Monday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Please don’t let your children eat common allergens while playing on public playground equipment" and posted in the "General Parenting Discussion" forum. As the title says, the original poster urges parents to not allow their children to eat foods to which many children are allergic on public playground equipment. Because of the severity of the original poster's child's allergies, this practice essentially makes it impossible for the child to go to playgrounds. This thread is 15 pages long and I only have time to read the first couple of pages. But, that is enough to know that there is a huge fight between parents who consider eating peanuts while climbing on the monkey bars to be a God-given right that will not be infringed and those who are not above physically assaulting someone in order to confiscate their snacks. Beyond that, rather than summarize the thread more accurately, I want to comment on two aspects of the responses that stuck out to me. The first is a topic that I may have brought up before in one of these posts, so forgive me if I am repeating myself. That is the importance of the first response. It has been a longtime observation of mine that the first response is often essential in setting the tone of the thread. In this case, the actual first response was the original poster adding more detail to the initial post. But, the next response was from a poster who essentially ignored the original poster's concerns and asked what she would do when the child goes to school or college, obviously unaware that accommodations for children with allergies are common in both. This poster continued opposing even the most mild of sacrifices and made clear that she wasn't interested in anyone's issues but her own. I think this clearly established the tone of the thread right from the start. The second thing that stood out to me involves the same poster. Admittedly, DCUM can be a pretty rough place at times with posters often being unnecessarily harsh. Frequently, this is blamed on the region's culture with residents of the DC-area being described as unkind or overly competitive. The original poster was even guilty of this, alluding to "dog eat dog D.C.". But, the poster responsible for the negative posts and who adamantly insisted nobody mattered but her was not posting from the DC area and appears to be a couple of states away. In my experience, actual DC people are more than willing to make reasonable accommodations for children with allergies and I would hate for this thread to give the opposite impression based mostly on the unrepresentative posts of someone from outside the area.

The next thread I'll discuss was posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. Titled, "Happy affair stories", the original poster complains about not having his sexual needs met at home. He has been deterred by negative stories about affairs, but is now soliciting postive stories, apparently as encouragement. In response, the original poster is hit with a flurry of negative posts and very quickly responds to tell everyone to "never mind". This doesn't stop anyone, however, and the thread continues for another 8 pages. I haven't read beyond the second page, but I don't think there are any postive stories posted. Rather, there are an abundance of negative stories, as well as warnings and condemnations. I assume that any reluctance that the original poster had previously was only doubled by this thread.

Yesterday I mentioned that it had been over a week since a thread from the "College and University Discussion" forum had been discussed and today we have two of them. The first that I'll address touches on a very real concern, though one that doesn't come up much on DCUM. Reading the forum, you would assume that all of the posters have children who are destined for Ivy League schools or, in the worst cases, state flagship universities. But the reality is, the average kid is, well, average. Many of them also have college aspirations. So, as the original poster asks, "Where do "B" average Big-3 students go to college?". This is a 9 page thread that I don't have time to read, but from the looks of things, lots of colleges and universities get mentioned. As is common in threads involving admissions, there are anecdotal examples that support a variety of arguments. I see that some posters are suggesting that graduating from a prestigious private school adds to admissions chances more than a simple GPA. Of course, this is disputed. I think that overall the tone of the thread, as far as I can tell, should give some hope to "B" students, though there are plenty of warnings as well.

The last of yesterday's most active threads that I'll discuss was also in the "College and University Discussion" forum. Titled, "UMD CS or UVA CS?", the original poster says that the cost of the University of Maryland and the University of Virginia are very similar and wants to know which is better for studying computer science. The original poster is a Virginia resident, but merit aid from Maryland makes up for most of the out-of-state surcharge. Again, I haven't read the entire thread but skimming it suggests a consensus that the UMD computer science program is better than UVA's. However, many posters argue that UVA is better overall. Most posters encourage visiting both and choosing which is better for the student. There is an argument about college ratings in which the University of Illinois and Harvard get roped into the discussion. One helpful aspect of this thread is that several of those responding have firsthand experience with at least one of the programs and sometimes both. The bottom line seems to be that this is basically a coin toss and that both are good programs.