Forum - Feast or Famine?

SpoiledPrincess

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Forums seem to go through periods when there are lots of great threads to post comments on, then periods where if you like posting you're struggling for something interesting to mouth off about. I've noticed that the more fruitful times seem to coincide with the times when there are lots of flame threads or threads with a lot of dispute on, I have a couple of thoughts as to why this might be:

1 - During any time of 'war' people tend to pull together so they post more to try and take attention away from the flame type threads and find themselves sticking with the people they've found to be good posters in the past (I don't view this as a clique, it's merely that we know who's going to be reasonable).

2 - Like it or not humans are an aggressive lot, when there are lots of flaming threads going on it means that there are a lot of people on who dislike one another (whether it's because they have opposing viewpoints or just because they can't stand one another) so because there are people with lots of different viewpoints there tend to be a lot of interesting threads made.

3 - Deny it as we might there are some of us who actually enjoy conflict and it gets our creative juices flowing.


Anyone else have any thoughts on why there are dry patches?
 
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SpeedoGuy

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It does go in cycles and I enjoy anticipating whatever the next wave will bring. Sooner or later it'll get arrive. But if the flaming gets too obnoxious or too juvenile I usually just tune out for a while.
 
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got_lost

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You're right, the 'flames' can often open up good debate, but in my experience they can also push many people away too....

There are those that don't manage the antagonism well and just stop posting, or even visiting the board for a while. Though I find this board to have such a broad spectrum of topics and threads that there is usally somewhere else safe to go play !!! :)
 

Yorkie

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Deny it as we might there are some of us who actually enjoy conflict and it gets our creative juices flowing.
You're just a troublemaker... :argue: :twak: :spank: :smashfreakB: :AR15firing: :rocketwhore: :hitwithrock:
:eek:uttahere:

Is this enough conflict for you ? :smile:
 

Wrey

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Conflict breeds creativity. It forces us to squeeze those frontal lobes just a bit harder to insure that what we have to say won't get dismissed or easily refuted.

"War is good for the economy." Is an old cliche, but one which holds true.

BTW, very estute observation, SpoiledPrincess.
 

Eva

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I can say that personally, I've been rather cranky lately and all the duplicate topics, trolls, and stupid questions (yes, there most certainly are stupid questions) have only been adding to the ire. For that reason, I've been posting less frequently as of late. It's probably best for everyone that way.
 

jason_els

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Agree on both counts. I think the recent troublesome discussions combined with the board's connectivity issues have been fatiguing.
 

Osiris

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I can say that personally, I've been rather cranky lately and all the duplicate topics, trolls, and stupid questions (yes, there most certainly are stupid questions) have only been adding to the ire. For that reason, I've been posting less frequently as of late. It's probably best for everyone that way.

I find even the crankiest of posts by you wonderful reads Eva. If you don't want to post, PM me. I need the reading material. :smile:

Agree on both counts. I think the recent troublesome discussions combined with the board's connectivity issues have been fatiguing.

That and the facts that I was sick as a dog last weekend and I started my new job this week.
 

SoFla8

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A debate/discussion with reasonable people is fun and I agree that sometimes there doesn't seem to be much happening. I also go through periods where I dont come here for a couple of months and then come here every day for a few months.

Maybe it's a combination of the two.
 

Quite Irate

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Another factor is forum size, which nobody mentioned. Online groups/forums all have different "peak" user counts. Some places do best with a very small number of users. Some need lots of users. In general, though, the level of intelligence in conversation goes down dramatically as websites get bigger. A perfect example would be deoxy.org. When it had only a few hundred users, it was probably one of the most intellectually stimulating forums to be found. It still is, to a certain degree, but the number of users makes it more and more difficult to find anything worthwhile.