The Most Active Threads Since Friday

The most active thread since I last posted on Friday was titled, "Fight btw BCC & WJ students after game @ 8:30 Friday night" and posted in the "Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)" forum. The original poster embedded an X (formerly tweet) showing video of a brawl near the Bethesda Metro station between students from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School and Walter Johnson High School. The incident apparently occurred following a football game between the two schools. The thread grew to 30 pages before I locked it yesterday. If you appreciate careful analysis and thoughtful dialogue, this is not the thread for you. Instead, posters seemed to simply use the thread as an opportunity to spout off about their own personal agenda. Several posters immediately acted to distance MCPS and the two schools from the violence by pointing out that it occurred off school property and that there had been good security at the game itself. Proponents of MCPS high schools in other parts of the county congratulated themselves on the outcomes of their schools' games that did not include fighting. Critics of MCPS claimed that this was another sign of the school system's decline. One poster even blamed "teaching controversial topics rather than focusing on academics" and school closures during the Covid pandemic for the fighting. Those opposed to the restorative justice process practiced by MCPS made their usual snide remarks. There were demands to kick aggressors out of school and send them to prison. Other posters demanded that parents be held responsible. The video included in the original poster showed an attacker kicking a White student who was on the grown. Many thought the student doing the kicking was Black and, as a result, fixated on race. For instance, one poster wrote that this was bad because, "People already fear and mistrust black teenagers". Racism is never far from the surface in these discussions. But, others thought the attacker was White. Subsequent video showed that both White and Black kids were attacking other students. But, the issue of race remained throughout the thread with a number of posters insistent that this was a racially-based hate crime, Most posters simply saw it as a fight between students from different high schools in which race was not a factor. At least one poster, and probably more, was adamant that B-CC students had initiated the fighting by seeking out WJ students and attacking them. Administrators of both high schools issued a joint letter in which they condemned the violence and promised that those involved would be disciplined. Other posters quoted similar letters going back several years to demonstrate that fights such as this are nothing new.

The next most active thread over the weekend was posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. Titled, "Kevin Costner divorce", this thread was started back in June with the original poster lamenting the poor terms of divorce provided for Costner's former wife, Christine Baumgartner. The thread is now 66 pages long so I can't even begin to scratch the surface of it. It looks like the thread has been fairly active since its creation. There was about a 2 week break starting mid-August, but on August 30th it was revived by a user saying, "So now she’s back asking for $200,000 a month in child support...". It looks like most of the discussion revolves around what sort of settlement Baumgartner deserves, with a number of posters thinking she is asking for far too much. When I started writing this post, I did not know the name of Costner's ex-wife. So, I Googled, "Kevin Costner Divorce" thinking that would give me a quick answer. I discovered that Google now provides "insights" to website owners and at the top of my search results was a note explaining DCUM's performance with regard to this specific query. Apparently, DCUM is ranked 25th for searches for "Kevin Costner Divorce". So, maybe our future is to be a TMZ competitor. I haven't read enough of this thread to really know what is going on with it, but posters being obsessed with celebrities is really nothing new in the entertainment forum. However, I suspect that one poster was correct when she explained why so many posters are defending Baumgartner. "Just a lot of women that see themselves in Christine and it scares them", wrote the poster.

The third most active thread was titled, "Video Ads" and posted in the "Website Feedback" forum is a thread that I actually started. As I explained in the opening post, DCUM has relied on display advertising for income. Beginning about a year ago, we started to see a decline in the cost per thousand (CPM) that advertisers were willing to pay for display advertisements. This resulted in a drop in revenue. After showing some signs of life in January and February of this year, there was another significant drop in March. Some revenue decline could be attributed to a drop in the number of users coming to DCUM and, therefore, I began taking actions to counter such decline. One of those actions was this very blog which I started in order to have fresh content for DCUM's homepage which had hardly changed for some time. The second effort was the forum's redesign to be mobile friendly. Both of those efforts were aimed at helping us with Google's search system which we believed was punishing us for a stale homepage and not being optimized for mobile devices. While we are now seeing monthly growth in the number of users averaging over 10%, revenue growth has been meager at best and we are currently earning significantly less than our goal. This has caused me to consider alternative forms of advertising, most recently video ads. Over the years I have rebuffed countless entreaties from companies offering video ads. I finally agreed to work with a company that is associated with Disney and which prioritizes user experience. The first step was to test the ads in a test environment and that was my reason for starting this thread. I invited users to try the test system and provide feedback on the ads. For the most part, that feedback was similar to my own reaction. It wasn't great to have the new ads, but it wasn't terrible and probably something that could be tolerated. I personally used the test system almost exclusively for nearly a month, on my computer, iPad, and iPhone. I didn't personally encounter any issues. When we went live with the ads on Sunday, I revived this thread in order to collect what I knew would be a bunch of complaints. Many posters hated the entire idea of video ads. Others could live with the main ad that is embedded in the upper part of the page, but didn't like the sticky player that appeared after users scrolled past the main ad. Some felt, like me, that they could live with the new ads. But, to say that the reaction was anything but overwhelmingly negative would be a misrepresentation. Part of the issue was the content of the ads. The system we are using uses filler content between ads. Most users, including me, virtually saw no actual advertisements. Instead, we were treated with the same filler content over and over again. Frankly, this was a very poor start to what I expected to be an unwelcome addition to the website even in the best circumstances. Several posters proposed introducing paid memberships that would either reduce or eliminate ads or asking for voluntary contributions in lieu of the video ads. For the time being, I have reduced the deployment of the ads to eliminate some complaints and provide time to work out the kinks. I am not exactly sure what we will do going forward.

The final thread at which I'll look today shares a lot in common with the first thread. Like that thread, it was posted in the "Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)" forum. Also, like that thread, I ended up locking it. Titled, "Disruptive student in class", the original poster says that her child's 4th grade class has a student who is a "hitter". Apparently last year this student was known for hitting other students and on the first day of school this year slapped a classmate in the face. The original poster is concerned that the child remained in class, says the behavior frightens her, and wants to know if this is "acceptable and normal" at MCPS. Over the years I have read a number of such threads and the challenge is always the same. How are the needs of one child balanced with those of the other students in a class when what is best for the first student is problematic for the others? Again, like the earlier thread about the fight, restorative justice naysayers showed up to make snide remarks and completely mislead about the goals and practices of restorative justice. For the most part, posters agree that this sort of thing is not unusual, but they don't think it is appropriate. However, there is disagreement about what should be done. Some posters want students such as this one isolated to special classrooms, others want them sent home to learn remotely. Some posters blame the child's parents for what they believe to be a failed job at parenting. Others blame the failure by nearly everyone involved to "provide a comfortable and safe environment for the child with special needs". This view received support from a self-identified teacher who believes simply providing teachers more training could resolve most of the problems. Some of the proposals offered by posters conflict with existing law which led to arguments about whether the law should be changed. By the end of the thread it was simply a dispute about remote learning and whether that was appropriate for disruptive students and, if so, whether it would be legal or effective.