Two things:
Point the first:
I don’t want to know what happens on facebook. If I wanted to know what happens on facebook, I would go on facebook. I don’t want to know what happens on twitter, instagram, or any of the other brain-dead socio-pathic-media spittoons out there.
You are posting on Blue Mass Group, a discussion web, the purpose of which, and the rules thereby, is to promote actual and original discussion.
And I CERTAINLY don’t see how any post that is merely a screen shot of a conversation that happened someplace else, and contains no commentary besides the title doesn’t fall afoul of the rules and the spirit of BMG.
WHAT? THE? FUCK?
This is not that and it enrages me that people are trying to dumb BMG down to the level of facebook. Don’t. Do. That.
I don’t give a dry french fart for either facebook or twitter yet now have to strive to prevent the rot from extending into BMG… WTF, all over again.
If you want to splat brain-dead, faux pithy, lowest-common-denominator sniping and simpleminded memes, there are places to do that and you’re welcome to them. Don’t do that here.
Point the second:
I sure hope the converse isn’t happening: that conversations here don’t get splatted, out of context and without nuance, up against some pathetic social-moronic wall of self-abuse. I would hope that would not happen… and if it did happen I would hope the editors would take action.
Well, there have been candidates and elected officials who link a contribution they made to BMG on their FB feed and I think that is OK.
I think that’s quite different from what petr is objecting to.
In point of fact, please note that petr wrote:
I don’t think that a candidate or elected official who links a contribution they made to BMG on their FB feed is doing anything “out of context and without nuance”.
You’re gonna love my next post.
Post and let post (except spammers).
Surely you jest! “You are posting on Blue Mass Group, a discussion web, the purpose of which, and the rules thereby, is to promote actual and original discussion.” This site has become a bubble wherein a group of lefties will only talk with each other, mostly reinforcing their own unrealistic ideas. I know from personal experience that anyone who dares to express an opposing viewpoint is treated like shit. And, Petr, you are one of the biggest hypocrites here, along with Somerville Tom. You guys just can’t tolerate an opposing point of view: you are the ultimate bigots.
“Treated like shit” means that we dared to disagree with you.
You’ve thrown a LOT of shit around here, sir. You should not be surprised when some of it comes back on you.
Edgar, I think you’re almost completely wrong here. I think you point out a particular danger, however.
With short opinionated posts, we run the risk of becoming an annoying bubble of lefties “who will only talk with each other, reinforcing their own ideas.” If posters shortchange readers on evidence and reasoning, there’s nothing left but a bunch of Marxists arguing about how many capitalists can dance on the head of a pin.
I don’t want to go back to the days of obnoxious trolls (for example, DFW), but I learned a lot about my thinking by arguing with them.
Solution: let a thousands posts bloom.
Edgar, your “opposing points of view” have gone downhill as of late, so I’m not surprised they are met with hostility. As far as “ultimate bigots”, there are some “fine people” in your favored administration that better meet that standard.
Do better. Be better.
If/When you someday have a valid opposing viewpoint, rather than a knee jerk antipathy to ‘lefties’, I’ll tolerate it and engage it head on. I’m not holding my breath. When your viewpoint is shit, don’t be surprised to be treated in exactly that manner.
I haven’t been posting (or commenting) much of late, but I agree with Petr: a lot of “posts” have been little more than an excuse for comments.
Edgar comes to the same conclusion, for the wrong reasons but one, posters need not include evidence or reasoning when they assume they’re just right.
I started blogging in the early days of the blogosphere. Etiquette required hyperlinks to provide 1) evidentiary support and 2) new sources of information. We may not need the same degree of hyperlinking these days, but the implied ethic–that posters should elucidate and educate, not just opinionate–should be preserved.
Thanks for this. Reflects my feeling.
OK, editor will chime in.
I am mostly for giving people a long leash, and letting them post what they want, as long as it’s not blatantly insulting or offensive. And as you may notice, sometimes we fail to discipline that. This post is itself larded with unnecessary vehemence and profanity, far more than necessary to make its point.
We could, friends, use more really high-quality content. That means: informed and informative, with links to reputable sources; economizing vitriol (since outright scrubbing it seems unlikely on a political site in 2017); and a strong dose of good humor and humility would go a long way.
There are plenty of places to yell at strangers on the internet, and I think I’d much prefer to learn something.
Apparently not. Got your attention, didn’t it? And it wasn’t my first attempt: the first link I posted was to an earlier reply asking much more nicely that got crickets in reply.
High quality content comes from engagement. It comes from, first, reading well and second, being willing to put your ideas in writing in response and with more than 140 characters. It can’t happen in a ‘hit-n-run’ situation where somebody posts a screen shot of part of a conversation that happened elsewhere. That’s little more than vandalism, actually.
I have to say, also, part of it may be technical: prior to the latest revamping of the site, and for all previous versions, we were able to A) see ‘new’ postings (posted since last we looked) and 2) we were able to go to individual posters ‘pages’ and see what they posted most recently. In this way we could, should we have desired, occasionally avoid the time-wasters or ranters. Without those two features, 1) people have to read, and sometimes re-read, nearly everything and only then decide what’s the signal to noise ratio and B) it’s harder to follow individual conversations. Under those circumstances, some people aren’t going to put in the time to determine the signal to noise ratio and just post in the ‘hit-n-run’ style, thus increasing the signal to noise ratio for others annoyance. And, then, if there are more than four or five ‘hit-n-run’ posts in a row, the sidebar is filled with them and the previous conversations, some of which some of us might be attempting to follow assiduously, get crowded out and we have to do even more work, if we are so inclined, to find and continue commenting on them…
This is a great point.. I would add that it is now much more difficult to see if someone replied to something you wrote in the past.
It is a true tragedy that you have to sully your eyes by scrolling past posts that are beneath your dignity.
Forgive me, M’Lord… I did not realize that my time is less valuable than yours and I shall await your next expulsion of wind with all the dignity it deserves.
You have ably demonstrated your ability to assess that wind’s value.
My appalling editing in my comments is fair game. But censoring brief posts? Silly.
I think that I shall, hereinafter, refer to you as ‘Rosie.” How you like that?
Why “Rosie,” you ask? Good question. Here’s the answer: Rosie Ruiz may have also thought that “brief” was a good answer to a long question. It was not and she was wrong. Nothing wrong with running a long race. Also nothing wrong with taking the T. It’s when you mistake the one for the other, is when you get in trouble, Rosie…