Threadheaders, keeping cogent in a chaotic world by dreamtrove

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:

I pretty much live under a rock except for you guys, so I often don't get your clever thread titles, but I generally try to look in every thread to see what they're about.

Mine are usually too obscure. I tend to think that everyone else is bombarded with the myriad of information that pours into my head with every waking hour. Oddly, it's the only way I've found to keep the tinnitus at bay. As such, I tend to assume that everyone else is plugged into the exact same pop-culture and trivia that I am.

Mike

Work is the curse of the Drinking Class.
- Oscar Wilde

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Tuesday, November 24, 2009 5:10 PM

Quote:

No, not ever. It's just vandalism and censorship of what someone else has written. No different than hacking the site and changing its content.

Good point.

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Tuesday, November 24, 2009 6:45 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Anthony has left me little to say, and he was way politer about it than I woulda been.

I think it's asinine for snark purposes, as it renders threads unfindable and thus impedes discussion, and my opinion of it as sheer malicious vandalism is something so unpleasant I'll just leave it to your imagination...

Me, I want others to THINK, and some people want others to sit down, shut up and OBEY.

Those people are my enemies, always will be.
And they show themselves in their behavior.

"Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit."

I know what side of that I am on, do you ?

-F

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Tuesday, November 24, 2009 8:50 PM

Actually, that was my nod to the general pro-anarchy slant of the forum. "Lou Dobbs fired by Mexican Jews" is funny, in context. Going Rouge is potentially funny, if it wasn't 100% predictable, and a lil sexist.

Frem, you might be being the anti-Frem here. Perhaps you are setting rules for others to obey to lessen the anarchy inherit in the free society.

Oh, and [/snark]

But my point here is that this is not a problem. Neither change obscured the message of the thread poster. Only the poster can edit the thread title on the page anyway, so they inevitably change back. There are all sorts of other little tricks. Hacking, exploiting bugs, botting, spiders, whatever trick there is that you can do, you can do, as long as people respect one another.

I take Tony's response is a typical instinctive personal attack. I don't clash with Tony on threads, and I wasn't singling him out by using his header. The human is a pretty simple animal, and we react this way, as if any commentary on us is a personal attack.

For instance, it could be that Tony just disagrees with me that the lawlessness of RWED is okay, and this had no connection to my use of his thread title as an example.

However, I took it as an attack, because I'm also a simple human.

Once stated, peers influence the attitudes of subsequent posters, and the thread then continues to generate an artificial consensus which is an obvious psychological development, which is...

...totally off the subject. Tony nitpicked my concession to a free society, and everyone piled on. Fine. That wasn't the point.

The point was that effective communication is about lead ins that tell you what they are leading into.

Here's an example:

Ever been to a website where there's some important information about some subject but instead of making any of the above text about the above information pertinent to the subject not stated above into a hyper link they instead click with a Click here
?

Of course. We all have. My point was that I notice when I scan through and decide which threads to read with a limited time allotment, I select ones that are explicit, and ones which are familiar, and have a topic which interests me.

I'm sure we've all posted threads that reveal nothing about their content, and did so unconsciously. I've been a communication junkie kick for a while, trying to figure out how to get my message across, should I have one. So, I from time to time post things about it. Usually, I get attacked, rather than get any kind of decent feedback on the idea, thus illustrating my lack of communications skills, and so here I am caught in an infinite loop.

Anyway, I didn't mean that Baby Steps wasn't a fitting and clever title, I did click on it, but it was one of many that required more work from the reader to access the information. That doesn't mean that it should have to be named something like crepuscular ambience, esp. lest someone think that it is a discussion about the phantasmagorical pyrotechnics of certain nocturnal hematophagia.

I'm actually just interested in what does and doesn't work, and whether or not messages get across, and to what extent the interference of others, essential to communication affects the outcome. Positing that minor title changes have little or no effect, compared to, say, a full fledge threadjack. So, to get back to the topic at hand, my apologies to Anthony if he took offense at my using his example, it wasn't an attack on you or on the thread, it was picked at random. Actually, I originaly went with one of Wulf's, but then deleted it figuring that I do disagree with Wulf a fair amount of the time, and that he would take it personally.

