Should they just go ahead and open the General Forum back up?

Your interest is wasted, but whatever pleases little minds.

I'm not sure why this thread has become a "bitch about the clique" thread

Since the "clique" or "crowd" is already here on Resident Answers .. its not like they will suddenly poof if they don't open a General Forum.

Nor will they suddenly appear if they did open a General Forum.

It would be the same crowd, after all.

Unless you are going to play Solomon and sacrifice half the crowd to "save Resident Answers" by cracking down with strict moderation ; the makeup of the posters around here isn't likely to rapidly change.

"Christ on a bike" scans better, Brenda. You can have that one on me.

Really? Because I find it quite childish - and arrogant - to deny that you might occasionally need to clarify something you've posted. If you meant x and the majority of people in a group interpreted it as y, something about what you said was unclear. That has nothing to do with anyone's intellect, it's just a plain fact.

This sort of thing--not specifically this example incident, but this *kind* of thing--is why I'm not convinced that a GD forum will elevate the level of discourse in RA, and why I'd worry that GD will become a flamefest without resource-intensive moderation. Unless, that is, posters make a concerted effort to both give and take gracefully.

Kismet made a good point in response to my previous plea in this thread. Indeed people will be people, people will offend and take offense, and telling them to "play nice" won't have much effect unless there's the implied threat of being sent to their room without dinner. Nonetheless, negativity, as Isabeau describes, is contagious; those who are capable of controlling their responses can help keep the environment from spiraling into hostility--in RA, GD, or RL.

Wow. It isn't posts about pies that are going to do this forum in,it's nasty posts like this.

Meh, it's nothing to get too worked up over...I'm quite confident in the knowledge that I am not, in fact, an idiot.

I don't particularly believe Phil is either, I just think he takes himself a *wee* bit too seriously.

Of course the stuff you were quoting was just a dredging up of an old Resident Answers argument.

So .. regardless of whats done about a "General Discussion" forum - the problem you worry about already exists.

I wouldn't disagree with that, if that is what it was. But you know as well as I do that there were multiple clarifications by me in that thread, and still the stupid/nasty people thought they knew better as to what I meant that I did - and you were one of them, Ann. It had nothing with people's intellect - it was people's stupidy and nastiness.

Incidentally, I can't deny that there are times when I write things that can be understood in ways than weren't intended, but that particular case wasn't one of them. There was nothing childish or arrogant about it. It was an example of what some of the discussion in this thread is about. Having said that, *IF* anyone really couldn't understand what the words meant then, yes, there is a gross shortage of intellect in some people around here, but I don't believe that was the case.

You may be right, Rioko, but that's what some of the people here have shown themselves to be over time - idiots.

I disagree.

Phil, I think you made your point. Can we move on from the idiots thing now please?

How exactly would any of this change if they did or did not open a General Discussion board?

Would people suddenly become better or worse?

Would that thread suddenly retroactively cease to have existed?

I admittedly put you on ignore about halfway through that thread, but I don't remember much in the way of clarification up until that point...more like continual insistence that we were willfully misinterpreting what you were saying. Which wasn't the case. If you DID actually attempt to clarify prior to that point, then it wasn't any more clearly phrased than the original post.

I don't think anyone is an idiot here,well maybe the pie troll lately...

I think a lot of things would be better if more people spoke to each other with just a little bit of respect here.

How special for you. But your opinion really doesn't matter in this case.

I still am having trouble seeing how bringing up current forum nastiness (or what have you) has anything to do with not having a General Discussion board.

So am I. I didn't think his point was relevant, I just think he made it, whatever its intention, and hope he leaves it there.

I believe some think that if the banter would be kept in a GD, then there would be no nastiness left in RA. That RA would all of a sudden be cleared of jerks. I don't agree, but of course I may be lacking in intellect when interpreting this, lol. As for it being a reason NOT to have a GD, I don't know.

When you don't have a general discussion forum, those seeking general discussion will simply co-opt a forum and use it for that purpose, as has largely happened here. The hubris was thinking that general discussion could be eliminated from an online forum -- that is not possible without very strict moderation. Now of course LL could implement forum nazis if they wanted to do so, but that becomes problematic as well, because even if you are using volunteers, a strict enforcement policy is very time intensive, and it's impossible to ensure that the strictness will be applied even handedly -- and that's leaving completely aside the underlying reality of how jarring such a nazi-like enforcement environment would be against the background of an almost completely laissez-faire platform.

Oh but it was, Ann. It was totally unnecessary, because the original words were as clear as day, but the nasty people prefered their own totally stupid interpretation of them - even after several clarifications. They were just idiotically nasty, and you were one of them. Someone even wrote that I'd taken great steps to be clear about what I meant in the original post, or words to that effect, but still the nasty idiots continued - and you were one of them. It's people like you who are the reason for threads like this, but you are not the worst of them.

Incidentally, I rarely insult people in posts except as a reaction to an insult against me, and then not usually after the first insult, but I made an exception in this thread by using the word "idiots" when "nasty" is much more accurate. However, I do think that there are many idiots who regularly post in this forum.

Fair enough, Max. It started as a reply to something that Colette wrote, and went on from there...

I do think a lot of the arguing would move to general discussion. Which I think would be a benefit to RA.

However no one dredging up these arguments that were over .. has bothered to add a conclusion related to this thread to them.

They just bring them up in a "Bitch about the clique" effort.

Bringing up old arguments just to complain about them and rehash them will do nothing to help anything get better.

I was responding to the post about people complaining posts were slammed over legibility.

See, that's the attitude I'm talking about. The majority of people did NOT find them clear. They did not find your purported clarifications clear. And yet, you still insist that those reactions were based on malice, not genuine misunderstanding.


But what did the majority say? Having one or two people who process things the same way you do post does not mean you were clear to everyone.


I didn't insult you. I disagreed with you, and I mocked you a bit when you continued to espouse your 'I'm always right and you're all nasty minded idiots if you don't see that' philosophy. I certainly didn't resort to calling you names.