Yeah, it was hard to stick around for. Just on its own, people defending bigotry tends to make my blood boil. Every single comment I made in that thread I was holding back.
I was naively hoping that I could somehow break through the ignorance, and that actually Pitting them would destroy that chance. I’ve since given up on that with the particular posters involved.
Y’know, you SAY that and right now you might even mean it but trust me, you sink into the depths of that one and buoyant gorge will be the least of your maladies. Yikes.
What we used to get were bare links with no context at all, so I see it as an improvement. At least we now usually get a clue what the link is. People didn’t need much of an incentive in the past to do that stuff; laziness is a damn good incentive on its own most of the time.
'80s pop star?
Glad I wasn’t the only one…
No wonder I had missed it – I have that thread on “mute” because I was so sick of seeing it constantly popping up in the Recent Posts list.
But BigT had mentioned monstro starting a thread in ATMB and I thought that’s what this was about. I had not seen that one either, but looked for it out of curiosity. In any case, it’s much shorter and also provides Dope Drama™. monstro didn’t actually start the thread, but she appears in post #16 and pretty soon drama ensues. This is the one where she threatens to leave the board.
I had a link to the thread in the previous post but it links back to here and since this isn’t specifically about DrDeth I thought it was unfair. Look for “Transgender topics” started by Boudicca90 on Nov 29 2020.
Oh, sorry I linked to the topic. I hadn’t thought of that.
Meh, it’s a closed thread. I don’t think too many people will see it. And, particularly, I doubt DrDeth will see it and think he’s being insulted in a thread that (IIRC) he didn’t participate in.
(Sorry, but that thread pissed me off so much that there’s no way I’m going back to check and see if DrDeth ever posted in it).
I disagree that the functionality ever served any valuable purpose here. Have never been a fan of it, and DD shows exactly why it’s a bad idea.
Right, but when you offer a bare link, you understand that if you want it to be taken seriously, you need to relate it to your point and warm it up a bit. People usually did that. The slick preview encourages behavior of “I found a link, my work is done here.” People now usually do that, and some like DD abuse it egregiously.
This is a hijack, but has anyone ever heard the judgment “I think they make some good points”, without the “points” being anything but terrible?
Eh, I’ve used it but not without immediately distinguishing what those specific good points are and why they do not mitigate the much larger quantity of bad points.
But just saying “I think they make some good points” without explanation does usually mean “I want to signal agreement with some truly terrible stuff while trying to appear reasonable and evenhanded”.
You think it’s a bad idea to automatically generate back links to another discussion that references a post or thread? That it “serves no valuable purpose”? I strongly disagree. It serves the purpose of connecting related discussions, which supports the fundamental purpose of what a discussion board is about.
Back on vBulletin, I used external links in two ways. If it was a cite for something that I was writing, I would usually embed the link right in my text. You can do that here, too. If it was a cite for a quotation I was providing, I would post the URL at the bottom of the quotation. Guess what? You can do that here, too. The URL is translated into a site title if possible, but within a quote, it doesn’t expand into a one-box.
The one-box simply provides a third alternative. Sometimes, there’s enough information in the box that it saves me having to provide a quote, because it’s there automatically, in an attractive format. Subject to abuse? Sure, but bad posters are going to make bad posts regardless of what tools are or are not available to them. Depriving the rest of the community of valuable tools for fear that bad posters are going to be making bad posts accomplishes nothing and is counterproductive.
Both of these features are part of the thoughtful design of Discourse that makes it a more modern platform than VB. What you’re essentially saying is that the designers of Discourse are idiots who created a bunch of bad features. I don’t agree. Or maybe you’re saying that this particular community has so many bad posters that we should be allowed only the most primitive message board functions. I don’t agree with that either.
(bolding mine)
I don’t know about that, there were a lot of bad links previously. Some people gave context, some people didn’t. I frequently had no idea what would be at the end of a link.
This is a new tool that some people use poorly, but you might be looking at the before times with a rosy view.
Nope, I definitely did not say anything about linking to a post or thread. I was speaking about external websites.
Sure buddy.
I’m looking at jackasses like DrDeth who use 2 links that fill up 2 pages of text, do not qualify it at all, and dust their hands thinking “I’ve done my part; that about covers it.”
And the word “use” might be a bit much here. The software does it automatically. Based on what I’ve seen, I doubt most people are consciously deciding to do it, and likewise I doubt that most people are looking at the transcluded blurb to check its relevance to the post.
Sorry, yes, I see now that you were. Your post was right after a couple of comments concerning the back links that are auto-generated to this thread.
But on the matter of the Discourse one-box, my comments stand. It’s a really useful feature, and it doesn’t preclude other ways of linking if one prefers, as I pointed out. If some assholes abuse it, then we should deal with the assholes, not remove a useful feature. You don’t need a fancy tool to engage in bad-faith posting, and you can’t turn morons into good posters with technology.
Better phrasing: “I continue to hold an opinion.” Sure, you go right ahead, but don’t act like it’s authoritative or incontrovertible. I happen to find it incorrect.
It’s not a very useful feature, at best marginal in some cases. And we both know that nobody is ever, ever, ever going to deal with the assholes for misusing it.
Things were better when people had to create their own qualifications for cites if they didn’t want a bare-ass link. It’s ungood that the software does an important part of authoring for substandard authors.
Better phrasing: “In my opinion, it’s not a very useful feature”. Sure, you go right ahead, but don’t act like it’s authoritative or incontrovertible. I happen to find it very useful.
I might have a different opinion if there were no alternative, but the old ways of linking are still there, and I use them too, when appropriate.
I also believe – though I’m not sure – that the one-box is the same feature that enables inline images, which I also find quite useful. Somehow the SDMB has arrived, kicking and screaming, in the 21st century.
True and it’s not like I’m not going to just scroll right past DD’s post anyway. I’ve not noticed it egregiously abused by anyone other than DD.
Several times, when I’ve put in a link and the preview shows it taking up too much real estate, I go back and embed the link in a phrase or make sure it’s not on its own line (so the oversized onebox doesn’t generate).