All of that said,

Mike,

But we *do* all live in a stream of consciousness and share your own personal experiences, which is why all of you got the above reference a couple of paragraphs ago.

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Tuesday, November 24, 2009 8:57 PM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

I don't care that you didn't find Baby Steps informative and used it as an example.

You may be unaware that the other day I blew up at some systemic thread title vandalism that replaced thread titles with vile, personal insults and crass lewd remarks. I think it was 4-6 threads retitled over the course of a few minutes, with me and others scrambling to restore the titles.

This actually made me so upset that I cursed rather profanely myself, and had one of those unfriendly white-knuckle fist making moments.

So when you said vandalizing thread titles was okay, THAT was what set me off.

--Anthony

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 2:54 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Some headers never fly because they don't convey anything about the topic. Sometimes the initial post doesn't. I'm okay with modifying headers, but the core should remain. I've been guilty of this sort of obfuscation editing, but not intentionally.

Great topic. We are after all a culture that is inundated by the sound bite, the ad bite, and the twitter tweet - maximum impact, minimum sounds. We're all students of the short tease whether we like it or not.

"Baby Steps" was DT's example of something that doesn't communicate well, though the title of this thread (which has been changed to "Threadscored" - that's also a not so good) could be used as well. "Thread Headers" definitely says what the title is about, but it's not much of a come on, a call to action "click."
For both titles I'd suggest a hyphen followed by a clarifier.

Baby Steps - Gold in the Desert
Thread headers - New Forum rules

Ok, those aren't great either, but you get my point. Think Peanut Spews and dial it down a couple twenty notches.

Or, let's all be individuals and just do it our own way.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 2:55 AM

I found "Baby Steps" intriguing enough to make me click on it. There are some threads I *don't* click on, just because the title tells me all I need to know. "Pedophile Jews to nuke USA yesterday!" tells me everything I need to know about its contents: It's a PN thread, it contains no useful info, and it contains a mangled word-salad with a net truth rating of zero. The ONLY time I'll click into such threads is to snark them and poke the PirateMonkey. Often, it only takes ONE WORD to goad him into full-on mental meltdown mode. "Neuschwabenland" is one such example. ;)

Thread titles that pique my curiosity get me clicking. So in that, DT, we're not very alike.

"Lou Dobbs fired by Mexican Jews" works because I got lucky with that one. PN is a freak for Dobbs. PN is a freak about Jews, and almost as much of a freak about "the illegals". It was a perfect storm of everything he fears. It wrote itself, really. I mean, could you imagine the fear PN would cower in if he thought our southern border were being overrun by Jews from Mexico?!

That thread told you not only what it was going to be about (Dobbs being "fired" - by someone nefarious, no doubt), but who wrote it. Kismet!

As to the vandalism, I find myself largely in agreement with Anthony and Frem. I say this as someone who HAS participated in such vandalism. In future, I'll try to constrain such practices to putting thread titles back to their original, intended form. The only way to really combat the title changes (short of disabling or disallowing that "feature" in the first place) seems to be to just make sure the titles keep changing back to their originals, until the vandals get sick of trying. That's what was going on Sunday, and that was what was making Anthony so angry.

By the way, don't make Anthony angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry. (I, however, found it rather hilarious because it was so unexpected and uncharacteristic, but I'm a twisted bastard, so your mileage may vary...)

Mike

Work is the curse of the Drinking Class.
- Oscar Wilde

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 4:36 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

I agree with this wholeheartedly for any forum you're on.

I belong to a few technical forums and one thing I can't stand is how many threads read things like "Help!", "I need HELP!!!!", or any of a million other totally non-descriptive headlines.

The real problem with posts like those in a technical forum is that the same damn questions get asked over and over and over again because the search features of the site will never find the questions to these answers because they weren't stated in the header. The reverse side of that is that I'm sure plenty of questions I've had to ask myself were probably already answered numerous times as well, but I don't have time to click on 1,000 threads and hope to get lucky.

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned."

