" "other" people if there is another board introduced.

Although, people do often come to see what might be useful about it over time. As somebody like Emcee mentioned in this thread.

But speaking of cyclical, we can always count on Rath to come along a day late and a whole lot foolish later and comment after 50 posts about me personally. She probably thinks my cautionary tales about Scientology are another example of the way this board tilts so heavily to the opposite side of the politcial spectrum than she exists on that she's positively BURDENED by it.

But I won't presume to speak for her. I know nothing about her.


PS: "Namo, what makes you think I give a crap about what you think of my posts?" Your apoplectic responses, for one.

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Updated On: 5/15/05 at 07:19 PM

I completely agree with people's rights to post anything they want. First Amendment absolutist that I am. But that influx of very young posters starting thread after thread and posting in them as if they were text messages that only each other could see really did create the phenomenon Iflit describes in her post last summer.

How about instead of a students board or a young people's board there's an "Old Fogeys Board," that would be based not on chronological Old Fogeyism but based on one's lack of tolerance for wading through the kinds of posts that Penguin describes?

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Could there be a way (and this may be technologically imposible) to code the threads we see. So if Namo is coded to see {politics, weird random, and places to get blitzed) but I am coded to see all threads, where we actually seperate ourselves based on content. That seems very inarticulate, but maybe you get the idea.

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No, actually, I recommended to the webmaster here that one approach might be what Datalounge does. A person decides to start a new thread and when the form is filled in with the headline and the post, and the person hits "post," a drop-down menu comes down and the poster has to pick "gossip" or "politics" and click on the most appropriate heading that the new post belongs under.

This came about when gossip mavens complained about the influx of political topics during the reelection.

It's fairly simple and gives the poster a chance to think about what he or she is posting and where it most belongs.

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Ha, this thread is a great example of that.

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I have to agree that it is an imperfect system but I like it better because a poster is proactivly deciding what they are going to read and what they are posting under. It seems some things may get lost but it does not seem as exclusionary as a student board.
What was the objection, or are they still considering that?
It sounds like a well formed compromise position.

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Actually, that is what I wrote in a suggestion to Rob and Craig at the beginning of May. I've spent a lot of time since then explaining again and again that I wasn't suggesting it as a means of segregration. I considered printing my note to them in the thread, but I didn't. Perhaps it would have made my intentions clearer then.

In any event, I am sure it would be more work to create that kind of a system, so I am sure it isn't an easy undertaking.

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