What sucks

[BainsBane]

Is not that people post about woo, white privilege, sexism, or any other subject but that people then come along and create 20 more threads mocking the post. It seems to me that is how GD gets clogged up with tons of posts on a single issue. Yes, I realize I've just added to the transformation of GD into Meta, but I wonder if others feel the same about the tons of follow up and mocking threads. Would you also like to see a disagreement be confined to the original thread so that the GD feed could show a wider variety of subjects?

[scarletwoman]

1. It's just the way it is. I gave up on complaining about it when Michael Jackson died,

and just got busy hiding threads. And that was before we had "trash by keyword" - which makes it even easier.

[dionysus]

2. what sucks is i knew this was a meta thread before i clicked on it, and clicked anyways....

[Journeyman]

3. Welcome to DU, circa 2002 . . .

My favored response is to not take too much of it seriously. Indeed, most of what gets posted here is irrelevant to my life, so I seek what nuggets I can find and wade out of the tailings as fast as I can. So try not to get stuck in the muck, it's definitely not worth your time.

[JaneyVee]

4. Republicans go back to work destroying the planet tomorrow.

[mike_c]

5. on the other hand, a sense of humor is often the best way to keep a good attitude....

We have to actually travel the road to social change. Along the way we can improve the journey a bit by laughing at ourselves and our world. We can do the hard work of making a better world and still joke about our foibles at the same time. Or at least I certainly hope we can!

[BainsBane]

6. I can appreciate that

but what bugs me is that after people that do that, someone who first posted something quite reasonable gets blamed for starting a war (whether gender, race, woo, whatever) and "dividing" DU, when the issue is that some have trouble respecting the concerns of others and feel compelled to either make a mockery of them or post some sort of follow up designed to deligitmate the concerns raised in the original post.

[mike_c]

7. this community encourages disagreement and partisanship....

It just does. That's not one of it's most appealing qualities, but I think it might be one of its most valuable ones. The challenge is to learn how to participate respectfully, or at least just carefully. I've been posting here since 2002, and in that time I've learned a tremendous amount about respectful discourse-- I mean, I cannot overstate how valuable DU has been for me in that respect. But for everyone who learns over the years, there are dozens of new members every day who still have to learn those lessons in making points without being too much of a jerk about it. It is a process. We're all participants. Threads like this-- meta though they might be-- bring attention back to our collective need to learn how to do it better.

[dionysus]

8. nice post, hitler.

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. I'm tired of posts suggesting new rules

Just let a discussion board be a discussion board, for cripes sake. Who cares, really?

[BainsBane]

10. except if there is a post you don't think should exist

Then you insist on telling others they shouldn't post it. I guess you just can't let a discussion board be a discussion board, for cripes sake.

[alcibiades_mystery]

11. Is this like when Christians claim that not tolerating their intolerance is also intolerance?

Oooof.

Basta.

[BainsBane]

12. No, it's like complaining about someone wearing black jeans

because only you get to wear the black jeans.

[BainsBane]

14. I take it to mean creative speculation type stuff

conspiracy theories and healing methods without an evidentiary basis to support their effectiveness. I could be wrong though.