There seems to be a trend of late wherein posters (myself included) will post a non sequitor in response to the OP in the Pit.
Do the Mods have a problem with this?
I personally think it’s a helluva lot better than posting nasty, negative remarks and starting a flame war. I’d rather reply with “Mmmmmm…you can really taste the goat” than “You are a jerk” or “You’re wasting bandwidth with your post” or similiar responses.
I can’t see the point in being nasty unless the OP is a direct attack on another poster and the poster is defending him/herself. Calling someone a jerk because he/she hates Sears, for example, is just being childish.
This is my opinion, of course.
quietly waiting for the first poster to call me a jerk or acuse me of wasting bandwidth…
I can’t say if the Mods have a problem with it, but (IMO) it’s pretty irritating, especially (I would imagine) to the OP’er, not to mention extremely condescending.
It kinda seems (to me) to defeat the purpose of posting. You post because you have something to say, so if you have nothing to say… why post? And if you have something to say… why not say it?
The only purpose I can see for posts of this type is to say ‘I am superior to you, nyah,’ without actually saying it, so as not to be a jerk.
It’s also an inherently presumptuous activity, since it presupposes that you speak for the majority of posters in saying that the opinion of the OP is unworthy.
I thought the use of an out-of-the-blue non sequitor was only used (well, primarily used) in a thread where the OP is perceived to be a troll post, in an attempt to Not Feed The Troll[sup]tm[/sup].
If I see it as intended to starve the trolls, then I enjoy the humor. If I see its usage in inappropriate situations, then it irritates me.
Since I don’t spend a lot of time in the Pit, I haven’t noticed if the practice is spreading or not.
Eh, well, just my opinion, but it seems to me the most effective way of starving a troll is, well, starving a troll: just not posting to the thread and letting it die. I guess people feel that’s unlikely to actually happen, and so by swiftly posting nonsense to a thread it diverts the subject and discourages people from responding to the OP. I find it a bit annoying, but within the Pit I suppose it’s within the rules. Over here in ATMB I don’t think that’s the case. Sure, the non sequitors posted here are done as a joke, but my impression is that ATMB is not really the place for jokes.
My feeling is that it is the Mods and Admins who decide if a poster is a troll or a jerk. If they decide that a poster is, then the person is banned. If they think the poster is OK, or have yet to make a decision, then purposely hijacking the thread to discourage discussion is rude. Of course, within the confines of the Pit, being rude isn’t necessarily against the rules. I do agree with Mr. Blue Sky that posting a non sequitor is usually better than posting a nasty remark. But, it’s not as if those are the only two options. It’s always possible to not post.
I seem to recall that at one point, when people were hijacking threads to discuss tennis, one of the Admins (I think Lynn, but I’m not positive) said that they didn’t like it, but that thread was probably lost.
Algernon and Amok both have it right. The best way to starve out a troll is to actually say nothing, not to say something silly so you can revel in your superiority with your buddies. And the most irritating thing about it (I’m mostly indifferent when used to actually combat trolls) is that people tend to do it a lot to respond to people that clearly are not trolls, but whose opinions they wish to dismiss. It’s one of the most cowardly ways to disagree with someone’s arguments that I can think of.