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 4:41 AM

6ix: Yup, that IS a definite issue with tech forums. It's a huge part of why I finally burned out and walked away from the vast majority of the Honda forums I was on for years. How many times can you really answer the "Car won't start - cranks but won't start!" question, before you cease to really convey information, and start conveying disdain. 99.9% of the time, that question, when dealing with a 20-year-old Honda, gets answered with "Main Relay". But I got so tired of explaining the hows and whys that I ended up just posting two words: "Main Relay", and logging off. At that point, I was pointing someone at the problem, but not really helping any more than that. So of course, the very next thing they do is post a new thread, titled, "Main Relay?"

In a real-world events forum, we HOPEFULLY have a few new questions or issues come up now and again. Hopefully.

Mike

Work is the curse of the Drinking Class.
- Oscar Wilde

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 4:52 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
So of course, the very next thing they do is post a new thread, titled, "Main Relay?"

Ha... yep...

There's no way to stop it though. I just think there are a ton of people who's brains don't think the way ours do about those things. Pretty hard to get the 98% of the people who come to a site that don't read the forum rules to stop breaking them.

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned."

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 5:27 AM

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
"Malicious editing is okay"

Hello,

No, not ever. It's just vandalism and censorship of what someone else has written. No different than hacking the site and changing its content.

Absolutely. The thread title ( subject), in particular, should belong to the original poster. His post should be subject to quoting and comment, as should any other subsequent posts in the thread, but the title, as chosen by the originator, should be unchangeable by any other person. I'm surprised the software allows that at all...

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 7:21 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

So, I'm going to use this opportunity to try out a new header which will hopefully be more descriptive than either the original or the current.

BTW- "Going Rouge" just totally went by me. A little dyslexia goes a long way!

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 7:39 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

IMHO, editing threadlines can serve a useful purpose. I've done it on occasion to flag posts that are NOT PN's but sound like it. I've seen others edit threadlines for clarity or sometimes to track where the conversation has gone. Generally, I like the threadlines to stay pretty much the same... too much change makes it difficult to find an old thread in archive... but it's not an activity that twists my knickers unless it obscures the topic and meaning of the post.

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 9:50 AM

Tony,

My apologies. Sincerely. I misrepresented you, and I'm sorry.

You are correct. I missed that thread, and the associated vandalism. I'm working for the christmas season, and spending very little time here, still probably more than I should be.

I never meant to imply that thread vandalism was okay. I mean that "Lou Dobbs fired by Mexican Jews" was okay, because it was social commentary, disagreeing with the initial social commentary of the original threadline.

BTW, nice edit to this title, whoever did it. It's very informative.

Pizmo,

The sabotage "Threadscored" was done to me by myself. I purposefully did not change the title on the page, because it was commentary. Anyone familiar with Anne McCaffrey would get the reference. It was an attempt to be clever, as I was under attack, by my own thread, while still keeping the title of the thread for those following it ;)

You're right about the tweetness of society.

Mike,

Me too, re: clicking on Baby Steps. Recently the BBC has experimented with this in their headlines, to see if people will click. I found that I did for about two weeks, and then I got sick of the gimmick.

I'm not saying that we need full disclosure headlines, or that we need anything, just to discuss what is effective.

Baby Steps is an effective tease, but only works if the person is curious. There are lots of similar ones that I don't click on.

It's like the difference between targeted and non-targeted advertising. I see a thread that says "I'm an obama healthcare bill thread" I avoid it. It did its job, but I expect partisan debates and don't have time or interest, but to be fair, I haven't read the thread. But if you're trying to catch the attention of those who are interested, then it succeeds. I don't even know whose thread it is.

As for John and Mexicans, I suspect just like Chemtrails and everything else, he picked it up because it was worth traffic. I think Lou Dobbs picked it up because it was worth traffic. I think hating mexicans is a gimmick.

I was saying that Lou Dobbs fired by mexican jews was fair. It's vandalism, but fair. It disguises nothing about the thread. Changing the thread title to CIA admits to UFO control from Nazi Jews... would be totally malicious, because no one would either recognize it or click on it.

oh, "help" subj lines are like "click here" links.

I see I'm winning the pro-anarchy award here with my extremely mild concession towards the anarchist crowd which I assumed ruled the forum.

What happened to the "we'd rather die than have mods" group that I joined?

