My least favorite are imdb (for reasons addressed) and amazon.com’s reviews. On the latter it’s the number of people who’ll give lengthy reviews, usually bashing but sometimes praising, a book they’ve clearly never read. IMDB has 18 “gay or not gay?” threads for every celebrity from Cheetah to “third Nazi soldier from the left in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN final scene” and each with 70 responses that are variants of one of the following three:
1- What differences does it make? (obviously none, but people are interested so get off your sidesaddled high horse)
2- No way, they’re too cute!
3- “I windt to school with them/have slept with them/no their sister and no their knot” from people who are clearly trying to sound believable. For movie discussion- well, if you say you liked a movie you might get 30 “me 2” or “didn’t see it- was he gay?” posts for every 1 post that might seem remotely intelligent.
I wonder what the longest comment thread is on YouTube. This clipof an anti-Mormon propaganda cartoon has 142,830 comments as of this writing and that’s the longest I’ve found, but I’m sure it’s probably nowhere near the top. (The more famous or infamous YouTubes tend to have been cloned so many times that their numbers per individual posting went down.)
Another misrepresentation is the the proportion of antisociality. I wonder if the people who hate or fear social interaction just don’t post online at all, leaving the people who do interact online with above average social skills!
I’m often on the Kawasaki boards and I’m frightened by the spelling & grammar on it. It’s a war over there and English is losing.
It’s even worse in the “sport bike” section, where riders are usually younger, and everybody types like they text. No punctuation, shortened words, & apostrophes announcing every incoming “s”.
Actually, I’d say that quite the opposite is the case with that demographic. For example, I’m kinda socially awkward IRL, generally preferring to be alone than in a group of people where I just wind up tongue tied and embarrassed and praying for the moment when I can leave. On the boards, however, I feel much more comfortable tossing out my thoughts and opinions, at least in part because the ability to edit my responses so that they are semi- witty/intelligent gives me more confidence than I normally have in social settings. I’ve known a number of shy/quiet people who have no trouble at all posting anywhere and everywhere. But YMMV.
I’ve given up on a board for Boston terrier owners and another one for gardeners for many of the same reasons already outlined here: willful ignorance, zealous Christian religiosity permeating every other post, ridiculous flash, long stupid sigs that never change and can’t be hidden… blech.
I do like avatars but I don’t miss them here. I also like that reading is a skill, and because SDMB is text-heavy and not a cartoon with lots of pretty pictures, membership here practically requires a certain degree of intellect, if not reading skills. Writing skills tend to go hand in hand with reading skills.
I’d agree that the SDMB has ruined forums for me. I used to post regularly to a certain hobbyist board. It was unmoderated but for a number of years, posts were more-or-less on-topic, and fairly literate. Then Bush came to the White House and the hobby discussions were gradually replaced by political discussions with varying degrees of literacy. The last time I checked in, there was no sign of the more reasonable hobbyists (I can only assume they, like me, simply stopped showing up), the discussion was all politics, and the ad hominem arguments and insults were somehow flying through the mess of what I assume is some variation of textspeak. No mention of the hobby any more.
Yes, the SDMB has definitely spoiled me. And that’s OK.
I’ll reply to my own posting to give an example of why the SDMB is so much better than some others. Here’s a posting by a guy who’s describing what it took to remove the grips from his motorcycle handlebars…
ok so i had to remove mone when i first bought the bike and it was not easy at all so u can save the metal part if u want but there is realy no good way to take them off i used a razor to cut out all the ruber padd if you shave the rubber down enought the metal peace will slide out from on op of it it is realy not easy to take off all the rubber tho i went thru about five differnet blades after u take off the metal u can start workin on the ruber that is glued to the bars i used a razor for this to and alot of lighter fluid to remove the rest of the rubber but in the end it just plain sucked o remove
That’s exactly it! There’s some good information in there, you just have to wade through hip deep muck to get at it. It would have taken less keystrokes, too! “I removed mine when I first bought the bike. It wasn’t easy at all! I used a razor to cut through and shave off all the rubber, and then the metal piece slid out the top; it took me about 5 blades to do it, though! After the metal’s off, you can use a razor to take off the rubber on the bars. Lighter fluid will help get the rest of it off.” Actually very useful instructions. But, as my shop teacher always said, knowing how to do it is one thing - communicating that to someone else is another! (I think I had the only shop teacher ever who assigned papers.)
