I think what bothers me is the change over time of the board’s view toward religion and politics.
Originally, it started out as a left-leaning board with a lot of tolerance toward all religions, or the lack thereof.
Nowadays, it seems like people go out of their way to attack and be condescending toward anyone remotely conservative or anything other than militantly atheist.
Maybe it’s my perception, but the boards seem a lot less welcoming in that regard than it used to be- you used to not have to have such a thick skin if you were a Republican or Christian than you do now.
I mostly find it annoying because I think the discussion level on the boards would be a lot healthier if there was a strong voice for both of those viewpoints, rather than an overwhelmingly one-sided crowd.
(starting the timer until someone comes in to say that Republicans and Christians are either ignorant, stupid or undeserving of posting on here)
The easy fix would be to display “Please try again in count + 1 seconds.”
That way, when there’s really only 1 second left, it displays “Please try again in 2 seconds”. The downside is that users think they have to wait an extra second longer than they really have to wait, but this way you never display 1 second and you never have to check the value and special case it.
Too big. Sometimes, I just don’t have time for Doping, and when i check back, it’s like a whole different board with all the different threads. This viscious cycle might keep me from visiting / posting for weeks, maybe months.
Love the Dope, still in a prominent place on my bookmark list, but lately, it’s too big to read in small doses, which suits my habits best.
I love it when i log on and there’s a whole bunch of new stuff that i haven’t seen yet. This place doesn’t seem to move as quickly as it once did, and i can get especially impatient on weekends when there are sometimes hardly any new threads at all.
Of course, i could sate my desire by starting some threads of my own, but while i’ve started my share, i generally prefer to join other people’s conversations.
Rotten runny-nosed rugrat. In my day we had flying cars that took real balls to fly in. Or at least real balls to back into the airframe if the gas tank hadn’t been fixed yet. And we had to walk uphill to and from the airport or field out back - through the snow, too!
I’m too old to learn the newfangled spelling. I also spell light instead of lite and doughnut instead of donut, although I do not mock or criticize people who use lite and donut. (I am young enough to have never spelled the latter doughnought.)
If such spelling bothers you, you can always try reading the boards associated with USA Today.
(Once past the concept of light doughnuts) my biggest complaint is the same as the OP. If I make a typo in my search string I can’t correct it and try again immediately. Same is true if my valid search string returns no matches and I want to try different terms. I know it’s been discussed before, but if enough people make enough complaints maybe eventually someone will decide that changing it wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Bad solution, for a message board that so values TRUTH and ACCURACY!
Annoying things that the board admins could perhaps at least provide better compromises on:
Granted, search wait-time has its reasons. Suggest: Reduce the search wait-time from 120 seconds to 60 seconds. Two minutes is annoying long to wait after failed searches, e.g… True, 1 minute is annoying too, but only half as much so.
Increase edit window to 10 minutes, maybe?
Require samclem to get a second opinion from other mods before modding? (Okay, granted mods have discretion to choose a note or a Capital-W Warning. But the tone and wording of that Russian Camera Joke warning did strike me as rather flameworthy.)
If that’s really needed, then the better solution is to de-mod him. But note that he rescinded the warning and changed it to a mod note after much “discussion” in another ATMB thread.
This is a good one. It deserves to be quoted in full. I’ll ad some specifics to this.
The use of Og instead of God (or god). I know it’s a small thing, but it is so stupid I feel it should be singled out as one of the dumbest PC things this board does. As I understand it (from asking this question long ago), typing Og was done out of respect of jewish folks who were/are uncomfortable with writing/reading God in a thread. Which makes absolutely no sense to me considering that most jews on this board seem to consider themselves athiests. Which, by my way of thinking, would preclude the person from being jewish in the first place. But that never seems to be the case because then I’m told that being jewish isn’t a religion, it’s a culture. :dubious: We could go on forever on this one. So instead, let’s not and save ourselves the reading.
The Christian bashing - It is fairly common and (somewhat) acceptable. I’m not religious, so I try to read religious threads that interest me, hoping to learn or understand something that currently mystifies me. It frustrates me when a Christian poster will get hammered relentlessly for their beliefs and how it skews their views on the world. If someone hammered a Jewish poster in the same fashion, I suspect that a number of things would happen. First, the poster would be labeled an anti-semite. Second, every jewish poster on the board would descend on that particular thread and make sure that everyone knew the offending poster is not only wrong, but an anti-semite. Third, their would be a push to get the “mean-spirited” poster banned from the board. As open-minded this board’s posters claim to be, I find the opposite to be true.