They got old I guess, and traded in their reavers for landrovers.

Ack. I agree with Sig... [/snark]

"The only one who agrees with me is the blooducking lawyer"

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 10:17 AM

BYTEMITE

Quote:
What happened to the "we'd rather die than have mods" group that I joined?

I'm there, this board flourishes on the idea that If your arguments can't swim, don't go looking for the sharks. There aren't people to intervene to shut down arguments they disagree with, so the process is more truthful, at least on a personal level. I think even some of the more vocal "I can't believe so-and-so just said that!" crowd feels that way too.

Every board I've gone to that decided to have moderators capable of banning people and intervening, I've always thought it ruined the board dynamics and created an "authority vs. anti-authority" undercurrent.

Niki was I believe chased off her old board because of moderator issues.

Also, props to the new thread title. :) It has three layers of goodness in that it is clever, it represents the thread topic, and is an example of the thread topic.

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 10:25 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Just to clarify: I wasn't chased off the previous board by mod issues. I chose to leave and someone posted after I had that the mod had banned me. To the contrary, I had deleted my account when I left the board.

I've only been bannned twice; once for two weeks, from one forum, and that because of an argument between myself and another person who was attacking me; the owner of the board banned both of us to try and get past the issue. I was bannned, along with many others, from one other site because we questioned the moderator on an issue. A number of those people joined the site I set up just FOR those banned to be able to keep in touch with friends they'd made on the first site, and they've been there ever since. We do NOT ban people from the site I run, and haven't had to moderate anything since it went up.

I do agree wholeheartedly about problems in having mods. The problems I have seen have related exactly to those elucidated here...as well as to mods developing "preferences" and being pretty irresponsible in who they condemn and who they let get away with murder.

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 10:26 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

I myself do not want moderators. I do want people to stop vandalizing thread titles, and if I could offer the owner some updated software that prevented such things, I would.

As of now, all I can do is complain when it happens.

--Anthony

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 10:43 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
"The only one who agrees with me is the blooducking lawyer"

BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 3:49 PM

Niki

No need wasting time defending yourself for getting in a fight with a mod. People hate mods. It was a universal snark. Some of the people here have undoubtedly killed people. I don't think that someone is going to frown on someone who was kicked off a board.

Tony,

Embrace anarchy, learn tactics to defend yourself.

I'm going to share one. This works well if you have tabs, on the newest internet explorer, and on any firefox, you can open several links in tabs.

Now, take a thread on which the title has been changed. Like this one. Hit reply to each post, one after another, and see what the title of the thread is on that reply.

That will betray what the title was when that person responded. The first person to post the change will be your perp. That's how I caught Mike with the "Going Rouge."

Now I don't know if that was a ref to make up or whores via Moulin Rouge, but I assumed the former, wasn't sure. I ragged on him, but it was a snark. I thought it was clever, and inappropriate, but that's what humor was. I of course had thought of it before I even posted the thread, and was waiting for someone to do it.

I also expected someone to change "A Private Little War" to "Obama's Private Little War" a title I had pre-emptively vetoed. I have no faith that Obama has any control, but it doesn't matter. If we spiral into WWIII or at least another Vietnam because Obama is hell bent on it, or Rahm and co are, or if Obama is not, but he has so little control over his own administration that the backseat drivers are plowing us down into same said situation, doesn't make a lick of difference. I didn't want the partisan divisive thread, and I wanted to keep my star trek reference.

But that little click trick betrays who responded to what post, and who fucked with your thread title and when. Once you know who they are, they know better than to fuck with you.

You don't have to get medieval on their virtual ass, just let em know, in a sniperkitty kind of way, that you know.

Oh, hope this helps. Rather than lay out laws to change your environment, just learn how to use that environment to your advantage. Now here's me, changing the title of this thread. Again.

Sig,

lol

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 4:49 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
I'm there, this board flourishes on the idea that If your arguments can't swim, don't go looking for the sharks. There aren't people to intervene to shut down arguments they disagree with, so the process is more truthful, at least on a personal level. I think even some of the more vocal "I can't believe so-and-so just said that!" crowd feels that way too.

