Stop the Insanity | The Coffeehouse

David7738

This is not a social commentary site, yet increasingly we see personal attacks and social commentary threads. Religion, politics, and social issiues have no place here.

This is a Microsoft site ergo threads or commentary on other operating systems are just noise that have no place here.

Well that's my 2 cents on what I think is of value on this site and why I frequent it.

brian.shapiro
things go on as always

well when coffehouse started it was said you could talk about anything you like, though they had a right to lock threads.

thats why we have threads such as the one about soul food restaurants, which is off topic aso.

politics and religion are things people always say should be reserved for the right place, and i think the only reason theyre a problem is because people refuse to be as polite about them as other topics. although OS wars can be just as much catfights

i think the only reason people want to discuss other subjects is because people here are getting to know each other and want to talk about things other than tech, don't want to rely on email, and there's no Off-topic forum other than coffeehouse

maybe if someone set up an off-site forum for people from here

littleguru
<3 Seattle

The Coffeehouse is about an open conversation. Why not discussing the benefits of different software solutions and OSes? We can all profit from it... new stand points, new views, the same problems, new problems, other ideas, other solutions, ...

But it should, as always, be in a moderate way. Personal attacks should be avoided!

Btw, why did you start this thread?

fdisk

David7738 wrote:
This is not a social commentary site, yet increasingly we see personal attacks and social commentary threads. Religion, politics, and social issiues have no place here.

This is a Microsoft site ergo threads or commentary on other operating systems are just noise that have no place here.

Well that's my 2 cents on what I think is of value on this site and why I frequent it.

I'm beginning to agree with you. I think the focus of this site should remain grounded in Microsoft issues, but people are people and I *believe* Charles recently said he wanted at least part of this site to have some sense of anarchy to it.

In other news, the recent patent issues are important, however, and unfortunately, it seems like the PR fallout from this is not going to be good.

Edit: Here.

Charles wrote:
We created the Coffeehouse with the explicit intention of enabling anarchy, a place for people to freely express themselves and interact, ina a respectful way, with peers.

To be honest, I'm not freaking out about trolls because I know that we are going to enable Niners to deal with these types of human problems (trolling is not a software problem) when they arise (where appropriate - banning will remain a moderator-only mechanism for obvious reasons). Please stay tuned. We do in fact listen to you.

Randolpho
Hacker On Steroids

littleguru wrote:
The Coffeehouse is about an open conversation. Why not discussing the benefits of different software solutions and OSes? We can all profit from it... new stand points, new views, the same problems, new problems, other ideas, other solutions, ...

But it should, as always, be in a moderate way. Personal attacks should be avoided!

I agree. It's all about the tone.

If you come in ranting at the top of your literary voice about how evil a certain corporation may or may not be and how it's forcing shoddy software on its consumers while refusing to even acknowledge any and all evidence to the contrary, you're nothing but a troll.

If you come in say something along the lines of "hey, Gnome has this nifty multi-desktop function, can we get that in Vista someday?" you're contributing to a positive discussion.

JohnAskew
9 girl in pink sweater

I have no problem avoiding threads that add no value for my objectives.

How can this be a problem for anyone, really?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, David, censorship is bad and the C9 staff should not have to spend time on enforcing such a constraint on Coffeehouse thread content.

Self-discipline is the solution, imho, reading and writing threads.

Doctor, heal thyself.

ScanIAm
On a scale of 1 to 10, people are stupid.

<sigh>

If someone is being obnoxious, and someone else points it out, that is NOT FRICKING CENSORSHIP!

If you show up in a thread and act like a jackovasaur, other Niners can and will point it out. Nobody is burning books. Nobody is throwing duct tape over your mouth. Instead, the rest of us are exercising OUR freedom of expression to point out that YOUR freedom of expression is annoying.

If I or anyone posts something that the Mods feel is offensive, they will likely take it down.

This is their right since they:

1) pay for the software
2) pay for the hardware
3) have lawyers to answer to
4) don't work for YOU

And frankly, the content on this site is client centric. This means that YOU, as the client are making a choice to view the content. If you don't like it, then take your offended little self to another thread.

