So, I make a post about a zany incident thinking people might want to read about it and coment on/snark about it, and it is closed. Meanwhile, ever fewer (new, non-sock people) are joining the board and contributing. Perhaps it might be better to consider not actively attempting to drive off the remaining people who do attempt to contribute something fun/positive/interesting to discuss? Or would you prefer to continue down the direction of being a rapidly emptying forum for anger, politics, and coddling racists?
The request wasn’t that you stop posting fun, zany, interesting items. It was that you include more information or discussion in your OPs. This is not an unreasonable request.
The mod note ended with
And, having to do it all over again, I can’t really see how I would have described the brief article any differently. But I can understand the concern for not wanting to overwhelm a subfourm that sometimes sees dozens of threads in a week (says no thriving forum ever.)
Just some thoughts.
Most people don’t click on links. If you want someone to see the humor in something, it has to be in the OP because very few people will click on the link. Unlike reddit, where there are summary bots and comment summarizers, the more information you can summarize from the article that makes the link notable, the better.
In that link, something that made it topical was that the mom was looking for a date for her son for Valentine’s day, a few days ahead of Valentine’s day. A sweet, if misguided and awkward gesture.
Did her son know about it? Even more awkward.
Another thing that made it noteworthy was that the campus authorities were worried about her. What did they think was going to happen?
She also had the picture on her phone, which isn’t the most convenient or safe way to show someone a picture.
Even in that short article, there might have been a few things to discuss.
*this thread has a lot of typos. I hope it’s not contagious.
It has always been our policy to close threads that are just links. Don’t just post a link. Say something about what you actually want to discuss about the link.
“(Link) this mom went around campus showing girls a picture on her phone asking girls if they wanted to date him”. Then add something you thought, felt, are curious about. “Moms are pimps/ I would die of embarrassment/ if it was your mom would you hide her phone/ etc etc ”
Actually, when including the title, you did all of that. Hmmm.
Do we still have “Weird Earl’s” somewhere on the front page? That used to be the place for sharing links without content.
Darren Garrison: I was a little bit surprised that your thread was closed. You did, after all, provide a description of your link; it wasn’t just “Hey check this out.”
But I see the point, that we don’t want the SDMB to turn into Facebook, where the boards fill up with people just Sharing articles and columns that they find, without adding any content of their own. I guess, if you expect other people to “comment on/snark about” something, you ought to do so too.
There is little appreciation for the surreal these days. It was tricky enough to bait up a good “what does this conjure up in your head” thread even 10 years ago, but now we are overrun with Very Serious[sup]®[/sup] left wingers who, like their conservative counterparts, have forgotten that the best part of being alive is being able to enjoy the beauty and entropy of badgers designing firefly milkshakes under the strangler’s moon. But I do have one question.
What is “cosing”?
The other question to ask yourself is “Does this need to be a completely new thread, or can this go in an existing mini-rants/MMP/Stupid Stuff thread?”
I wish more people would post minor fun stuff in the monthly mini-rant thread; it gets annoying to scroll past a bunch of one-shot “Hey, look at this!” threads.
If the goal of the site is to minimize the number of new threads and regular posters, I must say that it is succeeding wildly. I think that it would be nice if we did have enough active posters that the handful that are posting now wouldn’t stand out so much, and enough threads that we would need more subforums to handle them. Complaining about that is akin to complaining about having so much money that you have to open new bank accounts. But if you enjoy watching tumbleweeds blow across the forum, then you do you.
It has captured Christmas because it has no l.
Yeah, you’ve already said this. I have to admit, this is the first time someone has tried this approach when their post was dinged for having little to no original content(as far as I can recall, that is), and I’m not sure logic is on your side here, since people already have a place where they can link to all sorts of crap without contributing anything original-Facebook.
Is there much difference between OP’s thread and this one, for example? For the record, I’m cool with both in MPSIMS.
Except that’s not what this was. He had a link, explained what it was to, and commentary on it in the thread title. Had it been lacking either of the latter two, the criticism and closing would be justified. But it did - so closing it now makes it look like there is some sort of “I know it when I see it” minimal contribution threshold that apparently must be met, and that is moving us the wrong way.
We have had posters who would just post a link, optionally accompanied by “discuss” , and then would move on. This is not that. It is not a lot more than that, but enough to where I think the closing was unwarranted.
Best guess? One was reported to the Moderators, and the other wasn’t.
cosing=duet.
sing = solo
cosing = duet
But now we’re going off on a tangent.
Tangent=George Hamilton.
- 3 points for that.