I saw a SDMB’ers posting pattern referred to in The Pit as a “drive-by.” He was alleged to primarily start new threads and almost never return to them.
Is it considered bad form to reply to another’s thread in a non-controversial or non-confrontational manner and then never return to that thread to see if anyone quotes you or dogs you out for saying something stupid?
Whenever I start a thread I will follow it to the death, but if I just reply to someone else’s thread I rarely return to that thread. Is that all bad? The main reason I never return is it seems that I am almost never quoted within anyone else’s posts.
Starting threads and leaving them is not bad in itself, however its not a good idea either. If your going to start a thread you should be participating in it. But the poster in question cough cough has done it, a lot, in a short period of time. Thats the problem. Posting a reply and not returning IMO isn’t so bad, but usually you should check back anyway just to incase you got anything wrong in your post (especially in GQ threads) or just to see where the topic is going.
**It could at least be quite rude, but as Wearia says, it depends on where you do it; if your post consists of a controversial statement in a GD thread, people are going to want to ask you questions and possibly challenge you on it; to post and never return in this case would be bad form.
Likewise it’s bad form to post a very brief comment that implies a controversial opinion, but not give enough detail; something like “Atheists shouldn’t be allowed to own guns.” (perhaps in a thread about objective morality) - then never return to explain the non-sequitur.
Even worse would be to post a controversial viewpoint in a debate and end it with “That’s my opinion and I don’t care if you disagree, I won’t be coming back to read what you have to say” - this wouldn’t be debating, it would be trolling (or possibly driveby witnessing).
“if I just reply to someone else’s thread I rarely return to that thread. Is that all bad?”
Nope. Because sometimes you just can’t… Perhaps the board is so slow that you can’t load the topic again in a reasonable time frame, Or like perhaps I wanted to reply, but when I hit submit, I wait & wait & wait…then it wont submit. So I have to reload the page to see if it did submit & if not then submit again & wait & wait. Sometimes I waited 5 minutes to post & just gave up when it won’t post.
Othertimes you might not be able to wait around too long. Maybe the baby needs attention for example? Or you don’t want to post to the topic because someone already said what you want to say, so why repeat it? Or people are getting rude & you don’t want that to continue by posting & bringing the topic to the top of the forum.
So there are alot of reasons people may not be posting back.
I noticed that I’m often the last person to post to a lot of topics though
I think it’s fairly reasonable to make a point you feel pertinent to the discussion in a thread in which you’re only casually interested, and then only check it if you happen to have time, allowing days to go by if necessary.
The right way to schedule post-season collegiate football bowl games? You guys argue it out; I’ll be over here, discussing constitutional law or theology. Let me know when (if) you reach agreement. Whether Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s plotlines have declined in quality? I decline to be a Stoker to that fire.
But I might wander in to suggest that perhaps there might be a greater purpose to university-level education than intercollegiate athletics, or that the tendency to transmogrify satire into something having a life of its own dates back years (Anybody besides me remember when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was released as a self-parody of Marvel comics superheroes?)
And I may not check back to see what my comments have engendered (though Beeblebrox may call me out in the Pit to remind me, as he did in the first instance! ;))
Well, IMHO, it could be indicative of trolling or jerk-dom, to start a bunch of controversial topics and then never visit them again. It could also be indicative of someone who thinks they have the right answer, to post an answer to a question and then not go back (this happens to me sometimes in GQ, for instance.) And it could be a sign of someone that’s just busy or has nothing more something to say on a topic.
So, I don’t think it’s inherently bad manners per se. But it could be bad manners, taken in conjunction with other behaviours.
Put simply, a “drive by” is a snide one or two line post that shows no respect for the subject at hand. A drive by is a post that says, in it’s entirety, “All college football players are roid-mongers” in a thread discussing how to fix the BCS system.* Or someone who feels superior by posting a “you idiots should be watching reading!” in a thread about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
In short, it’s not a one liner joke. It’s a one liner insult to those discussing whatever the topic is.
[sub]*Poly didn’t do that. It was, however, still a drive by. And pretty damn uncharacteristic of him. He forgets, though. I didn’t call him out. Somebody else did. I just called him on that[/sub]
