Posting to a thread to say that you don't want to post to the thread

[aldiboronti]

To be fair, the examples given in the OP give a little more information that just “I don’t want to post in this thread”.

The first says there’s not enough room for what he/she has to say, and the second that his/her secrets are too secret. Granted, that’s not a lot of extra info, but we are talking MPSIMS here.

Having said that, I have seen posts which fit the OP’s criteria, offering nothing but a bare “I’m not going to comment on this”, and that is annoying.

[FordPrefect]

@neutron star

I guess the Pit tradition of rewording a joke that’s already been made twice in the space of four posts in the same thread is a subject for another rant.

Sure, but you risk a meta-rewording of a meta-joke and that would just be silly.

[neutron_star]

@Anaamika

It’s MPSIMS.

Well, there’s MPSIMS, and then there’s MPSINATS (Mundane Pointless Stuff I’m Not About To Share). It’s a given that every person on this board has some of the latter, so there’s really no reason to make a post to that effect.

@scout1222

This is about the only explanation that I can find that might have merit. Sort of a “hey, you know this is a pretty taboo topic - some people might have trouble sharing”.

That should be obvious to anyone who’s smart enough to find the power button on his computer, let alone make his way to the SDMB. The potential consequences of revealing personal information online have been made abundantly clear by the mods. Hell, I think it’s even in a sticky somewhere.

If someone had just poked his head into the thread to remind everyone of that fact, there would be no problem, but that’s not at all what the quoted posters did. If they had, the sentence you put in quotation marks not only have sufficed, but also would have been clearer in its meaning.

@hajario

The board gets bogged down enough as it is without that crap.

Good point. Every time a post gets added to the already massive database, searches take a little bit longer, and the board’s performance suffers a little bit more as a result. MPSIMS has more posts in it than any other forum on the SDMB.

[Excalibre]

@Anaamika

It’s MPSIMS. Who cares? If they were doing this in GD:

I’d share my views on nuclear disarmament but they’re much too complicated.

Or CS: Homer Simpson is…nah, never mind.

Or even the Pit!: I’d say what i really feel about the OP, but I don’t feel like it.

Then I’d be with you. And I am with you in all those cases. But I give MPSIMS a lot more leeway.

Anaamika makes a good point. MPSIMS tends to involve quite a few people talking for the sheer pleasure of feeling the wind in their teeth. On the other hand, the forum might be tolerable for those of us who hadn’t experienced lobotomies if people in MPSIMS were encouraged not to simply post anything that leaked out of their heads but stop to think if it could possibly, under any circumstances whatsoever, be at all interesting or relevant to anyone else.