Endless Threads and Arguments

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Three small complaints. Hope I can keep this very short.

  1. I get weary of conversation threads that go on for dozens or hundreds of responses. The subject inevitably changes a bunch of times, quite possibly deserving a separate thread.

  2. I’m bothered by how often one poster jumps on another one (and it often turns reciprocal). There are always many ways to interpret a comment. And English words aren’t all used the same way across cultures. What if we all assumed the best, instead of launching into arguments and name-calling? Asking a question for clarification is great, especially if it doesn’t come with a burden of insult.

  3. It’s easy to reply to one person’s comment, when you mean to reply to the original poster (OP) or the whole thread. When someone responds to me, instead of the OP, I plan to tell myself, “They meant to reply to the OP” and get over it.

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Thanks @RebeccaF .

This is a great place to be but I agree that we can all do with a reminder about how to behave here.

Here’s a link to the site FAQ.

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Thank you! Of course we can all decide whether to keep reading a thread, but I agree with your comments. It is easy to attribute motives and react less sensitively online.

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The mods can split the thread. Imho they should when that happens. I mod on other Discourse forums and do it frequently.

There are some subjects that can be 100s of posts long on the same subject: imho that is quite fine.

Totally agree. This is one of the most aggressive forums I have been a part of. It also makes me uncomfortable. It is really strange that it would be so, since we are all hosts, and, assumingly, gracious to our guests.

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Maybe the stress of having to be constantly gracious to our guests, even if they are annoying and we can’t wait to see the back of them, means we have to let out our not-so-nice-side elsewhere. :rofl:

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