Perhaps it was a mundane and pointless thing he wanted to share?
And why do you quote this:
without also including the title:
which is a question that along with the link makes it pretty damn clear what the OP is about?
Forgive me. I don’t want to yell, but you guys keep missing something important, and this will make it stand out.
IT WAS IN THE TITLE.
Darren Garrison very much did tell us what the reason for the topic was and his own opinion on it. It was in the title, the thing everyone reads before they can even open the post. We all were aware of DG’s opinion and why he posted the link.
Thus all arguments based on the idea that he did not do any of this are invalid. They are based on a false premise. All the things you guys keep saying he should have done, he did in fact do.
If Darren Garrison had just posted a link, I’d understand. But he usually has a bit of an explanation. It’s short, but no shorter than explanations that were previously said to be good enough.
Granted, none of those were in the title. If you want to say that putting an explanation in the title isn’t good enough for some reason, make that argument. But please stop making the erroneous argument that Darren Garrison just posted a link with no explanation of why he posted it.]
BTW, I think Darren Garrison is understandably angry, and wish you guys would be softer about this stuff. Of course when they’ve been doing something forever and you arbitrarily decide that this time is too much, they’re going to get angry. Consistency is key in keeping people happy with the rules.
Throw in being accused of not doing something he did in fact do, and I personally would be furious. Try to see this from his side.
What exactly is the point of that tiresome semantic argument, BigT? He posted a link with a short description embedded in the link. Fine. According to him, he’s trying to generate content that will get the forums busier and perhaps bring in some new users that will actually stick around. Posting articles like this is not the way to do that. Everyone who responded in his thread was right - that’s Facebook territory. Articles like that do not translate into generating a discussion in the message board format, because there’s barely anything to discuss in the first place. Facebook works a lot better for that sort of thing because of the format. We see thumbnail preview of the article, which gets more people to click, or you just go to the comments cause someone will sum it up there. People make some jokes, post a few memes/gifs, and moves on with their day. Here, the most you’re gonna get is a couple of one liners. I can even provide a cite. That’s the similar thread that Loach referenced upthread that he said he let go without closing. Like the one in question, it contains a link with a description to some clickbait-y internet article, and little else. Three posters responded (six replies total) and the thread promptly died.
The mods 100% made the right call here, and please remember he was invited to repost if he so chose. Also, your hand-wringing about how he was “accused of something he did not do” is both melodramatic and asinine.
You mean the thread that had generated 5 comments in 46 minutes, none of which was a complant? And a “click-bait article” that was a front-page news item link from my local CBS affiliate news station?
BTW, I’m not trying to get that particular thread reopened, just going on general principle. I had been giving descriptions for the links–maybe not paragraphs, but also not just “click this.” This to science, technology, and cultural stories that I found interesting and figured others would, too, and thought would generate discussion on their own. This “reporting posts that you don’t think give a long enough descripiton” doesn’t strike me as anything more than threadshitting with a different name. But now that I know my P are too M and P to S, I’ll try to refrain from starting threads in that subforum in the future (though I’m not promising that I’ll be able to stick the flounce.)
You have completely missed the point of the moderation.
No one is asking you to not post links. All we are asking is that you add a little more to say what it is about the links that you want to discuss. That’s all. We encourage you to keep posting links, if there is something there that you want to discuss.
5 comments in 46 minutes?? Holy shit, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a massive response before! The mods are crazy! Reopen the thread immediately, Loach! This is surely the way to save the SDMB from slowly circling the drain!
LOL. Seriously, dude. I know you’re being sincere and at the same time I can’t believe it. The same article posted on a high traffic page on Facebook would generate hundreds of comments within minutes. Have you visited the rest of the internet outside of the SDMB (and YouTube, and your local news affiliate’s site) recently? Might be time to take a look around. And I like how you elect to nitpick my use of “clickbait”, rather than address my other comments, because I suspect you know you’re starting to look silly and are grasping at straws trying to prove you’re right.
5 replies in 46 minutes, guys. This is a game changer!
It is pretty high traffic for this site, which is the one that I’m concerned about. That’s part of my point–the traffic here is low and getting lower all the time. (And with peop;le who act like you, there is little wonder.) What you are doing right here? That is known as “being a jerk.”
And a big part of my point is that what are you doing is not going to do a single thing to drive traffic here. Not one thing. And I believe what I did in the post you quoted is known as “sarcasm”. I’m certain you’re familiar with the concept. Two mods have posted in this thread and I’m sure they’ll give a note if they feel I’ve run afoul of the rules. I don’t believe I have, though.
Yes, this!
If anything is going to drive traffic here, it would be people posting things here that people think are worth linking to, or that would show up as one of the top hits on a Google search of something or other.
Maybe so–and on the other hand maybe a forum with more activity and more active posters would have more traffic than one that doesn’t. We both seem to be saying that the SMDB is really low-traffic–but you seem to be saying that is a good thing? All I can say is that I was in good faith attempting to provide a positive contribution to the forum by making those posts (and, as an aside, I’m writing this quite calmly, no “histrionics” involved.)
This is a bit of a sidetrack from Darren Garrison’s issue, but since it came up here:
A common problem that may discourage message board use is this: Many people are irritated when they take the trouble to post in a thread, then get slammed with “you obviously didn’t read the whole thread.” And it’s just as true that many people are irritated when a post is made by someone who clearly hasn’t read the thread—in some threads.
The particular threads in the Pit you mention, Green Bean, happen to be ones in which no one ever gets scolded for not having read the entire thread-----but there’s no way someone could know that in advance. And thus there may be quite a few people who come to the conclusion you have: that since they don’t want to read all 20,000 posts before replying, they won’t reply at all.
If there were some way to let them know that they WON’T be scolded (for failing to read the whole thread) in those particular threads, they’d post. And there would be collectively less angst, as well as more people logging onto the SDMB.
So, what if there could be a convention such as that of putting “(No spoilers)” or “(Spoilers)” in thread titles? What if there were a conventional thing to put in titles that would indicate ‘no one will be scolded for posting without having read the entire thread’…?
Something like ‘reading entire thread not required’, but pithier.
???
As for this: a number of people regularly read those omnibus threads. Many of them do not necessarily click on new threads. So in fact your rant might get more readers in those threads than it would if the Pit had dozens of new threads on the same over-arching political topics made each day.
I think Bucketybuck, in a slightly snarky way, made a key point. If MPSIMS has evolved to be something different from what it was named, then maybe change the forum title. If its mission hasn’t changed, then I think this kind of moderation is particularly questionable in that specific forum. (In, say, Great Debates, I can definitely see the wisdom of discouraging someone from throwing out a link and saying “have at it” without offering their own thesis.)
I also want to say that I thought Sherrerd made some very good points.
It was a silly post about a silly (non)-event. OP posts a LOT, and if any poster was going to turn this board’s activity around, it might be him. I can’t see one thread more or less making any difference at all.
All this fuss about this thread doesn’t ring true for some reason. No earth is being shaken by this event; no-one’s rights or privileges are under attack, no-one’s existence is under threat. I can’t fathom getting so exercised about it. Protest noted. Recommend moving on.
I actually meant to convey quite the opposite in my first post in this thread, when I said this:
I’m not saying the low traffic is a good thing, I’m just saying that it is a thing, and that I’m not sure that there’s anything that anyone can do that will rectify that, for the simple fact that message boards are a dying breed. I’ll be glad to be proven wrong on that point, though.
edit: by the way, I’d like to add that I agree with Green Bean’s assessment of the omnibus threads, and the negative effect they’ve had on the Pit.
Well, God forbid! In the subforum dedicated to mundane, even pointless stuff, maybe that’s ok, though?
Moderator Warning
Don’t insult other posters in ATMB, and don’t junior mod. This is an official warning.
Colibri
I really, really agree with this.
Fair points, but I don’t think that’s the biggest problem. It’s not knowing where to even start reading it.
Compare the Trump omnibus thread to the monthly minirants threads. If you put them all together, it would be massive, but doing it in the monthly format keeps it in nice, digestible little chunks.
A thread with a catchy title and a rant with a good beat that you can dance to would get more clicks. You’re not going to attract many new readers to the massive omnibus thread, but people who aren’t interested in the endless circle-jerk of most ongoing political discussion are still likely to read about something that catches their attention. Besides, frothing pit rants are tradition, dammit!
Yeah, the pit would be cluttered, but at least it would be LIVELY…
The thing is that people have been predicting the demise of this board and message boards in general for a long time now. They haven’t been very prophetic. You may be right, but there’s always a possibility that things turn around as it has in the past.
Places grow and decline for different reasons, but I don’t think decline on any platform is inevitable.
I haven’t gone into the numbers too much in depth. These are just preliminary thoughts. Here’s some of what I’ve found that might show where this board did an upswing.
Back in 2009, when there was a new rule for forbidding some language in the Pit, some spin-off boards were founded. At that time, there were a lot of predictions of this board’s demise. At that time, the SDMB didn’t show stats on active member count. Several members demanded that the SDMB provide those stats for comparison of growth. At some point in 2010, that was granted.
These are some numbers from The Wayback Machine on the selected numbers of the active member count at that time and since.
Date Active Members
1/6/10 not shown
10/1/10 6,299
1/1/11 7,419
3/2/11 11,617
3/20/11 11,491
4/6/11 11,719
1/2/16 4,878
1/3/16 4,881
3/15/16 5,087
1/6/18 4705
6/28/18 3493
12/22/18 3428
*I couldn’t get this to format correctly, so the active member count is in red.
There was a huge upswing in active member count in 2010 and through 2011 despite predictions of this message board’s demise. The swing looks so huge that it looks like it might be a glitch in the numbers, and it might be. There might be another explanation for that huge swing. I did a quick thread count and post count average to see if the numbers match, and they seem to match. Post counts and thread counts roughly double at that time.
I’m not sure what caused the spike, although I could make some guesses. But if the numbers are right, there has been a time of great growth amid predictions of demise.
Here’s someone’s blog in July 2011 bemoaning the decline of all message boards everywhere, but for some reason, it looks like this one was having a resurgence at that time.
As for whether one-line links like the one in the OP will help spur growth, I’m dubious. I’m usually a fan of more content than less content as a general rule. But creating one-line links creates more work for the poster which isn’t very inviting, IMO.