This Weekend's Most Active Posts

From the very beginning of the series I've mentioned how the active threads make me feel out of touch with this website, despite owning and operating it for nearly two decades. This weekend's threads with the most engagement reemphasize that feeling.

Leading this weekend in number of replies and second in number of views was a thread posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum titled, "How upset would you be? Close friend missing my DD's wedding." The original poster writes that one member of a group of four close friends of hers is unable to attend her daughter's wedding due to the date conflicting with that of a co-worker's wedding. This despite the group of five friends excitedly talking about the wedding for over a year. In all honesty, I am baffled that this topic would interest anyone, yet it reached 18 pages of replies in just two days. At least one poster must have also thought things were a bit strange because I received a report asking if the original poster was trolling (she wasn't). I haven't read the thread other than a few posts here and there just to see what was going on. As best I can tell, most of the discussion is a back and forth about the importance of the other wedding to the friend and why it got the nod over the original poster's daughter's wedding. For her part, the original poster appears to have accepted whatever advice she was offered and seems to have reconciled herself to the situation.

Reversing the ranking of replies and views, another thread in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum was first in views and second in replies. Titled, "Husband goes with other families on vacation without me and toddler", it describes a pretty bizarre situation (in my opinion at least) in which the original poster says that her husband arranged a ski trip in Europe with another family. Naturally, the original poster would like to go along with their own child since the other family also has a child. But, her husband refuses the idea because of expense and the added complication of traveling with a child. Admittedly, I can see how people would have opinions on this topic, but I am still astonished that it is one of the most popular threads over the weekend. At any rate, a bunch of the replies suggest that the husband is having an affair which may or may not be the case, but the debate over which probably drove most of the thread's traffic.

Third in number of replies and fourth in number of views was a thread titled, "Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Northwestern, other Ivies What Does It Take ?" in the "College and University Discussion" forum. As I understand the original post, the title is not really representative of the topic. The original poster states that a student's stats alone are not enough to get into the top universities. As such, the original poster asks at what point in the list of top colleges are stats enough? The poster then goes on to argue that applying to a top SLAC might be a better idea. My main takeaway from this post was that even after all these years, I am still not exactly sure for what "SLAC" is an acronym. I know it has something to do with liberal arts colleges and a quick Google search suggests that it might stand for "Selective Liberal Arts Consortium" but that consortium seems to have disbanded. Regardless, it appears that most responders are not buying the original poster's argument.

Another top thread, third in number of views and fifth in number of replies, was also in the "College and University Discussion" forum. Titled, "Experienced Parents: What was DCUM right/wrong about?" the thread's subject is self-explanatory. Again, I haven't read the thread, but this highlights something that has become a bit of pet peeve of mine: speaking about "DCUM" as if it were a monolithic entity. DCUM is used by hundreds of thousands of posters, none of whom agree with each other on everything. It's true that consensuses occasionally develop, but — in my experience — that is particularly rare in the "College and University Discussion" forum. So, while I understand the original poster's intentions with the thread, I assume that DCUM posters probably had multiple perspectives on every item that someone thinks DCUM got wrong or right.