Every few months, we seem to get adopted by another Net Mommy who feels that we aren't adult enough to handle certain topics.

I already have a Mommy, I don't need two*

* no offense meant to people who actually DO have two mommies.

Harlequin
http://twitter.com/TrueHarlequin

emet wrote:

Most people are not capable of that. They get offended when people don't agree with them.

Society has also degrated to a point where freedom of speech really doesn't matter anymore, imo. How many high school grads even know what the "Bill of Rights" are? Offending people is apperently a bigger crime now then censorship.

What the hell are you going on about? You're the #1 threat to this community at this moment. I've yet so see a thread in which you spew out your Linux Rulez crap and you actually listen to what others have to say.

I think Charles used the wrong word. 'Anarchy' isn't right, the word should be 'debate'.

JohnAskew
9 girl in pink sweater

ScanIAm wrote:
<sigh>

If someone is being obnoxious, and someone else points it out, that is NOT FRICKING CENSORSHIP!

If you show up in a thread and act like a jackovasaur, other Niners can and will point it out. Nobody is burning books. Nobody is throwing duct tape over your mouth. Instead, the rest of us are exercising OUR freedom of expression to point out that YOUR freedom of expression is annoying.

If I or anyone posts something that the Mods feel is offensive, they will likely take it down.

David wrote:

social commentary threads. Religion, politics, and social issiues have no place here.

Two very different topics, Scan.

David implies censorship, while you only focus on offensive content.

Charles
Welcome Change

Harlequin wrote:

emet wrote:
Most people are not capable of that. They get offended when people don't agree with them.

Society has also degrated to a point where freedom of speech really doesn't matter anymore, imo. How many high school grads even know what the "Bill of Rights" are? Offending people is apperently a bigger crime now then censorship.

What the hell are you going on about? You're the #1 threat to this community at this moment. I've yet so see a thread in which you spew out your Linux Rulez crap and you actually listen to what others have to say.

I think Charles used the wrong word. 'Anarchy' isn't right, the word should be 'debate'.

Anarchy is perhaps too strong, but debate is too weak... The point is, we do not control what you can talk about here (we don't want to and we will not), but we will remove anything offense and lock threads that are pointless and stupid (somewhat of a Catch-22, but too bad...).

We will ban Niners who consistently offend and/or diminish the value of conversations by posting flame bait and other nonsense...

How's that? Pretty simple....

For the 1,000,000th time: BE RESPECTFUL OF ONE ANOTHER OR BE GONE.
C

Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

emet wrote:
Most people are not capable of that. They get offended when people don't agree with them.

Actually, most people get offended when someone acts like a troll. Take a look at your Gentoo thread: there was disagreement, but the conversation went fine. Taking a look at your Linux MCE thread, and we see it erupting into a flame war.

The constant factors here are you, everybody else, the fact that people posting in it disagree, and the subject matter. So apparently the problem at the heart of all this argument does not lie with you, anybody else, the fact that people disagree, or the fact that it's about open source software.

So what is it? Tone. The tone of your Gentoo post was informative. The post of your Linux MCE post was "lololol you guys suck lulz." The former resulted in normal discourse. The latter resulted in flaming.

Meditate on that.

ScanIAm
On a scale of 1 to 10, people are stupid.

JohnAskew wrote:

ScanIAm wrote: <sigh>

If someone is being obnoxious, and someone else points it out, that is NOT FRICKING CENSORSHIP!

If you show up in a thread and act like a jackovasaur, other Niners can and will point it out. Nobody is burning books. Nobody is throwing duct tape over your mouth. Instead, the rest of us are exercising OUR freedom of expression to point out that YOUR freedom of expression is annoying.

If I or anyone posts something that the Mods feel is offensive, they will likely take it down.

David wrote:
social commentary threads. Religion, politics, and social issiues have no place here.

Two very different topics, Scan.

David implies censorship, while you only focus on offensive content.

I was addressing emet's reference to freedom of speach in the post above mine.

brian.shapiro
things go on as always

I think that you should be able to sort threads by stars given to it, and threads should be able to have negative stars, which would signal the thread to be locked. The advantage of positive stars, is that I think a lot of old threads could use staying on top.

