Wednesday's Most Active Posts

The "College and University Discussion" forum was on fire yesterday with three out of the top four threads coming from that forum. The thread with the most replies — by some measure — and the second most views was titled, "Schools That Aren't Easy to Get To". The parent of a high school junior says that as she has started thinking about higher education, the fact that many schools under consideration are in locations to which it is difficult to travel has become a concern. The original poster asks how much of a factor this has been for others. It was surprising to me that, despite the significant lead in number of replies this thread received, I was not aware of it until just now. I just took a quick glance through the 7 page thread and, as far as I can tell, the thread has stayed on-topic and contains mostly helpful replies. Frankly, that is rather remarkable for the Colleges forum.

The thread that led in number of views yesterday and was third in number of replies was posted in the same forum and titled, "Ugh…sophomore daughter says she is getting loan forgiveness". The thread is not really about colleges or universities but rather the fact that the original poster's daughter, who is a sophomore in college, is now eligible to apply to have her college loan debt forgiven. The original poster does not think her daughter should be eligible because she hasn't graduated yet. Other posters quickly pointed out that much, if not most, such debt is held by those who didn't graduate. Most posters supported the daughter getting the loan forgiven. The original poster, giving the appearance of being a different poster, then posted to say that she had told her child to opt out of forgiveness. This predictably provoked a number of incredulous responses. I didn't notice this sock puppeting when I read part of the thread yesterday, but noticed it just now. I've now discovered that the original poster was responsible for a number of other sock puppet posts in the thread, so I have locked it. Sock pupeting — the posting of responses as if you are a different poster, sometimes even replying to yourself — is a contant problem on DCUM since the anonymous posting makes it so easy. I am sure posters get away with it quite often, but I do manage to catch a decent number of them.

The third top thread from the "College and University Discussion" forum yesterday was titled, "What led your UVA accepted kid to pick a different VA public?" The original poster's son is considering colleges and has focused on the University of Virginia. The original poster is not sure that is the best fit for her child and is looking for perspectives showing how other Virginia public universities might work better for him. This is another thread of which I was not aware until now. Quickly skimming it suggests that it mostly stayed on topic with substantive and helpful replies. The one exception was a brief diversion regarding James Madison University which included a post of the irritating Jan Brady "Sure Jan" gif. Not only was that post unnecessary, but the response was apparently aimed at the wrong poster. Nevertheless, all in all, a pretty good showing for this forum.

The only thread yesterday to compete with the "College and University" threads at the top was in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. Titled, "Accepting the AP as your kids' stepmom", the original poster wants to know from anyone who has done this how they interact. As an aside the acronym "AP" has many meanings on DCUM. It can stand for "Advanced Placement", "Au Pair", or "Affair Partner". To make this even more confusing, in rare instances (hopefully), the second two are one and the same. Generally, the relevant meaning can be determined by context but from this thread's title alone I was genuinely unsure. However, I quickly figured out it was "Affair Partner" in this case. Threads about the so-called "other woman" tend to follow the same pattern in becoming debates about why the cheating spouse is not held equally, if not more, responsible than the affair partner. This thread takes that turn in the third reply. I've only looked at a few posts in the thread but it looks like this thread is pretty much just like every other thread of the sort. Probably not worth reading unless you are completely new to the topic or are personally invested in the subject for some reason.