I’m not sure which of you, or both, is exhibiting a lack of reading comprehension skills. Where, pray, in this thread, or anywhere for that matter, have I or anyone else said, “Unless your response is supporting the OP, don’t post”?
Someone asked for an obligatory “fuckwit”? I give you two.
from the OP (that was you, yes?)
you want only nice supportive of the OP posts, seek elsewher asshole
Oh heavens. I AM an idiot. Clearly, “If you’re not interested in someone’s post, is it too difficult for you to freakin’ ignore it? Is it necessary to fill the whole damn thing with :rolleyes: and nitpick bullshit?” is code for “only post warm happy fuzzies that agree 100% with the OP and never ever flame or argue with anyone” and necessarily negates everything I have said in this thread since.
Silly of me.
**Wring ** you really are missing it. While I do not completely agree wtih him, what LifeOnWry is bitching about is the content-less replies to pit threads. Especially when they are the first few replies. He is not bitching about people getting smacked around for stupid whines, just the ratings and similar stuff in some pit threads.
Jim
Hmm. Well, I guess you weren’t joking, although you haven’t explicitly stated you weren’t. I really do hate April Fool’s day. Somehow yanking someone’s chain could get you at least a warning on the other 364 days of the year but on April Fool’s day, it’s supposed to be funny. So I hope this isn’t an example of that.
OK, so I can only speak for myself, but I’ll explain what I’ve done and why.
In the Gentle Robot thread, I considered reporting the post and asking the mods. if they would consider moving it to MPSIMS or Cafe. I didn’t do that. Here’s why.
I had recently reported a thread which was about a woman’s experience which was just about her and was pretty tragic and I didn’t want her to get inadvertently hurt in the Pit. And the mod. was nice enough to move it. But after it was moved, it sunk down into oblivion within hours and was gone within a day. She only got like 5 responses and almost all of those were before the move. I felt bad about that. I don’t know if she would have gotten better attention in the Pit, but I also didn’t want her to get hurt. It sure does seem like some people don’t realize how these threads can turn to bite you. And oddly, I feel bad for those people. On the other hand, allowing people not to take responsibility for their own actions isn’t really helpful either.
So instead of asking that the thread be moved, I made a comment that his OP wasn’t really having enough venom to be a Pit thread in the hopes that he would check out the environment in the Pit and look at other threads to check out how things go here. Most guests, since they’re new look around anyway and I was hoping he’d do the same.
As for the cell phone OP, I think those people who commented were really doing the OP author a favor. Perhaps by people saying that the OP was too long, he would shorten his OPs in the future. I know I didn’t read it. It was too long. He probably would have gotten more responses with a shorter OP.
As for RO threads, you can certainly start another thread about why people do what, but there seems to be plenty of discussion on that. I’m following Giraffe’s suggestion in regards to RO threads. As to the people who say, let them do what they want, I say that we don’t let people post porn links. And I would object if they did. And since my only way of objecting about this is within the thread, I’m taking that opportunity.
Is this a joke? I’m not feeling the humor.
On preview: One more of your posts. I now have no idea about what you’re talking about now, but I think I’ll post this anyway.
FYI, if anyone wants to bitch about other pit threads without stinking them up with contentless shit, I made a place to do it, although currently the mods are giving me a big frowny face :eek:
no, I’m not missing the point.
if you’re only looking for "gosh you’re right! posts, you’re in the wrong fucking place. post rating the lameness of the OP are also saying 'this is lame, go elsewhere, especially if you’re only looking for me too posts.
You’re right. I’m really missing her point. What’s a content-less reply? Even the ratings give an idea what someone thinks of the OP. And generally **Oakminster **even goes on to explain why he gave it. And his scores are not completely random.
As for people saying it’s too long, that’s constructive criticism. How does one distinguish posts that are content-less?
“This post is too long, so I didn’t read it” doesn’t count as constructive criticism. In the case of the cell phone thread to which I linked, a good example of constructive criticism would be something more along the lines of “Man, you are totally overreacting to the situation. You should have done a little research ahead of time, maybe gotten some comparison quotes, and found a better phone.” (Note for the comprehension-impaired - this response would be (whaddaya know) a response that doesn’t support the OP.) Or, say one does agree with the OP - how about, “Yeah, I feel your pain, cell companies have us by the short hairs. Maybe you should invest in a pager instead.”
AFTER posting something that has ANYTHING to do with the actual TOPIC, one could add, “your OP is awfully long and hard to read” or “I think this is better suited for MPSIMS, you should talk to a mod about moving it.”
For an example of a contentless post, see any of the responses in that thread that never MENTION the actual content of the OP, and just say things along the lines of “I give this rant a 3/10, because you forgot to say fuckwit.”
(And as long as I’m already in here, What Exit?, I’m female.)
OR! EVEN!
Say you just generally hate the person who started the thread, for whatever reason, and you just can’t let any of their posts goes by without commenting. You could then say, “You know what? You’re a goddamned asshole who thinks the whole fucking world revolves around you. I hope your stupid cell phone burns a hole in your jeans and that it gets short-circuited and will only ever allow you to make calls to Singapore and will turn every text message you send into Dutch. You DESERVE bad cell phone service because you didn’t object to someone killing puppies. AND your rant is weak!”
Yanno, at least expend a little effort and/or creativity.
In order to get that far, you have to actually read it. Since I would think not that many people did that, it just got few responses. Is lack of response a better help than a response telling the person how they could get a better result in the future?
In this particular case, the OP was not only long, it was about a pretty dry subject.
But that wouldn’t happen. Lack of “fuckwit” is only a 1/10 deduction. The scoring is more descriptive than that in most cases or is self-explanatory.
707 reads as of this minute. And yeah, when a thread gets zip in response, it sinks off the front page. Happens enough, the poster gets a clue.
Holy crap. Let me amend my error: fuckwit.
So now you’re advocating pure ad hom. as long as it’s creative?
And if the OP is really poor, the responders are supposed to put more effort into their response than the actual OP? And what do you do if you don’t even know the person?
And some of those came from your linking to it.
They might get a faster clue if people told them why.
Let me assure you that the reason that the OP in this thread was given a 2/10 was not the lack of a fuckwit.
No, I’m not advocating ad hominem attacks. I just don’t see how contentless posts are somehow “better” than ad hominem attacks. Besides which, had this been an actual ad hominem attack, a moderator would have stepped in pretty swiftly.
As for your second question, let me see if I can think of anything… Hmmm… well. Um… OH! I know! There’s always “just ignore the post and go along on your merry way rather than expend any effort at all.”
So really, is this an April Fool’s joke?
This post is off the rails.
No. It’s really not a joke. And I can’t figure out why you think it is, but whatever.
“Off the rails”?? :dubious:
See, what you’re not getting is that some posts simply don’t qualify for anything more than a brief rating. Mostly, it’s because they suck. Rarely, there will be a gem that merits a high rating. Anything 7/10 or higher should be considered a compliment.
Then I apologize for the tone in my posts in this thread, but not necessarily the content.
Posting with the thought that someone might be pulling a joke is disconcerting enough, but thinking they might actually get away with it made me more hostile than was required.
And what YOU’RE not getting is that some posts don’t qualify for commentary at all. If you have nothing but a rating to post, why bother posting at all? To continue to add responses to a post keeps it coming back up to the top of the page, where you weren’t interested in it in the first place.
I just honestly don’t understand this need to respond to things that don’t interest you. It comes across as pointless post-padding.