I also wish there were a more complex way of organizing threads than just a stack of messages, and I don't mean standard tree threads, which are too complex. But when a thread become so long conversation becomes lost and new readers don't have a way to follow, so the only thing viable sometimes becomes starting a new thread, which I don't think is the best idea. I think you should be able to start sub-threads, threads within threads, so someone could view everything in a thread or only related to a topic, or everything without a topic, and have child threads listed somewhere within that thread view as if they were individual threads in a user created folder. So, essentially, a thread becomes a folder for new threads. Plus the threads, subthreads, etc would allow tags so its more flexible and easier to find similar topics. This would allow the discussion to branch, without making it too confusing. (Sounds more confusing than it would be in practice I think)

brian.shapiro
things go on as always

Randolpho wrote:

littleguru wrote:The Coffeehouse is about an open conversation. Why not discussing the benefits of different software solutions and OSes? We can all profit from it... new stand points, new views, the same problems, new problems, other ideas, other solutions, ...

But it should, as always, be in a moderate way. Personal attacks should be avoided!

I agree. It's all about the tone.

If you come in ranting at the top of your literary voice about how evil a certain corporation may or may not be and how it's forcing shoddy software on its consumers while refusing to even acknowledge any and all evidence to the contrary, you're nothing but a troll.

If you come in say something along the lines of "hey, Gnome has this nifty multi-desktop function, can we get that in Vista someday?" you're contributing to a positive discussion.

Its not just about being polite though, but knowing when something is flamebait, and being respectful if just because you know this isn't a good forum to proselytize some things. So, in my opinion people should be able to talk politics.. but if you start a thread "More proof that Bush is a murderer" you're pressing your luck. Given that this isn't a political forum, and off-topic threads can be rightfully locked, if people want to express controversial views the burden should be on them to be respectful, otherwise they'll all be locked.

k2t0f12d
The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society

brian.shapiro wrote:
Given that this isn't a political forum, and off-topic threads can be rightfully locked, if people want to express controversial views the burden should be on them to be respectful, otherwise they'll all be locked.

Or just post "Ann Coulter" LMFAO

harumscarum
out of memory

lol

raymond

Some suggestions:

First, please read the ReadMe.txt in the above menu to the right of Search.

Second, ignore what you are not interested in and the trolls too, including me, if you like.

Third, address the ideas posted but please leave personal attacks at the door. Personal attacks only get the thread locked.

Unfortunately personal attacks are a favorite tactic of those who do not agree with your ideas. Instead of responding to the idea they call you an insulting name or tell you to get lost. I usually ignore them, and it drives them crazy.

Fourth, this is not a strictly moderated technical blog, if it were, I would agree with you, but it is not.

Fifth, If you are interested in purely technical blogs, there are plenty.

For example, if you are a web developer, start here:

Blogs from the ASP.NET Team

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/asp.net/aa336549.aspx

Sixth, share resources.

Seven, have some fun.

I hope you will post some threads.

Welcome.

Remember, they are listening! Wink

Cool

PS War and peace, life and death, freedom and slavery, love and happiness, literature and music, to name a few, are not stupid posts. They are serious subjects that should be addressed accordingly, with a little humor, where appropriate.

David7738

JohnAskew wrote:

Two very different topics, Scan.

David implies censorship, while you only focus on offensive content.

What I implied was self censorship. But some days it seems like the trolls and fanboys have taken over the message boards..

Threads that start on religion, politics or social commentary have their own place which IMHO is not here. They invariably end up in personal attacks or strawmen arguements.

OS wars also degenerate rather quickly into flame wars with really no rational discussion of the merits of the case. Saying something SUX with no understanding just stating ones opinion has little or no real value. In a commentary site this might be acceptable. On a technical site it could be worded diffrently or better yet narrow it down to specifics of what you like and what you don't like.

Here being part of MSDN if you find something you don't like it would be better to ask why is it like this and is there another way so that I can get the expected behaviour. Someone coming back and saying well under this OS and user interface with this add-in you can do it like so. This may or may not have value. More often than not it is of no value since the person wants to know how to do it under their circumstances. That or at least tell them WHY it is so difficult or a way of getting the task done.