That is perfectly readable to me. I called a few people out on writing like that when I was younger and more arrogant, and got my ass handed to me when they demonstrated a near perfect (possibly better than mine) grasp on the English language in response. That taught me that some people just like to write in a more casual voice. I tend to write and talk to my audience. If you go into some of the neighborhoods I grew up around and speak perfect English, you’d get your ass kicked. If you went into some of the jobs I’ve had and spoke ‘hood, you would be laughed out of the interview room. The same is true online to some (lesser, I think) extent. Basically what I’m saying is I try to talk however those around me decide is the “right” way to talk, because to me it’s fuckin’ arbitrary as long as you’re communicating effectively.
I posted for a while at findadeath dotcom/forum, whose mbs are exactly like these in layout and design. If you’re not familiar with the sight, it’s dedicated primarily to celebrity deaths (Jett Travolta’s thread probably has well over 1000 posts by now) but also to all other topics.
Back during the election I got into a political argument with a McCain-Palin supporter who was making comments that the most conservative pro-McCain of posters here would have been yelling “Cite?” at, just incredibly stupid and fact challenged Coulter Crap type arguments. (In bipartisan fairness I’m sure there were liberals making equally stupid comments, but I wasn’t arguing with them.)
I basically said “That’s one of the stupidest arguments I’ve ever read, and here’s why…” and then through snopes and other sites showed the factual errors and explained why ignorance like that was unnecessary and unacceptable in the 21st century.
The same post got me about 4 Mod Warnings!
And not a single one of them was anywhere NEAR as “mean” as the average pitting of a Doper around here. In fact my post detailing the reasons her argument was stupid wouldn’t even make a particularly vicious MPSIMS thread. SDMB officially ruined me for political debate on other boards.
I’ve spend a lot of time recently on the forums at civfanatics.com - a website dedicated to the PC game Civilization. I’ve found that considering it is a gaming website with little official moderation, it is surprisingly well… self moderated.
In fact, I saw one thread where someone was posting a strategy guide of sorts (which is pretty common - there are a bunch of articles and guides people have written up and posted on there), and wanted critiques of it. A few people said, in a constructive criticism sort of way, that the author should have someone proof read it because the broken english was a little hard to understand. I was very surprised by that - that people actually cared enough to suggest realistic improvements.
I still believe that good message boards are few and far between - it was just that this one, as a gaming site, really stuck out.
I also do not [del]waste[/del] spend much time bothering to decipher posts (either here or elsewhere) that fail in simple sentence structure and spelling. I do post in a casual voice and my grammar (and occasional spelling mistakes) probably give some posters here fits. I admit to some laziness. I think we all have it at some time or other or in some degree. There’s lazy and then there’s just bone ignorant/uneducated.
I think most people are seduced into thinking that since the Internet is both fairly anonymous and casual, that anything goes when it comes to communicating. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Posting in anger (all caps, many exclamation points) just makes the poster look silly and shrill, to use a common example. Texting is also a bane to clear communication online. I may not spell out every word in a text, but to do so here is just asking for mockery.
The SDMB has spoiled me for other fora. Most other bbs are painful to read (and why waste time?). It’s everything: the lack of reasoned discussion in disagreements, the lack of grammar and spelling skills, the poor use of language to describe issues and events accurately–it’s a wonder any communication is achieved at all. I have the Dope to thank for improving my critical thinking skills and for my recognition for what I term “non-arguments” (ex: Well, X just sucks, IOW, blanket statements that are inherently absurd but that we hear every day given as sound opinion).
Certain general things like politics, film/literature, current events, etc, can be maddening to try to talk about on other boards (hell, politics are maddening to try to talk about here most of the time), but for specific things, I find it better to consult niche boards. If I have a question about my dog, I’m going to a pet board. If I have a question about my 1967 VW Beetle, I’m going to a VW board. Their spelling, grammar, and critical thinking skills be damned. I’m not going to let online textual elitism get in the way of figuring out why I have a stuck valve.
