I’ve seen references to this sort of thing multiple times by multiple persons. I don’t want to get into linking, because I don’t think that this about just one person, and I don’t want to single anybody out.
IMHO, there is an adequately wide variety of opinion expressed here. If you look you’ll find some who’ll agree with you one most any topic that you care to pick.
I just really want to know where this sort of idea comes from. i mean are the variety of opinions expressed here on the SDMB really that homogenous that there can be said to be a or the way that people arouind here think?
In the spirit of your question, I hope, I have noticed a wide range of opinions and positions. Enough so that I can’t say there’s an “SDMB view” on anything.
The tendency I have been amazed by is that of providing references (cites/quotes/etc.) for opinions and beliefs. That’s vastly superior (IMO) to just stating things and leaving it at that.
There does appear to be a tendency for some to expand on their beliefs by reiteration and double talk, ad hominem attacks, belittling, and the sort of thing that really doesn’t advance the point(s) being made and debated. I trust those posters are recognized for their fallacies and are rated accordingly.
But I also observe a large number of posters who are not intimidated by the “he who speaks loudest and longest wins” concept. That is refreshing and encouraging.
The presence of moderators keeps things in the middle of a very wide road, in my view.
I would agree that this is a fairly homogenous group as far as thinking goes. I mean, I’m always amazed at how elucidator and Reeder think pretty much the same as december or Taxguy. And I’ve never heard Olentzero or Shodan disagree on much.
Seriously, if you are being roundly condemned by a vast majority of posters here on the Dope, chances are you’re just a jerk.
There does seem to be an SDMB homogenous multi-nucleated protoplasmic reflexive response to Jack Chick and Fred Phelps.
Not that that’s a bad thing.
Fervently defend them, and the odds are that virtually everyone will laugh at you, call you bad names and correct your spelling.
I believe there is a pervasive “gentlemen’s agreement”, if that term is still used, regarding common courtesy, an the manner in which people address each other on the boards outside the pit.
The post you semi-quoted was of the “I didn’t do nuthin, I didn’t do NUTHIN! How come everybody’s so mad?” type made by someone who had gone off to lick his wounds. I think he came from another forum, where instigating fights is considered “clever debate.” You know the one.
There are plenty of different, wide-ranging subjects on the SDMB. I just happen to stay out of those I am unable to comment on, or if someone got there first. Or, if it just isn’t up my alley. The joys of taking a dump, for example, went without even a viewing, much less a response.
People whose opinions are based on not much more than conjecture and “because I think so” tend not to have the sort of schooling that also includes proper grammar/spelling etc. So among other things, in a place where one’s ability to properly communicate comes into play, that’s going to get made an example of, so to speak.
Actually, one of the things that I see on this board is that there is an enormous social pressure to conform. This conformity is seen in almost all posters other than our newest members. The regular posters here (and not the moderators) enforce this conformity agressively, and sometimes brutally.
Actually, I think that this is a good thing.
The social pressure here is to express oneself clearly, rationally and with appropriate back-up. To get along here, one must use logical statements and argument, written with more-or-less proper grammar, with proper capitalization and paragraph structure. Although some spelling and grammar errors are tolerated, total abandonment of proper English is disdained.
This social pressure is what makes the SDMB a great place. Admittedly, it sometimes gets out of hand, but I think all rational, well-supported arguments are given a chance here.
I think that the people who complain “that most of the posters to this board do they call you bad names and laugh at you and correct your spelling,” don’t understand the high level of debate here, and the requirement that for one’s ideas to compete in the marketplace here, they must be appropriately packaged.
I guess I’d disagree with some of you here in that I do think there’s a certain “Straight Dope bias”, even though you’ll find dopers with all sorts of opinions, of course. And of course, all these are my observations, and I may be wrong.
First, religiously and philosophically, it seems there’s a strong strain of both atheism/agnosticism on the board, and religion, when it exists, tends to be of the “God loves everyone” variety. Fundamentalist Christians, for example, tend to get challenged a lot on the board, a lot more so than liberal Christians.