Ayep, and that's exactly what my problem with it is.

Changing a thread title for humor is annoying, but barely tolerable...

But the recent thing that riled folk around here was that someone started changing them in an intentional effort to shut down arguments they disagreed with - the very thing we treasure the LACK of on these boards, and misused a glitch of the system to do so, in effect showing their "true colors" for all to see.

There's a big difference between countering someone elses argument, and trying to shut them up.

I do not hold with the latter, I never will.

-F

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 11:12 PM

RIVERDANCER

The only thing I think a mod should be able to do is combine threads that are covering the same topic. I have often seen five different threads pop up at around the same time, all about the same thing. If it's something that interests me, I find myself following three or more conversations. It's not the absolute most annoying thing in the world, but it's not very time/space efficient. A threadlist doesn't need the same topic listed over and over and over, it's a waste. So, I wouldn't mind a mod who tracked and tidied that kind of thing, perhaps along with moving threads to the proper forum if they're started somewhere random and inconsistent with the subject. That kind of thing can make it easier to browse and find subjects you want to discuss. I also don't mind 'stickies' to prevent the same kinds of things being asked again and again by every person to join a forum. Those can be useful. That's a mod thing, I'm pretty sure. Some mods, sometimes, can be a valuable resource in answering questions. I don't mind those mods. We have a certain amount of content moderation here, to the extent that we have Troll Country. I think that's a good level of content moderating. Sometimes I think we could stand a little more of that, actually. Things have been left to fester that I personally thought could have gone to Troll Country, but maybe it's good that the criteria for that action is so minimal.
Anyway, what else were we talking about? Oh, title edits. Sometimes I've found such things to be very useful in filtering what I read. If someone 'un-vagues' a subject heading, so to speak, it can be immensely helpful. And sometimes if spelling or grammar is corrected, I like that too. What can I say, I'm an English major. Sometimes the 'humor' edits are funny, but most times they make me roll my eyes and think something like, "Really? Are we five?" And sometimes, as pointed out, they get quite hateful and malicious. I wasn't witness to this latest round of that, I guess, but I've seen some hateful stuff in the past. Even that, I sometimes find useful. It can denote a thread where a particularly venomous round of mudslinging is in progress, and I might want to avoid that. It can denote a thread started by a known troll or quasi-troll. Such subject edits have at times been used to draw admin attention to a thread that should be moved to a lower board, and that usually proves effective.
I guess, as with all things, it depends on the situation and personal outlook. I may shrug off something that someone else finds despicable, or someone may laugh at something I find offensive. I don't know what the solution is or if there even is one.
Oh, and I think being somewhat more detailed with thread subjects is a good thing. Sometimes one word can give you a lot of detail and be very expressive, but often you need a few more.

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Thursday, November 26, 2009 4:44 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I should have followed

Quote:
"The only one who agrees with me is the blood[s]ucking lawyer"

With

"They should all be destroyed!" (Muldoon)

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Thursday, November 26, 2009 5:09 AM

Dancer,

good ideas. The problem with mod is that it denotes power. Maybe we can find ways to do this in our acephalous society.

Thread title changes can be effective in separating out the tangled web of like threads. For instance

If there are three threads running on a topic of Afghanistan, and some people are talking about practical solutions, some about the culture of afghanistan, and all are tangled all tangled up in partisan bickering.

Retitle the threads to:

Afghanistan: Practical solutions
Afghanistan: Culture and stuff
Afghanistan: Who do you blame for this mess?

And then maybe the people discussing one subtopic can be nudged be random other members to "hey, take the blame to the blame thread before it turns into a flame war."

Now the only snag I see is that one problem that the forum has always had is that it rewards flame wars, pushing them to the top because they're the most recently posted. I think that if this is correctable, we could work on that. If not, we could at least push this sort of exchange into a small number of threads at the top, and then continue other more mellow conversations down below.

Sure, at the moment, the flames are low...

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Saturday, November 28, 2009 4:40 AM

Quote:

Niki

No need wasting time defending yourself for getting in a fight with a mod. People hate mods. It was a universal snark. Some of the people here have undoubtedly killed people. I don't think that someone is going to frown on someone who was kicked off a board.

