Things you don't like about post(ers) topics

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have a lot of posts, but more importantly, I have READ a lot of posts (Gotta read them to post to them). Here are some of the things that posters do with their topics that I hate:

  1. Appear to have no reason for posting said topic. 2. Obscene questions that are absurd & have no socially redeeming value 3. Poster doesn’t maintain his topics, never comes back to give more info or to see what people wrote. 4. Didn’t search first to see if it’s been talked about before.
  2. Not enough information given in the post to answer it. 6.Person responds to a reply with a nasty attitude.

I could go on, but I’d rather read your submissions.

2

Well handy, I don’t know that I’m guilty of any of the rest of them, but I certainly will admit to being a target for your first gripe. Most of my threads aren’t really about much of anything, and that might explain why they don’t get far.

I don’t have personal gripes about threads in general. Nothing in particular stands out to me. But I’m a softie.

3

So this is a kind of “topic pet peeve” thread?

Count one vote here for the MB death penalty for GQ thread titles like, “What does this mean?” and “Why is it doing this?” and (my favorite), “Need help!” Yes, you certainly do.

#4 bugs me mostly in Comments. Star light, star bright…please grant my wish and have people check to see if there’s already a thread started on the column in question. I don’t mean you have to check the Archives or anything, that would be unrealistic. :rolleyes: But you could at least go look in the Forum and see how many OTHER “Madonna’s sex-change operation” threads there already are, before you start another one.

4

Here’s my feelings as to your gripes:

  1. No reason to post - Not exactly sure what you mean by this one. If you mean there’s no question or cause to respond, yeah I agree.

  2. Obscene - I skip those for the most part.

  3. Doesn’t maintain the thread - yeah, this is annoying if you’ve responded and asked for more info, etc.

  4. Didn’t search for topic first - The only time this ticks me off is when there’s a a very recent thread about the same topic. Hell, I’ve seen the exact same topic in threads on the same day.

  5. Not enough info to respond/answer - If I’m interested in the topic, I’ll request the info I’m looking for, if they don’t bother to respond, I drop it.

  6. Bad attitude in response - That’s just poor manners, and if someone does it enough, others simply will stop responding to their posts IMO.

Now for the slight hijack -
My one real pet peeve when it comes to the board – People who cut and paste or quote the entire OP. I’ve seen the first person to respond to a question do this on several occasions. Look, I think we know if you’re posting in that thread what you’re responding to. I don’t need to read the OP twice in a row. And if you post to a thread that may have gone off topic a bit and are only commenting on one part of the OP, just cut the little bit of the OP out and paste it to make it clear (if necessary) so people know what you’re responding to.

There, glad I got that off my chest.

5

All right, here’s mine:

  1. Post count parties–especially stealth post count parties. I don’t like to be tricked into opening a thread only to find out that it is yet another inane post-count party. Please at least make it an obvious post-count party so I can avoid it.

  2. I’ll second Ducky on the matter of thread titles like “A Question,” especially in GQ.

  3. THREAD TITLES IN ALL CAPS. Do you really think your thread is more important than the others? (this means you, don willard)

  4. Threads opened in wrong forums. C’mon, is it really that hard to figure it out?

  5. Introduction threads. Yes, yes. Nice to meet you/your friend/your dog/your shrink. I notice that most of the posters who are introduced/introduce themselves with great fanfare don’t survive to become regular contributors.

  6. Pad-your-post-count/neverending-thread threads. Enough already.

  7. Christina vs. Britney threads. Again, enough already. p.s. Fattney? Now I’ve heard everything.

  8. Threads with the same old tired complaints about moderators. If you’re gonna complain about the moderators, at least find something new to complain about!

  9. “I hate you all so I’m leaving the board” threads. Well, it’s been said a thousand times before–I’ll say it again: Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.

  10. OPs that are hard to understand. Why did you bother to open the thread if you didn’t want to bother to make yourself understood?

