Wednesday's Most Active Threads

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Today marks one year since I started writing the "most active threads" series. So, I thought that I would take a moment to revisit the origin of these blog posts. Back in 2007 when we moved to this website platform after two years of using another, my vision of the home page blog was that it would be a place for DCUM users who have an interest in writing to contribute blog posts. A communal blog for DCUM posters, if you will. That worked okay for a while with a small group of writers offering regular articles that kept the content fresh and interesting. But, slowly, those authors moved on to other endeavors. That left me as the primary contributor and I was often pressed for time or, more often, simply out of ideas. As a result, the home page content grew stale. Often it was little more than republished press releases. A year ago, the most recent post on this blog was nearly 10 months old. Moreover, we were at the beginning of what would be a seemingly non-stop decline in advertising revenue. Among the advice I received from advertising partners was to keep content fresh. "Surely, that is not a problem for DCUM", I thought. "Our content changes every few minutes if not more often." But, that was the forum content, not the home page. So, I stretched my imagination to its limits — obviously a very short horizon — and came up with the idea of writing about active topics on the website. If popular threads would provide writing prompts, I could write about anything, I believed. My goal was not to attract readers — indeed I couldn't imagine why anyone would read such posts — but only to appease Google's search engine and algorithm. The result was my first post in this series. Originally I also posted on the weekend but eventually stopped that in order to give myself a break. But, outside of weekends I am pretty sure that I have posted every day except the day of my brother's funeral and the day we drove our younger son to college.

The two most active threads yesterday were ones that I've previously covered. So I'll start with the third most active which was titled, "Will I cause an eating disorder?" and posted in the "General Parenting Discussion" forum. This was a strange post in which the original poster went into great detail about how she provides only healthy food to her two kids but fears that this might provoke an eating disorder. The original poster made frequent replies in the thread, often asserting that she was not bragging, but also being increasingly critical of other parents. She also started discussing how she strictly limits her children's access to screens. I don't know exactly why, but this thread really caught the attention of users and it grew to be 12 pages in just a few hours. Several posters started to think the original poster couldn't be real and reported the thread to me as a possible troll. The original poster seemed to be identifying herself as the original poster in every response and, while her posts became more surreal by the minute, I could not conclusively identify her as a troll. Then, I noticed that she had sock puppeted the occasional post and, therefore, I began to look more thoroughly. I noticed that 12 minutes before starting this thread, the original poster had started another one in which she said she was pregnant with her second child and her husband was pressuring her to breastfeed, something that she was reluctant to do. In addition to the discrepancy in the number of children, I suspect that a poster who is obsessed about healthy food and controlling screen time would attempt to breastfeed regardless of the hurdles. I never know what to make of posters such as this. Are both threads fake? Is one of them legitimate? Is there some weird set of circumstances that I'm missing in which both could be legitimate? Why would anyone devote so much effort to a fake thread? I don't have answers to any of these questions, but I locked both threads.

Next was a thread posted in the "College and University Discussion" titled, "Uncomfortable truth: non-partiers wind up working for the partiers". What the original poster means by "partiers" are fraternity members. In a full throated defence and promotion of the Greek system, the original poster has composed one of the most obnoxious posts I've read in ages. In the original poster's world, women exist only to be "hot" and men exist only to be useful for her sons' advancement. The poster contends that the Greek system is terrific because it teaches "the importance of socializing, sizing people up at a glance, social drinking, and how to present yourself so that you're accepted and click with the executive class." The fraternity brothers learn to engage with people that can help them and avoid those who can't. There is no indication that the system teaches its members how to contribute to society or to help others. Rather, this poster views everything through a lense of self-benefit. I've said before that the one sure way to ensure that your post gets a lot of response is to get everything wrong. Viewed that way, it is understandable that this thread was among yesterday's most active. Suffice it to say that posters voiced lots of objections. But, I think one poster summed things up best by simply writing that the thread was the "Awful post of the day".

Third was a thread titled, "BASIS Equitable Access Preference" and posted in the "DC Public and Public Charter Schools" forum. First some background. BASIS DC is a public charter school in Washington, DC associated with the BASIS network of private schools. BASIS emphasizes academic achievement and is geared towards high-performing students. There is an inherent conflict between the requirement of public schools, including public charter schools, to meet the needs of any student who is admitted and the BASIS philosophy of programming for high achievement. To a great extent, BASIS is a public school that would like to operate like a private school. Many of the BASIS proponents agree with that sentiment. BASIS critics argue that the school should act like any other public school and be supportive of all students. BASIS is often criticized for neglecting students with special needs and finding methods of weeding out underperforming students. Generally DC public charter schools are expected to provide equal opportunities for all District students to be admitted. Hence, the infamous lottery system. But, schools are allowed to provide special opportunities for underprivileged students. This thread is about the introduction by BASIS of admissions preferences for at-risk students. The original poster is disappointed by this because "[u]nderperforming disruptive students are already a problem at BASIS". As with any BASIS thread, responses are sharply divided between BASIS supporters, most of whom are unhappy about the new policy, and BASIS detractors, most of whom think BASIS should be doing more to support at-risk students. There is fairly broad agreement that BASIS was probably forced to accept this policy in order to expand and that BASIS will probably do its best to encourage the new students to leave once they are accepted. Much of the thread is devoted to aspects of the inherent conflict I described above, with some posters arguing that BASIS should be allowed to act more like a private school and others arguing the opposite.

The final thread at which I'll look today was posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum and titled, "Disagree with Daughter’s ED decision". For those not familiar with the terminology, "ED" refers to "early decision" which is a type of college application in which an applicant agrees to commit to the university if they are accepted. Colleges are believed to give an ED applications extra consideration because they know the student is serious. Due to the required commitment, students should only apply for ED admissions if the school is one that they definitely want to attend and can afford. I had to smile as I read the first post in this thread because I immediately recognized the original poster as a notorious character who started a thread that became famous in the college forum. Several other posters also recognized him and welcomed him back. The original poster is upset that his daughter has chosen to apply ED to Tufts University which he does not feel is "on the rise" and is only strong in a few professional programs. His wife and daughter have told him to be quiet and the school counselor told him to get over it. Most of those responding agree that he should be quiet and get over it, that this is his daughter's decision and Tufts is a great school. The original poster's reaction is that "You people are nuts. Nuts!!", a sentiment with which probably few would disagree. But, he accepts that he should probably just be quiet. Most of the thread is devoted to debating the quality of Tufts, New York City magnet schools, and how much posters appreciate the original poster and enjoy his posts.