Can anything be done about the nastiness on this forum?

[Anonymous]

I find this general parenting area of this forum to be full of nasty, unnecessary, comments. I often wonder if it's from the same 2 or 3 women who have nothing better to do then berate mothers for asking genuine caring questions about their children.

As a first time mother it is helpful for me to have a community where I can voice concerns and ask questions. It's completely unhelpful to me to see responses like, "What's your problem," "Go Away," "Why do you worry about such trivial things," "This is the easy part, get over it." on a regular basis.

I'm all for full on debates with serious comments and constructive opinions. It doesn't help the forum community to have these nasty comments makes us all feel like bad parents.

I'm writing this to urge the forum moderators to please take down comments that are outright nasty and do not add to this community in a constructive way. It also may be possible to enable an preference in this forum to flag comments for removal.

I also urge my fellow posters to please add your vote or thoughts to this post in hopes to clean up the tone and build a more welcoming parenting community.

[Anonymous]

As a first time mother-to-be, I'm totally with your thoughts. I'm glad to came up with this topic!

[Anonymous]

There are a lot of unhappy, angry people out there and they feel somewhat better coming in here and putting down others. It sucks, I know...I just try to ignore them.

It's like they said in school, "No Question is a stupid Question"

[Anonymous]

Many other people will start to ignore the unhappy, frutrated people (aggresion comes from frustration) who post in this forum. But the point is to "clean up the tone", as the OP said, and get the moderators to do something about this problem.

[Anonymous]

One more firm vote here!

[Anonymous]

I think the nastiness (which is rather subjective) really adds spice and keeps it real. Besides, do you really think Jeff has the time to read and keep track of the hundreds of postings (especially going on simulataneously)? Besides, what is "nasty" to you, may not be "nasty" to Jeff and, therefore, nothing will be deleted.

I mean, sometimes, people need a "get over it" or "no, it's really you that is the problem". Also, the trouble with postings (emails included) is that tone is not conveyed.

If you are feeling bereted on the general discussion forum than stay away from the political discussion and nanny discussions forums.

Check the feedback forum as the nastiness topic has been addressed by Jeff many times.

[Anonymous]

The only thing you can do to stop the trolls is not to take the bait. They love to stir things up, and if they're ignored, they'll usually move on.

[Anonymous]

There is clearly at least one extremely annoying troll here (maybe more than one). All you can do is ignore them -- "Don't feed the troll!"

Then there are people who respond sincerely, but bluntly. I actually like and appreciate that tone.

[Anonymous]

Can Jeff tell who we are by our IP addresses? Perhaps ban people who are consistently nasty for no good reason? I am not talking about heated differences of opinions, but trolls. "Every 13 year old knows how to avoid pregnancy, deal with the consequences". Sheesh.

[Anonymous]

I think this is just the result of an anonymous forum. I'm also on a local forum where people post with their own names and many know each other and it is always a very civil dicussion.

[Anonymous]

I understand that some people are unnecessarily nasty sometimes, but I hope the OP or the other posters supporting the OP aren't talking about censorship. That would be much more detrimental to the discourse on this site than a few nasty words. It's also wouldn't be very American. For instance, who would determine the level of nastiness a post would have to achieve to be deleted? Even just basing our judgement on the use of bad language would simply give rise to a debate over what is bad language and in what context it is used. Sometimes we have to grow up a little even if other's won't and ignore that which deserves no comment in our own personal judgement.

[Anonymous]

I agree that the nastiness is frequent and often unwarranted. I agree with the PP - that some of it is the nature of the ability to say exactly what you think without ever being identified. I think the board is symbolic of our communities at large. I am often amazed at the mean responses on this forum...and then we wonder why our children are being bullied or treated poorly in school. The apple does not fall far from the tree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree that the nastiness is frequent and often unwarranted. I agree with the PP - that some of it is the nature of the ability to say exactly what you think without ever being identified. I think the board is symbolic of our communities at large. I am often amazed at the mean responses on this forum...and then we wonder why our children are being bullied or treated poorly in school. The apple does not fall far from the tree.

Perfect example-"the apple doesn't fall far from the tree", "our children being bullied at school" could be considered nasty, incoherent, UNHELPFULL(that's a big complaint around here) and the whole post could be considered symbolic of the judgemental mentality of many of the posts-should this person be censored, listened to, disregarded or silenced because someone else doesn't agree with her/him? What about the freedom to respond in the first place? You can't yell FIRE in a crowded movie theater on the internet unless you're the Taliban-you gotta learn to live and let live if you really want to participate!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think this is just the result of an anonymous forum. I'm also on a local forum where people post with their own names and many know each other and it is always a very civil dicussion.

I just started visiting this site in Spring/early summer. I then posted something 'snippy' on my community listserv and had several people email me to say, "Why do you have such a nasty tone? It's unnecesary." I was really embarassed. I apologized on the list. I do think it was because i had started spending time on the dcum site.

That said, I think the best response to the nasty posts is no response (which isn't always easy for me but I'm going to make it my new mantra). I think there's a cut off point for when nastiness is downright hurtful but above that cut off -- sometimes it's kind of fun....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think this is just the result of an anonymous forum. I'm also on a local forum where people post with their own names and many know each other and it is always a very civil dicussion.

Totally agree. I challenge everyone here to create a login name. Be part of the solution.