Whew. I didn’t realize I was annoyed at so many things! :slight_smile:

6

My personal post pet peeves include:

irrelevant or uncalled for responses
and
resurrecting threads or topics better left dead

7

Man, what a bunch of whiners!

Are you guys incapable of tuning out noise?

8

RE #3

First off, you can’t really tell if the OP has returned to look at their results, can you? Also, I am very guilty of post-n-runs. If I’m asked for more info or have legitimate follow-up questions I’ll post again, but I get a lot of questions answered right from the OP. I am hesitant to post back to the thread if I don’t have anything significant to add, because I don’t want to bump the thread without good reason. I usually want to go back and thank the group for the help / info, but don’t out of respect for the thread that will get moved to the next page if I do. Does that make sense? I can’t say that is the right thing to do, but I feel awkward bouncing my own threads.
As to the rest of the OP - My feathers get a bit ruffled by overly-parsed replies. That is, those that break up a post phrase by phrase (not even sentence by sentence). Though there are some appropriate uses, typically it is a group of quite picayune (boy I miss the Picayune Press) comments. Most of these posts could have made the same point without being overly meticulous. They generally come of as pompous personal attacks, and tax my interest in a thread. Again, there are good uses of line by line responses, but they can be abused.

It also annoys me a bit when people post to a thread merely to say ‘that shouldn’t bother you’. Not so much for saying that something doesn’t bother them, but for being condescending about it, as if the OP was being childish for complaining in the first place. For example,

OP: I really hate it when I bang my thumb with a hammer.

Reply: Why is that such a bad thing? Hitting your thumb is an expected result of building a bookcase. If you want to build a bookcase, you should expect to hit your thumb.

Not a perfect example, but it gets the point across. Like everything, this too has good uses (and who is to say when those ‘good’ uses are?) but most of the time it just causes my eyes to roll a bit. Great, so you’re too good to get upset by that, and those who do are Neanderthals.

Last thing I’ll mention is people posting to correct their grammar or spelling. OK, so there are some people out there who are a bit obsessive about things, and yes, of course major corrections should be sent along (“oops… I meant I don’t like hitting myself with a hammer”) but does every single typo need a cutesy correction? Yeah, the board can be rough on obvious grammar mistakes, but if you write looknig rather than looking, people (usually) aren’t going to think you’re an idiot. Do you really need a post to correct that?

These are all small annoyances at best. Each has a wide range of exceptions. None of them are enough to cause anything more than a half-sigh, and none of them were ever solely responsible for my not reading the rest of a post. I’ve never though less of a poster for them, never really gave them much though 'till handy’s OP. But I had a few minutes to think, a couple more to type, and here I am.

9

You know what I really hate? People who don’t read the OP close enough.

10

What bugs me is the “Drive-by” poster – one who has nothing significant to add to the conversation, but posts anyway.

Sound familiar?

11

“Need help!”

That’s one that drives me nuts.

GBean has a great list, it should be in the FAQ or something along with the other ones.

Another one is OS [original subjects] that don’t match OP [original posts]

12

I’ll second (or third, or fourth :rolleyes:) Non-Descript Thread titles, that lead one to press only to find it’s a load of rubbish.

13

Definately everything Green Bean and Gazoo said (especially regarding quote-crazy posters.)

Now for my new gripe: No typos in the subject heading please!

I’ll forgive a typo-filled post without a second thought, but jeez, can’t you at least proof the four-to-eight words in the subject heading? That’s all I ask.

14

I hate it when people respond to a thread in such a way as to make the entire thread moot if we accept their opinion. These are people that post to Pit threads saying nothing more than, “Well, aren’t there more important things to worry about than [complaint that is the point of thread].” and GQ threads saying, “Well, you don’t need to know anyway, because . . .”

15

I’d like to second that one stuyguy. There’s been a thread in GD for a couple days now about evolution and evolution is misspelled in the thread topic. It bugs me everytime I see it.

16

So much boring stuff.

Like, what’s with this Calvinball thread that goes on forever? Then the post count parties or bragging. Some of the posters who have had the most profound posts have some of the lowest counts.