The board has a pretty general libertarian streak when it comes to social issues, with the attitude seeming to be, “It’s ok as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone”. So, a poster saying that drugs, esp. a drug like marijuana, should be legalized, is likely to face less disagreement than a poster saying that drugs should be kept illegal. Likewise, (well, before the supreme court case), someone saying that sodomy laws should be repealed is likely to face less disagreement than someone saying that we should keep sodomy laws.
I also don’t think you’re as likely here to find somebody who supported the war in Iraq or who supports Bush in general as in RL.
Like I said, these are just my observations, and it’s quite possible I’m wrong.
No, I was just thinking the same thing, Captain. But even if you hold views that don’t mesh with those, you are unlikely to be Pitted or personally attacked unless you are consistently a jerk.
Seriously, if you are being roundly condemned by a vast majority of posters here on the Dope, chances are you’re just a jerk.
Agreed. Rarely do I see a poster being condemned for anything other than being a jerk. What I do see is disdain for the unreasoned remark. Don’t dare present a position in GD that you can’t back with fact. I rarely post in that forum because I lack the knowledge of topics being debated. It is somewhat frustrating, I confess. I have strong “feelings” about many of the issues and subjects being debated. With some posters, the desire to be a participant and get their point of view out there is significantly greater than their ability to present facts, cites, and arguments that are respected by the pros. So when the uninformed but well-meaning get busy with the keyboard, it gets called for what it is. This has happened to me a couple of times. You are lucky if you get ignored or dismissed. Those that persist… well they end up here in the pit bitchin cuz everybody is impatient with them.
I think that’s a very valid point. For example, I’ve noticed that in GD, many people frequently find themselves belittled or condescended to. It could be because the individual making a statement has not provided enough evidence to sufficiently back up their opinion, and is therefore making an ass of themselves. But on other occaisions, it appears that once two parties have discovered that they are not going to be able to convince the other of the validity of their opinion, they resort to outright name-calling and condescension instead just of agreeing to disagree. In fact, I’ve noticed that in some posts in GD, people come down harder on each other than they do in the BBQ pit. But that’s usually on those GD posts which are based primarily on opinion, i.e., religion, instead of factual debates.
I think there’s a pretty wide range of opinion expressed on the board. I also think it doesn’t seem that way sometimes for at least a couple of reasons -
For whatever reason, some threads turn into pile-ons, which seems to convey an Us Against Them dynamic.
Sometimes it seems that people are more interested in arguing than they are in understanding a diverging viewpoint. This is when the old chestnut about eradicating ignorance often gets trotted out.
Sure, it’s nice to lessen ignorance, but sometimes it appears that it’s undertaken with the attitude of “I’m going to eradicate the fuck out of your ignorance in the most verbally gory way, and I’ll rest comfy in the knowledge that I’m ignorance free all the while.” We’re all ignorant to some extent. It’s easier to deal with that ignorance when the person doing the educating respectfully teaches rather than berates and needles.
While I don’t think that a clique mentality is that prevalent here, I also don’t think it’s entirely absent. I think that’s why pile-ons as referenced in 1) sometimes occur.
What Dopers respect is not a homogenized viewpoint but an ability to reason logically and defend one’s POV. For a great many of us, there is a consistency in a humanist stance towards proper treatment of others, a tendency to moderate libertarianism of the live-and-let-live-and-make-sure-the-government-does-too variety, and a general espousal of mildly liberal stances on issues. But these are not demanded of Dopers as a condition of being an accepted member of the community; rather, they seem to be positions that people with the abovementioned abilities tend to move towards.
Thinking of two longtime members whose political positions I generally disagree with, December and Scylla, I find that I have much more respect for the latter than for the former. And this is not based on their differing stances, but rather on the question of how they present their particular views. Scylla tends to found his positions on fact, on as objective journalism as he can find, and to make his assertions clear and predicated strongly on what he asserts in support of them. It’s sometimes quite a task to refute what he has to say when I disagree. December, on the other hand, tends to frame his OP’s as an inquiry as to whether Bill Clinton has quit beating Hilary yet, and to document his views with the opinions of polemic columnists and blog-writers rather than factual evidence. This is not to say that December cannot make a valid case nor that Scylla never pulls a wild-hare bit of illogic, but it describes my perception of trends in their different writing styles.
