It’s been about a month since the powers that be, in an unprecedented move, allowed some refugees from another board to colonize a thread in Cafe Society where they can snark on the various shopping channels on TV. This was very kind of TPTB, but what has there been for the board in general? They are keeping to themselves and not venturing, that I’ve noticed, out of their ghetto. While IRL I don’t expect the first generation to be particularly outgoing, on this messageboard there are minimal linguistic difficulties to prevent assimilation so we shouldn’t have to wait for their children to become proper Dopers.
In the past the mods have objected to members with extremely limited posting histories. Okay, they were all jerks, too, and this crowd seems nice, but I am not sure that this precedent will be good for the board in the long run. What’s next, a thread for RVers snarking about Jellystone Parks?
We managed to gain a whole new batch of regular posters with just a single thread. I would say it was a resounding success.
Don’t like it? Don’t read it. Simple as that. There are entire forums that I don’t go into, but I don’t object at all to their presence here.
I see that some of our regular dopers have posted in their snark thread, and I see that some of them have posted outside of their thread as well. It’s not as completely segregated as the OP states.
I’m not seeing a problem here. And if a bunch of RVers snarking about Jellystone increases the number of regular posters here, let’s welcome them on board as well.
For the most part the only ones that needed action taken against them were posters that would open thread after thread on the same subject. I don’t see any reason why someone sticking predominantly to a single thread would be a problem to anyone.
Was it an experiment? Did it have a goal? Or was it just some people chatting about stuff that interests them, like literally every other word posted on this site?
Some people chatting about things that interest them.
So? When did we institute a requirement for cross-posting?
Any guesses as to which of these two factors was more important?
I have had several of the new posters tell me how interesting they find this board, so I think you’ll see more posts from some of them in the future. Don’t we normally want new members/guests to hang back a little, to get the lay of the land?
It would have been worse if all those new members came here, and immediately started creating several new threads, and began posting all over every forum. Give them time to see how things work here.
Agreed. And doesn’t the SDMB greasemonkey script allow one to permanently hide a thread? I could imagine a problem if refugees from 30 different boards all opened up their own recurring thread but even then it’s not hard to ignore it.
OTOH, if we begin to get an influx of evangelical apostles from such places as, say, stormfront or similar, we might be bothered. But a bunch of cute fuzzy shopping channel snarker? Where’s the problem there? Hey, even I could be friends with anyone who owns and is owned by Labradors.
