I automatically skip over people’s thread-relevant poetry. I know they and others think its automatically witty, but it’s distracting to me. If I was involved in a real-life discussion and someone just broke spontaneously into poetry, I’d be annoyed too. I guess I just dislike poetry.
I also hate the nitpickery about spelling and grammar. It’s amazing to me how many Dopers don’t seem to understand that no one cares that “it’s” for “its” is their pet peeve. If you wouldn’t correct someone’s grammar in real life, don’t do it on a message board. It’s just as rude.
I agree this is a weakness. So often I’ll nod, or laugh out loud, and but not give the poster their due. Sometimes I remember to post some kind of appreciation, but not often enough.
It’s interesting that on female-dominated messageboards people go out of their way to be responsive, even when they’ve nothing else to say.
Also I don’t read very detailed threads updating everyone on their relationship/dating status. I really just don’t care. But by all means don’t interpret this to mean that when you do this you’re a board-annoyance. Some members (not me) enjoy living vicariously through others.
I know exactly how you feel. Sometimes you swear you can hear crickets chirping at you, and maybe a muffled cough from somewhere down the back…
I’ve been told before to take it as a compliment (You said what needed to be said so well that no further comment was required), but it’s a bit hard when people appear to have ignored your thoughtful post to respond to a throwaway joke made on a previous page in the thread…
At times it is overused and generally can be phrased differently.
Bad Use:
Poster A: Widgets are 12 inches long
Poster B: CITE
Better Use:
Poster A: Widgets are 12 inches long.
Poster B: I’ve only encountered 10 in widgets. Kindly provide a reference for 12 inches.
The better way indicates that poster B has actually some knowledge of widgets and is treating poster A with some degree of respect. Crying “cite!” with no evidence that you know any better is lazy.
I agree with the cliquism comment. There are some regulars that treat newbies like lepers. The only newbies that get noticed or responded to with regularity are the guys that come in with both guns blazing.
Sometimes it does. But sometimes it’s either pointless or contentious. There is often disagreement over just what qualifies as a reliable cite. It’s too far left, or too far right, or too religious, or too atheist, or too racist, or too something. Frankly, I’d rather see more cites from books and fewer from web pages. But even then, people could argue about it. Diogenes, for example, wouldn’t accept a pro-Christian cite if you snuck in something he wrote himself.
The Whedon-slavery around here. I am so tired of hearing Buffy mentioned in every damn CS thread. Something that’s 30 years older or more and someone will invariably come along and mention how Buffy did it sooooo much better. Unfortunately it’s often done by a couple of my favorite posters, so I just grit my teeth and bear it.
Being downright ignored in GD, and then having a more prolific GD poster come along and make the same points and they get responded to. Yeah, that’s not cliquism at all.
People who constantly argue with you in IMHO. I have stated my opinion, I have given you my justifications on it, I see nothing in your arguments to change my mind, so I will continue keeping my opinion. Don’t keep nagging me about it! We hijack the whole conversation that way!
I don’t like the snark from the admins/mods when you’re just asking a simple question, either.
The cat love.
People who pit a thread because they don’t like the content, even when it’s clearly labelled as _____. Don’t read it!
How the whole website is predominantly Christian-based. But there’s nothing that can be done about that, and it’s not really even a complaint, just sort of a :(.
Are you joking? No one has done a scientific poll, but polls in IMHO have borne out the opposite (and frankly obvious) conclusion that Christians are a minority here. I’ve been here for what, eight years, and I can recall only a dozen or so if that.
Minority compared to what? Atheists and non-religious?
I meant - there is very little real discussion of Islam, a bit of Judaism mainly because of Israel, and almost none of ShintoBuddhismTaoHinduismWiccanism etc.
That’s because the board is predominantly Western in culture, not because it is predominantly Christian-based, which seems to mean something else entirely.
I’m honestly a little puzzled by the mentions of cliques, which is not to say that I doubt that people do percieve them. But I don’t perceive them. Who’s in the cliques? How do you know? Am I in one? How would I know? I mean, I’m certainly up on the whole concept of cliques, having gone to a high school, but I have never in my life been in a clique.
There are certain posters that I really like and respect because they are consistently kind or funny or intelligent or whatever. I’m happy to see those people post and happy to have a dialog with them. There are other posters that I don’t know from a hole in the ground – there must be, right?, given how many of us there are. And veterans obviously have had a chance to establish a reputation that newbies haven’t had a chance to establish yet. Is a preference for conversing with people you know over people you don’t know (yet) inherently rude or cliquish?
I’ve never felt I had an obligation to respond to one particular poster over another, like “first in the thread” or something. It has never crossed my mind that someone might feel ignored if a poster responds to another poster and not to them. But in my case at least, there’s none of the isolating motivations or the “us versus them” mentality that to me is the hallmark of clique-ism. For better or worse, I’m just not thinking that hard about it; I read and I respond. I’m not trying to be inclusive, and I’m not trying to be exclusive. I’m just me, responding.
So when people talk about cliques they are talking about a phenomenon I don’t personally perceive. But in all honesty, if I am one of the clique offenders (or may I assume I am not?), I would appreciate some guidance on how to dispell that perception. It’s one thing to say “I hate the cliques around here” but might they not be unconscious cliques? Assuming such a thing as an unconscious clique can exist, then do we deal with them?