I may lurk a lot more than I post, but I’ve been here quite a while. Comments in the OP are like the perennial comments about Saturday Night Live - “it’s not funny anymore, I’ve heard they are going to cancel it”. Meanwhile it’s been on for 45 years!
People move in waves through the board. Some crappy prolific posters, some wise but frugal with their posts 
.
Gah! I got sucked into HD’s buffoonery in the Matt Shea thread. :smack:
I’m done with that thread. I also promise not to get sucked in again in the future.
Too bad: This is a topic I am deeply interested in, both the subject matter, and it is relevant because I live in this area.
IMO If you want a “safe and welcoming board” you shouldn’t use a word that mocks the developmentally challenged.
On the other hand, if you really wanted to improve the SDMB, you would simply leave.
Oh please. Even words like idiot, moron, dumb, stupid, etc. can be used to mock the so-called developmentally challenged. What I would like to know is where one can find the latest version of The Newspeak Dictionary.
And if you don’t like what I have to say then demonstrate some apparently in short supply around here adult agency and use the ignore feature.
Or The Simpsons, TV’s longest running prime time scripted series, which has been on for 30 years.
You can just look it up in a Oldspeak dictionary. It’ll tell you the same thing.
Nitpick: “retard” and “retarded” are not the same word, and I’m not certain that the latter is as inherently offensive as the former. “Retard” (noun) is a slang-only abbreviation (a bad sign) used to coarsely delineate a group of people (a worse sign) with a label entirely defined by a percieved-as-negative characteristic (the final nail). It’s a term sharing properties with spic, jap, honky, and even nigger. “Retarded”, on the other hand, is the unaltered form of an originally benign term that has only taken on negative shades because its use to mean “stupid” implies (in a rather backwards, reflected way) that lower intelligence is the defining trait of a mentally retarded person, rather than just an often-present part.
The first sounds worse to me.
You know what the worst thing is? This place has become boring. I don’t come around nearly as much and post but seldom this last year or so. Same people riding the same hobbyhorses, day in and day out. It’s a shame, too. But, hey, if the board culture desired by the majority, or at least the loudest crusaders, is some kind of neo-Puritan safe space where the main activity is showing off to each other just how woke we are…have at it. This place needs me no more than I need it.
Whups.
I was about to ask what topics you would consider interesting that were present in the past but which you now find lacking, but then I got to the second-to-last sentence, and realized that the problem is that we’re just not racist and sexist enough for your tastes.
This has led me to briefly wonder what makes non-racist, non-sexist discussions boring. Is the the lack of ‘spice’? Is it the illicit thrill of saying shitty things and getting away with it what social conservatives (let’s call them) find interesting, tio the degree that conversations that don’t involve them being shits are dull to them for the lack of it?
Or is it that when there are threads that aren’t full of assholes being assholes, the social conservatives (let’s call them) feel compelled to spend all their time trying to inject back the homey familiarity they prefer, and that even they find the endless repeat of that to be tedious and uninteresting?
Or… what? What other reasons could there be for a non-racist, non-sexist board to be inherently boring, sheerly and only due to the fact that the people present don’t all suck? What?
No, it won’t do any good, and yes I do think it’s a bad thing, mostly because your tactic doesn’t work in any way to promote reasoned discussion. Every thread where a troll dumps his load and people spend their time and energy responding to that means that thread has now been taken over by what the troll wants to talk about instead of what the thread was actually about. The thread in question in the OP is an excellent case in point.
Do you suppose the troll thinks he’s won something if his post/pile of poop goes by unremarked? I guarantee you that’s not what happens, and on those few occasions here when such a non-reaction has happened, either the troll comes back again to stir the shit (this is where everyone else’s persistence in ignoring him really pays off) or he finds more receptive waters for his activities.
Being in Coventry is a lot worse for a troublemaker than being in the middle of the trouble he is so anxious to create.
It isn’t easy sometimes to find the right line, some of our best trolls are adept at phrasing things to sound almost reasonable and deserving of a reasoned response, or of seeming genuinely concerned about something and slipping in the shiv when you aren’t looking. Diligence pays.
I don’t usually sympathize much with these kinds of OPs myself, stay, go, I don’t care that much. But I think it’s true that the quality of discussion has gone downhill here because some of the trolls are getting cagier, and we’re not keeping up.
On the contrary, that’s a standard method such people use to take over forums. They drive everyone else out, leaving themselves in control. Everyone else leaving is precisely what they want.
Where did you find all that straw, man? People are just asking that “don’t be a jerk” be the motto in all the fora except the Pit, and if you find that too limiting then you’re right, we don’t need you. The board rule requires us to all be eighteen or older with the expectation that we behave like adults, not twelve year olds who just discovered their first BBS. We shouldn’t need to be babysat, but some do.
Then there are the trolls like WF and HD. They should simply be banned. Semi-trolls like Shodan and octopus can be ignored, but that doesn’t hide them from the newbies. Ignoring for the rest of us can emphasize just how much some people post (asahi), and number of posts does not correlate with their quality. That snippets of the ignored’s posts are quoted is handy because whole pages of bullshit can be, if the quoter isn’t an idiot, distilled down to a few words. Those who haven’t ignored these jerks have no idea how much scrolling time is saved.
No, they don’t. The rules allow thirteen year olds to join, although parents are encouraged to determine whether the Dope is a suitable place for them.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21288689&postcount=1
For what it’s worth, we’ve had numerous polls in IMHO over the years, and they have consistently shown a 70-90% liberal majority. Not that liberal/conservative and non-sexist/sexist are necessarily correlated, but the idea that reactionaries are going to overtake and dominate the SDMB is something that is not going to happen.
Thanks, cochrane. Now if some people would stop pretending they were thirteen, though it would require they joined before birth.
Why are octopus’s posts like nails on a chalkboard? I can’t put my finger on it but every post is amazingly annoying.
Perhaps, but what they will do is poison the atmosphere and make the Dope seem unwelcoming for the reality-based newbies. However, I was almost a Republican until 1980, so I have nothing against a lot of conservative thinking. Who I dislike are reactionaries like the unlamented Starving Artist and psycho prophets of Libertarianism like WF. Conservatives bring something to the conversation and can be reasoned with. Reactionaries and prophets don’t and cannot.
Now, before my post count on this page starts making me look like a kook, I’m going to bed.
The three right of center posters make this a scary place for newbies? Lol.
Jesus Christ on a fucking pogo stick. You’ve huffed away more times in the past year than octopus has cried about people using the words that got his mouth washed out with soap and Shodan blatantly lied than ran away when corrected on it combined.
I don’t care whether you stay or go, but make up your mind, for fuck’s sake.
You mispelled hateful, lying whingers.