Anonymous wrote:Jeff (and others),
Do you ever wonder what motivates people to post certain competitive, cruel, catty things here? Is this a universal issue with message boards; as in, anonymity is the perfect cloak for the evil that lurks within all of us?

I see people -- presumably adults, many of whom are parents -- acting in ways that my 6th-grader would have outgrown by now. Putting people down, making competitive remarks about colleges or sports, making fun of people's income, suggesting people have cancer when they post a common symptom on the health board, writing things that would make them humiliated if their true identities were discovered.

Is this a Beltway thing? A DCUM thing? An anonymity thing? Does this board attract people with axes to grind? Yes, sometimes there are posts that reaffirm my faith in humanity, but often, the things I see here make me wonder what brand of vitriol lurks inside so many of us.

Ideas?

I don't think there is a single answer. Some people are just entertaining themselves. They don't really care if they are helpful and actually might find it more fun not to be helpful. There is no real explanation for their response other than that they were fun. There is a minority, or at least I hope it is a minority, who are simply mean and take pleasure in being mean. But an unfortunately large number of posters appear to have mental health issues. I am not a psychologist and can't diagnose these folks, but the ones with whom I am most familiar are simply obsessed with posting. They commonly have a couple of strongly-held views and absolutely nothing can stop them from posting those views. These views can be anything from the proper age to get married, to the best sport to play in high school or whether a child should be held back a grade in school. If you post an opinion that conflicts with their view, you are going to hear from them and not necessarily in a polite manner.

I unblocked you. You are not going to like the reason you were blocked. You used the phrase "fun fact" which I have blocked because of the irritating "fun fact guy" who is extremely obnoxious.

I am going to lock this thread because all of the posts above are from the same poster.

If you want to talk to yourself, find a mirror. It will be more interesting.

The second one was deleted because it was posted in the wrong forum. The original one was removed because it consisted almost entirely of rumors about a player, along with allegations of a cover-up. Posting anonymous claims of illegal behavior without a single shred of supporting evidence, and then claiming that there is a cover-up, is not an appropriate use of the forum.

Anonymous wrote:Jeff, the posts were about ending boundary review. Highly relevant to the discussion. Just because they did not go the way the political operatives on the board wanted is no reason to block me or take down the posts.

I am in the process of removing the political and COVID posts now. The thread is busy enough without having a debate about political parties or COVID policies.

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:It looks like you were blocked the first time for using the "r-word" which I've banned because a great many of our posters find it offensive. You were also blocked for posting "CrickEtS" which I've also blocked simply because it is irritating and adds nothing of value to the discussion.

I'm confused.

R-word? The only one I know of is a slur about developmentally challenged people and I never use that word because I also find it offensive.

As for the critters I DO use that as a prod when the resident conservatives can't bring themselves to respond, acknowledge facts, or admit they are wrong, which I do think makes a valid point. But I guess I could do that another way.

That's the word but looking into it further (I had to check different log files), it seems that this is another case of the brain-dead pattern matching to which we are currently limited. What you actually wrote was "flame retardants" (you won't be able to quote this message if you reply). I'm going to have to give some thought about how to address this sort of thing.

It looks like you were blocked the first time for using the "r-word" which I've banned because a great many of our posters find it offensive. You were also blocked for posting "CrickEtS" which I've also blocked simply because it is irritating and adds nothing of value to the discussion.

Report your IP address and I'll look into it. I can refine rules if the are producing too many false positives.

Anonymous wrote:Yet a forum for divers and lax bros makes sense?

That forum is actually for swimming and diving. It, like the other sports forums, we started after discussion on those topics started to overwhelm the general sports forum. I created forums no so much as a favor for those posters, but rather to help those who wanted to discuss other posts but where having their threads drowned out.

I am not aware of a huge number of threads about musicians. If there have been and I missed them, please let me know. My preference is that rather than creating a forum and hoping that posters come, I identify topics that already have significant discussion (e.g. like what I did with the sports forums).