thanks, but no thanks

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21 years 8 months ago #5817 by Larry Burford
JUU,

If you were the only one to see things the way you do I'd have to agree with JoeW that you are seeing things.

But others see it, too.

There are some personalities on this board that use a deliberately antagonistic posting style. It is surprising how easy it is to get most people mad and, perhaps?, they enjoy making people mad. I'm not sure.

Their ideas and philosophies may or may not have any value. They like to state a lot of conclusions but the support offered for them is spotty and sometimes half baked. (And they like to shout a lot. WTF?) Makes it hard to tell. Well, hard to be certain (gold is where you find it, and don't you forget that).

Rather than presenting their ideas, their goal seems to be to present their ideas in an antagonistic manner. The ideas themselves seem to be of merely equal, or maybe even secondary importance. Recently they pushed the envelope until a few of them got bounced. Now that they know what they can get away with they are "doing their thing", staying back from the line but not way back.

And of course, there is the burning question of "how many actual people are we talking about?". Seems like too much work for just one. I'll guess one to three.

I usually pay a good bit of attention to how I want to say what I want to say. I strive consciously to avoid antagonism. When I'm tempted to bark back (the button-response can be surppressed if you think to try, but it is still there) at one of them, I use Wordpad first. Sometimes I can spend an hour or two trying various approaches. (If you need to blow off steam, this is the place to do it. Having blown off some steam, focus on what if anything you really want to say. With practice you soon just skip to the last step.)

Don't get into a "gunfight" with them. The quick draw posting style gives them an advantage. All they have to worry about is not crossing the line. You have the additional burdens of being nice and (trying to be) right. Take your time.

This is actually a very interesting phenomenon to watch. And it's educational, but not just in the Physics or Math sense. People do some fascinating things, and think in some fascinating ways.

You may have notied that my participation in some threads has dropped off recently. I still find some of what they say interesting, but you know you just get tired of being around people like that after a while. So I guess I'll just leave them to themselves for a while.

I can't keep them from following me to another thread and trying to pick a fight there, but I can ignore them. That doesn't mean I stop reading them. It just means I stop talking to them.

Consider a similar approach rather than what you propose. From time to time some interesting discussions do pop up here. And remember - "they" might say something interesting. I sense some intellegence, training and possibly even some experience. Honest.

Regards,
LB

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21 years 8 months ago #6092 by JUU
Replied by JUU on topic Reply from
Thanks Larry, that makes me feel better. I have actually come to the conclusion that when I access this site, I pass through a 'mirror' site. Knowing this, I have been able to determine who is resident in this domain. There are a few 'Mad Hatters'. They must not know who they are, thats a result of their condition. There are quite a few 'Queens'. Thats not a reference to their orientation, just their ability to believe numerous impossible things before breakfast (nothing wrong with that). I am convinced that TVF, dholeman, and you are all cheshire cats, because I can see the smiles sometimes. I have yet to figure out who is the hookah-smoking caterpillar. You all can just call me Alice...

My hat is off to all out there who are actually developing theories and doing experiments. Thats what counts.

Well, I think I'm going to change my current velocity, accelerate in the opposite direction, and pass back through the looking glass to my world...

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21 years 8 months ago #5741 by tvanflandern
The webmasters for this site are dicsussing this matter. If warranted, changes will be made. Suggestions are welcome from all readers of this MB. -|Tom|-

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21 years 8 months ago #5818 by Jeremy
Replied by Jeremy on topic Reply from
<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>
The webmasters for this site are dicsussing this matter. If warranted, changes will be made. Suggestions are welcome from all readers of this MB. -|Tom|-
<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

I think there are inevitable gray areas in behavior. It is possible for someone to be insulting and condescending without using overt words like "idiot" or "moron". They do it with code phrases like "if you just knew what you were talking about" or "gotcha". We have to put up with it a little bit but some people just seem to shovel it out with every post. I call these "nerds" they are probably young, were bright in school and had to put up with a lot of flack from the not so bright students. As a result of this they are compelled to stroke their ego by proving their opponent to be an imbecile and making sure he darn well knows it. Any extra restrictions I can think of would be vague and hard to determine without a vote. However, I would say that if someone makes comments to the effect that they aren't going to post on the board anymore or go somewhere else in a huff that we should take them at their original word and dump them off. Another possibility is for the moderator to check multipage topics against what the original post was and close it if it is straying too far off course.

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21 years 8 months ago #5746 by Larry Burford
Observation:
This is a moderately serious problem. It seems likely that "legitimate" posters are sometimes detered from participating by the presence of this type of activity.

Observation:
One aspect of this problem is the presence of some posters that seem to want to push the limits. I'm not sure they are sophisticated enough to be deliberately trying to disrupt this board, but it is certainly possible. Probably they are just "having fun".

Observation:
No matter where we move the line, there will probably be someone that wants to crowd it.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't move the line. But we should be realistic about how much good it will do.

Suggestion:
Open a new forum. Call it "Other Theories" or "Alternate Ideas" or "Non MM Stuff" or "Challenges to MM" or ...

Moderators would relocate threads to this forum when appropriate.

In some cases it might be necessary to relocate specific posts to this forum as well.

The goal would be to keep this sort of activity "off to one side", as it were, rather than trying to prohibit it completely. Prohibition sounds like a lot of work, and even then is likely to be less than totally effective.

Suggestion:
We could invoke Double Secret Probation.

Regards,
LB


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21 years 8 months ago #6098 by Jim
Replied by Jim on topic Reply from
Despite the mud slinging on the Acceleration101 link I think there is a little progress being made-even if MV thinks it is redundant. The question is not resolved because nothing is said about when constant velocity of a particle is near the speed of light among other items. I don't like the centureship MV and others wish upon everyone.

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