There’s also a strong willingness on the part of most Dopers to examine the other perspective, to see if perhaps what they thought they knew may not be valid in the light of someone’s differing stance. And a willingness to, not compromise, but find a perspective that accommodates both viewpoints, and to learn from each other in the process.
I don’t think I think the way most posters here do. I’m a fiscally conservative, socially moderate, practicing Christian with little patience for either intolerance or excess “tolerance” (of the “let’s never ever judge anything, and keep our minds so open our brains fall out” variety).
But one of the things that might lead a person to believe this is a pretty homogeneous bunch is that those of us who are in the minority on issues such as politics and religion tend to become a silent minority simply becuase we get sick of defending ourselves all the time. I’ve largely given up on discussing my faith here. I find myself answering the same questions repeatedly, and I find that there will always be posters (usually of the first-year-in-university, I’ve-discovered-the-truth variety) who can’t be civil about it. It’s exhausting, and it pisses me off, which frankly doesn’t make me a better Christian here or IRL. Same with politics. Some posters will discuss the evils of GWB, Republicanism, or America (or all of the above) from now 'til the end of time, apparently without ever getting bored with it. Well, I get bored with it, so now I mostly leave them to it.
As far as the spelling and name-calling is concerned – yeah, there’s some of that if other posters are taking you to task. But I don’t think you can assume that it’s never justified. Spelling is taken by many to reflect intellect, and though we could have a long discussion on whether that’s valid, surely you’d agree that a person who consistently litters his or her post with misspellings does not come across as a genius. And when people have decided to whale on you a while, they’ll often use spelling and grammar errors as just one more thing to whack you with. And name-calling – While I agree that it’s over-done and often indefensible, I also think that sometimes an idiotic argument, or an idiot, deserves to be called just that.
My only warning would be to guard against the “clique” mentality – that is, the belief that if a bunch of “older” posters are kicking you around, it’s because you’re “not in the clique.” Please keep in mind that if numerous people are all taking issue with what you have said or how you have said it, the most likely explanation is not that they’re all out to get you, but that you’ve said something stupid or said it inappropriately.
In practical terms it’s pretty much what both Billdo and Captain Amazing said. If you are offering a strong opinion or argument here there is considerable pressure to make your case in something approaching a coherent and highly rational fashion. The SDMB board population is self selecting to some degree toward those who are fond of accumulating and distributing knowledge and agressively questioning the coherency and validity of other people’s (and their own in many cases) opinions and notions about practically anything.
In may cases this attitude can come off as overly aggressive and cruel if someone has a faith based perspective or opinion they are promoting as these are particularly hard to defend without referencing the faith itself as a valid reference point. Doing this opens the gates to a lot of rhetorical hand waving and finger pointing from the stricter empiricists and ontological horseplay soon turns to tears.
Some people have a hard time separating their self from the issue they’re arguing about. I try to avoid longwinded debates about GWB and the state of world affairs, though I enjoy reading them. Let’s just say that december and I are firmly psoitioned quite a long way, away from each other. I can read what he’s writing and think ‘Oh you stupid fool, why can’t you just see it this way?’. However, even if I said so in a thread, I doubt that december would take personal offense.
Some would. An attack on their position is viewed as an attack on the self and in the cases where it becomes a train wreck, that person is bound to feel that the ‘secret cabal hive mind of SDMB’ has issued an order to flame that person to oblivion. Becuae, it’s always easier to blame someone else. A lot easier than taking a good look at yourself and try to judge how others perceive you.
So arguments get more and more ad hominem, with accusations of the ‘clique’ and ‘censorship’ and ‘childish behaviour’ and ‘i don’t like using caps!!!’
