It’s just a note, not a warning, and I don’t have a single feather ruffled as a result. I do have a question, though.
The OP asked “what do you want to wear to your own funeral”. I answered the question.
How is that a thread shit? Isn’t “I don’t care” a legitimate answer to the question?
My intent was not to shit the thread. My intent was to state that I am indifferent with regard to my funeral outfit, which is, to me, a valid position to take.
If I am wrong, perhaps we should edit the title of the thread to include the words “If you care…”
I think that is a legitimate sentiment, one which I expressed in my own response, if less florally. I don’t think that is thread shitting either - although that’s probably directly related to the context of the thread. If it were a post about sports or a movie, it would be thread-shitting.
What you will be wearing is the topic. So clearly that is an untrue statement in that context.
It’s the same as if I were to create a Cafe Society thread to talk about what everyone’s favorite pizza toppings are, and you posted to say you don’t like pizza and so you don’t want any toppings. That’s a classic thread shit, just as your actual recent post was.
Now, I completely believe that you didn’t mean it to be, you just didn’t understand the thread. I don’t think you were trying to derail the thread or otherwise sabotage it.
That’s the issue. There is no need to edit the title of the thread. It is already strongly implied, because if you don’t care, then there is no answer to the question. Just as in my hypothetical pizza thread, I’m not asking if you like pizza, of course you do if you have a preferred topping. Or if I started a thread asking what everyone’s favorite episode of Cheers was, and someone posted that they don’t care for that show.
I think it’s just a misunderstanding on your part, and I am glad you just got a note for it, and I’m glad the note didn’t upset you, because it shouldn’t, because I don’t think it put you in a bad light. You just made a mistake like we all do now and then.
For the record, I also don’t care what I’d be wearing at my funeral; I’d probably rather be cremated anyway. So I share your sentiment. But that would not be the appropriate thread to give that opinion.
I try not to give warnings for anything that is likely to have been a misunderstanding, or was meant in a positive spirit.
Fwiw, i share your disinterest. Jews don’t have open casket funerals, and my family has recently tended to select cremation as a convenient way to dispose of the body. (Not acceptable under Jewish law, but oh so practical.) My mother’s body left her house in the nightgown she was wearing when she died, and i honestly don’t know whether it was cremated with her, or the funeral home removed it.
I suppose a useful distinction is whether any reader of the thread has something constructive to contribute.
You can be interested in other’s answers while being indifferent / having no interest in adding content of your own. Continuing the analogy, even if I despised pizza, I might enjoy reading about what others like on their pizza. And I might enjoy the inevitable train wreck about pineapple. But me chiming in with “I hate pizza!” doesn’t help any of the other readers. It mostly harshes their party.
“I’ll eat anything as long as it’s on a pizza! Yumm. Pizza!” is friendlier, but still amounts to an uninteresting unhelpful non-answer. But even that could be ruined by expressing an intense enough disinterest in response to a “what’s your favorite …?” question.
Sounds a bit to me like mmm confused “I’m interested in reading other’s opinions about this” with “I’m interested in contributing my affirmative disinterest, in fact my anti-interest.”
Back under vBulletin it was common to post “posting to subscribe” so you could follow a thread as a reader without adding substantive content to it. That’s not necessary under Discourse; just set the thread to [Watching]. Or if you’re like me, have your Discourse profile configured so anything you (read “I”) spend a few minutes reading is auto-watched.
So stop and think: am I posting just to hear the sound of my own keyboard, or am I posting to provide something others will be interested in reading? Especially stop and think if your post amounts to “I disagree with the premise of the OP, or it doesn’t apply to me.”
I’ve recently started paying a lot more attention to my own posting, and discovered way too many of the ones I start amount to me liking the sound of my own typing, or me quibbling with the OP somehow, not adding value for others. Most of those get discarded right then.
This is a false equivalence. A more apt comparison would be commenting “I prefer plain pizza” or “There are no toppings I dislike”.
I’m standing by my argument that context matters. I essentially said the same thing (i.e. - I don’t care what I will be wearing), but clearly I do care about the topic enough to specify my wishes in my will (and comment as much). And not that it matters… I didn’t get warned about thread shitting.
If by “plain pizza” you mean cheese pizza, that’s a legitimate style of pizza and a genuine answer.
“There are no toppings I dislike,” that would almost certainly be a thread shit verging on trolling in my opinion, because there is no way you literally like every possible topping. I’d say that’s actually much worse than saying you don’t like pizza. That is such a controversial take that it seems deliberately engineered to derail the topic, so that’s probably just a really awful example. “Jelly beans, raw squid, and ghost peppers, of course that’s okay; that used to be my regular order in college!”
Exactly. This does nothing but emphasize that your analogy is a false equivalence. Not caring about the clothes you are wearing when you are dead is not the same thing as not caring about the topic of funeral arrangements. But if the topic was more focused on attire than the circumstances, perhaps I too missed the spirit of the thread.
(And if you can find a pizzeria that will offer jelly beans or raw squid as a topping I will order it just to find out if I like it. Ghost peppers are conceivable, although rarely encountered, but are a no-brainer if they are on offer.)
They did. And I think MMM did it right by making it a topic for discussion. I really don’t think anyone stepped out of bounds here, but hey I’m technically the new guy.
I agree here. There’s a member who feel it’s useful to point out their confusion whenever they come across an initialism they’re unfamiliar with and that’s all they contribute to the particular thread is their confusion. I replied back once and asked them if they had anything else to contribute to the thread besides a nitpick on widely used imitialisms and I got mod noted for attacking a poster.
FWIW I liked the explanation MMMused is describing his stance.
This place would be a better place if people followed this advice. Of course, the people who don’t follow it are the people who never realize they’re the ones.
Often the initialism is one that when you Google it, it’s so far down the list that it’s a big hassle to find it. Write for your audience, not yourself.
“Jelly beans, raw squid, and ghost peppers, of course that’s okay; that used to be my regular order in college!”