Fantasy threads, like one I started to read about creating some form of SD detective or something, like in a book.

Then that fart question.

Posts like ‘If I drink green dye, will I s**t green?’

I like threads and posts with bite in them, that make me think, inform me of things I did not know that are useful, perhaps connect me with good links, or manage to get me all fired up because I think the poster is an idiot but an intelligent idiot worth taking my time to argue with.

I’m not interested in which teenybopper current hot buns female pop singer you’d like to bang or why you wouldn’t.

I figure we’ve covered every aspect of male and female sexuality, physically, that can be covered by e-posts.

I’m not interested in any more homosexual bondings, understandings, disclosures, revelations or theories.

Nor anymore ‘pillow fights’, virtual parties or text related virtual adventures.

Argue about religion, give up on politics unless you are willing to actually start doing something to change things, give me reasons why the universe is finite, reasons why it is not, define links with archeological sites in correlation to happenings in the Bibles or other religious texts, tell me whatever happened to the actual magnetic hover board (Back to the Future) that actually was created in the 60s but flopped.

I’ll argue with you about why I think space time theory is flawed, you can argue back why my reasoning is out of my a*s. Want to discuss the socioeconomics in relation to traditional values verses modern corporate influences in third world nations and the dichotomy of tribal beliefs verses point of view modernistics? OK.

But I don’t want to know why bubble gum actually does loose it’s flavor on the bedpost overnight nor even why bedposts are a vanishing breed. Boring!

Heck. Lets discuss why the French Devils Island, the worst prison in the world, failed to stem significantly the rise of crime in relation to various other more humane methods, which also have failed.

Spicy stuff. Stuff you can sink your teeth into, rip off a hunk and have to chew it for a while before understanding the flavor and texture and which you will savor after swallowing and digesting it.

17

Ummm…just a note, Adventurious82.
All the topics you mentioned are in MPSIMS. That stands for Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share. I don’t think you’re going to find threads about quantum physics theories or Ancient Sanskrit etymology or the plight of the Native American Nation during the Spanish Conquest.
But then again, stranger things have happened.
Didn’t mean to hijack, sorry.

18

A certain poster who OP’s with “interesting” questions.
I keep waiitng for Whose toenails would you like to clip from him. hee hee

19

I am pretty sure I’m guilty as charged on every one of those. Except I always check back in threads. That doesn’t mean I POST again, because I thought that pissed people off. If I have to add more info, I do, but mostly I let the thread go as the respondents take it.

I dislike OP titles that are obscure or vague. I have to be selective in what I read (and post to) so I prefer when I can quickly tell that a thread is something I want to read about. Or can help with.

I’m a vicious hijacker, but it’s because I have such a random brain. Posts trigger all kind of thoughts in me, some of them tangential, I guess, but the connection is clear to ME. Judging by some angry “Lave my thread alone” messages I’ve gotten, I guess it’s unique to me. :stuck_out_tongue:

20

I’m curious, folks. Why do these things bother you? And what is the purpose of this thread? Simply to vent? To change something? If to effect change, exactly what? I’m not trying to criticize here. Merely seeking information.

If a thread is titled in a certain way you don’t like, ignore it. Or if a particular post is written poorly, skip over it. Are you worried that you might miss something if you don’t check out every thread? Do you feel that, in a community as large as this, there isn’t the possibility of satisfying a tremendous variety of tastes/personalities/interests?

Most of what is listed above seems like nothing more than what should be expected of any large message board with relatively hands off moderation. Which is what this board is. So if your gripe is that these boards aren’t something other than what they are, well, I guess that is uncontestable. But of little importance.

I understand the designation of your gripes as “peeves” attests to the minimal significance of these complaints, but I wonder why they even register for you.

To me, this board is really fun, interesting, and stimulating. It (and you) occupy a greater portion of my consciousness than I would have expected possible. And I consider my life richer for my communication with al of you. BUT – and I have a BIG BUTT - it is only a message board!