The Republican bashing - seriously, this is sooooo tired. There are two types of posters to this type of thread. The ones of the “me too” variety, showing their superiority by agreeing with the majority, or ones of the “let me explain” variety, which never go well, even if the explanation is a good one. These posts are so quickly dismissed that regardless of the accuracy of the “let me explain” posts, it doesn’t matter. Each point gets lost in the shouting. Oh, and by the way… just because someone agrees with a stance on an issue that happens to reflect the republican viewpoint, doesn’t make one a Republican (or visa-versa). Open your minds, people!
One of the things I used to enjoy about this board was the varied opinions and POV’s represented here. Now, it seems that opinions and POV’s in the minority are shouted down so quickly that it becomes impossible to read. I like reading views contrary to my own, as I think it is important to understand where the other side is coming from. If I hold the popular view on a subject, the “me too” posts don’t add anything of significance to the topic, and the “let me explain” posts get lost in the shuffle. Either way, the ability to understand how my fellow human thinks and ticks is lost.
The labeling of posters on the board - A few of the standard favorites, “anti-semite”, “homophobe”, and “racist” are just a few of the terms tossed around easily by posters to deflect the discussion. After these types of things are thrown out in a post, the poster accused usually spends the rest of the posts trying to defend themselves from the accusation, and it usually derails the thread.
Being jewish doesn’t permit you to call anyone that doesn’t agree with your point of view an anti-semite any more than being black gives you the right to call anyone that doesn’t agree with your POV a racist. Sometimes, people just disagree. And in my experience, being an asshole does not tie one to a race, creed, sex, or hair color. Assholes are everywhere - in every religion, culture, and shade of skin represented in humanity. Not to mention the animal kingdom in general (any doubts about this and I’ll be happy to introduce you to my neighbor’s dog.)
Other than that, you are all a swell bunch of eggs. That’s right… every young, old, man, woman, white, brown, black, yellow, red, pink, magenta, albino, christian, jewish, heathen, muslim, buddhist, short, tall, fat, thin, whatever else one of you.
I’ve learned to stay away from the more controversial topics… not because I don’t think I have anything to add, but because I get weary of the repetition.
Believe it or not, I’ve had my mind changed more than once out here… but damned if I’d ever let the one who changed my mind know it.
It’s an ancient board joke along the lines of “Once for 20 minutes…” or “Rio by Duran Duran.” That’s all. If someone told you it was out of deference to Jewish members, they were pulling your leg.
HAHAHAHA! Seriously? :smack: I can’t believe how long I thought that was the reason!
Colibri,
Well then, consider my leg pulled. Out of its socket, apparently!
I would like to thank you for pointing this one out, because seeing “Og” really annoyed me… it made absolutely no sense. It still makes little sense, but at least it isn’t being used because of some not really understood (at least by me) sensitivity to jewish posters. Being used because of a long-time inside joke stemming from a typo is annoying in its own right, but at least there is an origin and an explanation.
I would also like to thank whoever it was that fed me this bogus info. You’ve helped me look like a complete ass for quite a while out here. :smack: You should know, I don’t need any help in this regard, so for Og’s sake, pick on someone else.
I have to admit I’m laughing at this. I would be laughing even more if this happened to someone else. But considering this was the first thing on my “annoy” list, it’s hard to argue the humor of this particular “whoosh”.
Eh, does this really happen all that much? In most instances where people are “labelled” they actually are antisemtic, homophobic, or racist. The person receiving the labelling is of course going to protest but that’s regardless of whether the label is apt.
It’s interesting how three out of four items on Stink Fish Pot’s list have references to Jewish folks. Have you been targetted by them recently or something?
(BTW as a fellow MAS*H fan I’ve always loved your screen name.)
Anyway, topic. I guess one thing annoys me is the same thing that annoys me everywhere: people who ask for advice and then, once advice is doled out, either don’t respond / don’t thank people, or spend the whole thread explaining why everyone’s advice doesn’t apply to them. Or worse, they practically go out of their way to do something that everyone specifically advised 'em not to do.
Technically speaking, I concur on the 120 second search limit. I understand why it’s necessary, but once you make a mistake in spelling or forget to choose the correct forum, it’s really frustrating to have to wait two minutes for your second chance.
On the other hand, I should mention – and I’m sorry that this is anti-topic – that I do have to give props to the admins for the general lack of spammers showing up. Obviously several do pop their heads up now and then, but they’re dealt with pretty quickly; in general, for a board of this size and popularity, the ratio of spam posts to legit posts is quite amazing. Whatever you’re doing on the back end to combat this, well done.
