This seems to be disappearing but I used to notice a lot of discussion boards where, rather than have all posts on a topic appear in sequence, they’re set up in tree format, with reponses to responses to reponses all off on different branches, and affter the first 20 or so posts the whole thing is mass of RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: as people respond to whatever they read last rather than the initial post. And I find that sort of thing impossible to read through.
I used to post on a board like this and it drove me nuts. (see… that’s what did it)
It was almost impossible to follow a thread without backtracking over and over. I finally gave up in frustration.
You probably all know this already, but it is possible to disable avatars and sig lines on most message boards. I was on a board once and mentioned how much I hate the huge banners and the person who operates the board was nice enough to tell me how to disable them. Usually if you go into User CP you can edit your options and disable pictures, sigs, and avatars. Just FYI if anyone is interested.
I belong to another message board that actually has a pretty good level of discussion. The problem is that every time there’s a bit of disagreement that is a little too “mean” or confrontational, the thread gets locked and disappeared. I’ve been three pages into a four page thread, clicked on the next page, and been sent to an error message because the thread’s been deleted. It always happens to my favorite threads, the ones that would probably find a really good home here on GD.
I hate the lack of dedication to reasoned debate. Nothing like taking the time to construct a decent argument only to have some asshead rebut it by flinging poo.
I also hate boards that allow unrestricted posting of images. I don’t mind the smilies - in fact some of the other boards I play on have some rather creative custom smilies. It’s the posting of bandwidth-wasting images of people’s pets, vehicles, etc. that really gets me. I might be participating in a thread about gardening and some idiot with a huge sig posts to it and shares a 60K snapshot of his 4X4 with every post. That’s annoying as hell.
I’ll post this here: while animated and otherwise annoying avatars can often be intolerable, for me at least I tend to remember posters’ avatars better than I do their handles (being a visual person and all-same thing in real life faces not names). I was laying in bed last night thinking about this thread and when I asked myself to remember the names of just a few members of this board, and could only recall a meager handful (nothing personal-plus I was half asleep). But at a lot of the various other fora that I hang out at I can recall probably dozens of avatars (for those who don’t change them as often as they change their underwear)-they just stick in my mind better than a bunch of letters. So consider this a halfhearted pipedream request to allow (non-animated!) avatars here even tho I am aware of the bandwidth issue.
On another board I frequent, two longtime posters have used the same avatars: John Lennon and Patsy from AbFab. I now think that T from VA looks like Lennon, and S from Washington looks like Patsy!
I don’t like moving avatars or “light up” sig lines. To me, they’re a lot like bumper stickers on a car: do you really want your opinions to be boiled down to a pop culture sound bite? (or is that byte?)
I don’t mind the emoticons. Sometimes they really help to establish tone. I would like a non-animated puking smiley or at least a nauseated one.
I know from the “what do you hate about this place” thread that everyone hates grammar nit picks, but one thing that drives me insane about another board I visit is the complete disregard for spelling, punctuation, and paragraph breaks some of these ding dongs exhibit. They are not the majority at this board, thankfully, but they’re there in increasing numbers lately. These are professional women who post at that board. They’ve gone to college and everything! I believe most probably own a dictionary! And a manual of style! If I want stream of consciousness, I’ll read May Sinclair, not a damn message board. Good Lord, there are a lot of people who really AREN’T SMARTER THAN A FIFTH GRADER!
Yes, dammit - someone has had a bad morning! It’d be ME!
I know - decaf.
By the way, yellowval, thanks - I did not know that, and thanks to your advice, I can now go back and visit a board I had just about given up on due to people’s huge sig pictures. I thank you!!
Not with basic Firefox, I couldn’t. I’m sure there’s some extension or another out there that could do that for me but I have enough problems with Firefox’s stability as it is without installing a bunch of extensions.
I hate board where you can only read one message at a time – you can see the titles for every message, but you have to click on each one to read. Essentially that means I’m not reading threads that stretch out for more than a dozen messages because it’s too much work.
I also hate running into climate change deniers on motorcycle boards. These people usually blame humans for creating smog, but in the next breath say there is no way people are responsible for any other alterations to the environment :smack:
You’re very welcome. I know it’s the only way I can tolerate most of the other boards that I visit.
I am a member of a board dedicated to my Alma Mater’s athletic teams. Many members have moved away from the area and this is the only way to get up to date information or links to articles about the football and basketball teams, plus good discussion from people with inside information. Almost all the members are (were) alumni and many are former players or reporters for the campus papers. As the community grew over the years, new forums were added for things like general discussions and politics. The discussions were generally high level, and even the heated arguments maintained a level of decorum.
A year or two ago, another board that was much more commercial in nature started to fall apart, and many posters from there migrated to our board. Now our discussions run something like this:
“What are some good books for the beach as I am on vacation next week?”
“The Kite Runner is hard to put down, but might be a little dark for beach fare”
“If you like satire, then anything by Christopher Buckley is great”
“WTF??? Who reads f%&ing books anymore lol. Suck it, college boy!!!”
Sigh.
Preview rocks. I hate boards where I can’t preview and the moronic poster can’t come up with a thread title that in any way describes what the thread is about.
Another board I’m on uses MVN Forum. I couldn’t find a way to change my board settings to disable animated avatars. But I did hunt through the IE7 menus: Tools - Internet Options - Advanced tab - Multimedia group (towards the bottom) - Play animations in web pages - uncheck it! Now I no longer see the animations, which distracted me from the content anyway.
Like other people, I also don’t like how many boards have people usng cht spek t sa wht u want. It makes me appreciate the Dope all the more. Chat-speak is useful when there is a very low character limit and you have to use multiple keystrokes for each letter, but is not useful in a normal written environment.
You can find some great links and good discussion on Metafilter, but they go through phases where half of the comments are just people bitching about how the original post didn’t belong on the front page. In short, junior modding pisses me off.
No way. Quotes should always be chained, never nested. To use the linked example,
BAD:
(Response by person quoting all these posts goes here.)
BETTER:
(Response by person quoting all these posts goes here.)
Oh, hell yeah. Flag it and move on or take it to MetaTalk and flameout. Both are good for me, but I like the last option better.
See, that’s why I think the chain is backwards. It should go like this:
Much easier to follow the chain that way, because the quote is not separated from the user name.
Thank you, Ellis Dee and Sarahfeena. Sometimes it’s hard to convey how fricking annoying it is, and your examples of alternatives really show the difference in clarity.