You're right on all counts. And I say that as someone who WAS a mod on another forum. Word came down from "on high" (the site's owner and administrator) that profanity was to be disallowed, and warnings were to be given, then suspensions for limited times, then blocking and banning. And that was the beginning of the end of that board; within a week people were leaving, in droves. Then I posted up a long screed with what was REALLY going on behind the scenes, and what we were being told to do, and that I was no longer comfortable with the direction the board was going, so I let loose with honesty and invective, and then had no choice as a mod but to ban myself.

About 95% of that board's membership went to another site, and the old one just shriveled up and died. Cause of death? Moderation. So much for the old saying about all things in moderation, eh?

Mike

Work is the curse of the Drinking Class.
- Oscar Wilde

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Saturday, November 28, 2009 8:08 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Oh indeed.

Although it often goes beyond that.

One forum I was a moderator of, they rejected a certain person who was invaluable to the community because he was "too left" and they did not like his politics, and then *LIED* about their reasons to him and the users.

Mind you, this was small engine repair, which has dick to do with politics beyond the EPAs hatred for two stroke engines, really.

And me bein me, OF COURSE I oh so very publicly tore a long bloody strip off them about it, they not only banned me, but nuked every post I ever made (resulting in the loss of much valuable information, and the ire of MANY posters!) out of sheer spite - and then tried to cover it up, but I picked my time well, by the time they "cleaned up" it was too late, their dirty little business was well aired - sunshine and sunlight are the antitheses to such dirty biz.

While something of a social pariah in the small engine, pagan, and anarchist communities cause I don't play ball with the cliques and the bullshit, I've a hardcore serious offline rep which means I don't have to take so much shit from em online, especially since I can and will take direct, personal, PHYSICAL issue with threats - or at least they think so.
(Ain't worth the time, but let em believe what makes em happy)
Reason for that was accidently running into one of those making such threats during a gathering in Oklahoma, whereup I pulled out my best knife, slapped it in his hand, then got up in his face and DEMANDED he carry through on all that talk.
*laughs*
After he got done begging for his life, and went off to change his pants, word got around really quick like, that givin me too much hassle on the internet is generally a damn bad idea since I do show up at the occasional festival or event - and rumors grow with the telling, don't ya know...

One thing for damn sure, nobody asks me to moderate their forums no more, cause they got too much to hide and I got no damn patience with that shit.

The IRC incident was not quite as public, but even more disastrous amongst the youth advocacy community, where I am severely disliked in the first place.

I caught out the systems administrator not only playing favorites, but keeping logs we were supposed to be deleting for privacy reasons and poring over them for information she could use in real life ways against anyone who impinged her precious little ego.

When the dust settled from that, there *WAS* no IRC net, nor website, any more, and the systems administrator was in a position where criminal charges were viable for her actions, but the lady who could have pressed them decided it wasn't worth her time since I had done solved the matter in a fashion satisfactory to her.

S'why I have so much respect for Haken, I've seen the ugly side of "moderation" and his light hand is a kindness we should be tremendously thankful for.

-Frem

There always has to be a price.

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Saturday, November 28, 2009 8:26 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Thanx DT. I was just clarifying; I've got a "bug" about people lying about me or things needing clarification, which is usually what got me in trouble in the past.

I know it comes from the past; my mother would take things I told her (often private ones) and turn them or just plain lie about them to her friends. You know how it is about things we internalize in childhood...some of them stick and never go away, even when we recognize and fight against them.

I have this weird belief that if I just clarify, explain so the other party and I both know what each means, we can communicate. Took me literally decades to realize that there are those who do not hear you, WILL not hear you no matter how logical or sensible or civil you are, and to stop wasting my time trying.

Unfortunately the urge remains and I sometimes don't stop myself in time. That is one thing I've seen here that I especially appreciate; people tend to clarify when they were misread or weren't clear enough, and the other parties actually seem to HEAR them more often than not.

Communication here is better than any forum I've been on (except the one I run, which is very mellow and a-political). Once again I have to congratulate you guys; even including the snarking and occasional real nastiness, on the whole the communication here is really good.

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Saturday, November 28, 2009 8:30 AM