The Typical Forum Hack

[charles brough]

I have observed a few ways some posters wreck a forum thread. I would welcome any additions to the list you can think of.

 

In this type someone follows the first post with something that is really nonsense. Instead of skipping over it and leaving it to languish, another member attacks it for being "stupid" and the writer, a "moron." The author of it then attacks back and they both lapse into a protracted series of posts in which each does his best to insult and humiliate the other. Each is determined not to abandon the interchange first and hence seem to have giving up, Each wants to be the "victor." The forum runs on and on ten to twenty pages or so without the subject of the thread being treated seriously and intelligently. All intelligent would-be posters get out and go to another forum or thread.

 

The other forum thread wrecker is the few who love to nit-pick. That is, they like to find tiny exceptions to what you write, slight inaccuracies ("No, it was fifty five years ago" instead of about seventy or so). Or, they come up with puny exceptions that do not alter a sound generalization. Sometimes they will break up one of your sentences with unbacked up, contrary, statement that is purely and unmistakably only their opinion. When you go to the thread to find what follows your own last post, you find it broken up into a long seemingly endless scroll peppered with only trivial comments.

.

[belovelife]

its annoying isn't it

 

somtimes i relate things to threads that others do not find fitting, but i donot battle

 

i just start a new thread on the subject

[CraigD]

I have observed a few ways some posters wreck a forum thread. I would welcome any additions to the list you can think of.

 

In this type someone follows the first post with something that is really nonsense. Instead of skipping over it and leaving it to languish, another member attacks it for being "stupid" and the writer, a "moron."

Calling posts stupid or members morons is against our rules. Please alert us moderators and admins to behavior like this by clicking the “Report” button in the lower left corner of the offending post and submitting a report – we’ll try to get the offending member to mend his ways, and failing that, suspend his posting privaleges.

 

The other forum thread wrecker is the few who love to nit-pick. That is, they like to find tiny exceptions to what you write, slight inaccuracies ("No, it was fifty five years ago" instead of about seventy or so). Or, they come up with puny exceptions that do not alter a sound generalization. Sometimes they will break up one of your sentences with unbacked up, contrary, statement that is purely and unmistakably only their opinion.

The rules demand that you back up your claims using links and references.

 

Following this rule has several salutary effects. It causes the poster to find and correct or avoid making inaccurate or incorrect statements. It allows the reader to easily read the post with improved confidence in its accuracy and correctness, while freeing him from the burden of researching the material himself. Thus, supporting your claims is a courtesy, not doing so a dereliction.

 

When you fail to back up your claims, make incorrect ones, and are corrected or questioned by another member, he’s doing what you should have done before posting the claims. Accusing him of nit-picking, puniness, or trivialness, and further claiming, again without support, that your errors are inconsequential, compounds your offense.

 

Don’t do this, Charles. If you refuse to follow our rules, you won’t be allowed to post here, an eventuality I’d personally regret, as I believe we share many opinions, and I often find your ideas interesting and insightful.

 

Hypography is a site for science enthusiasts, its rules intended to make it welcoming and enjoyable for people with respect for objective reality, rather than rhetorical assertion. Speculation is welcome and vital, but should be stated as such, not treated as territory to be defended against questioning and criticism.

[charles brough]

Following this rule has several salutary effects. It causes the poster to find and correct or avoid making inaccurate or incorrect statements. It allows the reader to easily read the post with improved confidence in its accuracy and correctness, while freeing him from the burden of researching the material himself. Thus, supporting your claims is a courtesy, not doing so a dereliction.

 

When you fail to back up your claims, make incorrect ones, and are corrected or questioned by another member, he’s doing what you should have done before posting the claims. Accusing him of nit-picking, puniness, or trivialness, and further claiming, again without support, that your errors are inconsequential, compounds your offense.

 

Craig, my posts are the result of re-interpreting much of the data of the social sciences in a way that alligns the facts with the otherwise ignored implication of us all being small-group primates. It folds out that we have not changed from that and that the only thing that has enabled us to form societies has been our ability to unite people into the larger groups by using ideological systems to bond us into them. Social theory consesus does not interpret their data in line with that. I re-interpret the data in order to do so..

 

As long as the data does support my re-interpretion of it, I fail to see why or even how I could possibly reference it all, it would be every sentence. I have to operate on the premise that the reader will need to show where social science data contradicts what I state. This does not happen. Few ever put in references. My observation is that on the rare occassions where someone puts in a post with a reference is because he had just read the reference and starts a new thread based on it

 

Of course I'll leave this forum if I am not wanted, but I will always balk at responses that shred up my post with picky comments that are the clearly the result of ill-will because nearly every point is interpreted negatively. I say "picky" in, for example, mentioning a rare exception to what everyone else (well, allright, almost everyone else) would regard as a valid generalization and then ending it with some comment about me be "wrong" etc. We have to speak in social science in generalizations. You do, I do, we all have to, or almost all (!). I suppose there are even exceptions to that!:blink: