Re: ENT Forum Mediation Thread--Please Participate
Sorry if this post is quite long, but I don’t want to be seen as spamming as I have quite a few replies to several posters.
Posted by NX-01 Plumber:Well, I'm always prepared to justify my opinions. I just cannot understand and I have not yet seen the beginning of a glimmer of an explanation as to why someone would subject themselves to watching upwards of 50 hours of a show they do not like. That is just pathological behavior.
I’m always prepared to justify mine too, but I don’t have to justify my presence in this forum which is what you are asking us to do over and over (and over
), and it’s the expectation by you and others who share the same opinion that we must which is clearly against the rules. And even if we were to comply and answer questions such as these, as I personally have done so time and again (and again
), the answers never satisfy the person who asks anyway (which experience of this board has taught me over time), it’s simply baiting in my view.
Posted by Raz:
Posted by Top41:
It's not your place to criticize or question them for that.
If you think it's strange, that's your business, but keep it to yourself. We all have different definitions of what's strange, so it's not really relevant.
*applauds*
I am getting sick and fucking tired of hearing people "thinking aloud" about why person X is posting when they hate the show. It's nothing more than an attack on their character.
Why somebody watches or does not watch is none of anybody's business. They can hate the show; they can have a big glossy poster of the NX-01 on their wall that they use as target practice for dart throwing. It really doesn't matter.
Quite frankly all such speculations can just fuck off as far as i'm concerned. It just goes to demonstrate how small such people can be. Either refute the poster or ignore the poster - one or the other, there shouldn't be any inbetween as it's just a huge booby trap. But, as the saying goes, "when you run out of arguments and excuses you attack the person".
Well i've fucking had it with personal attacks. You want my participation in this "forum mediation"? Fine, here it is: start warning people for questioning the motives of other posters. It's been a rule here before, it should be again. Start nailing people for it, because it's beyond unproductive.
As an example, Stewey can be very stubborn and outspoken, but I believe he is right in one respect: nobody should be calling the validity of his motivation into question, only the validity of his points.
Exactly
Raz , and I don’t blame you for being a little passionate there, as hearing the same old “justify yourself to me” arguments for over a year and a half now is wearing me thin too. I agree on warning people for it, time and again we have friendly warnings issued to the same people week in week out, and these people after so many of them know what they are doing, it’s the only thing I think should be made stricter on, just like there is a strict rule against making jokes like “Enterfake” or “excellaprise” Really, how many times must these people be reminded of something they know, especially when they express a desire to continue to do so, as illustrated here:
Posted by Galactus:
After 9 pages of discussion this thread boils down to the fact the mods like the way the forum is, the people that dislike the show like the way the forum is, and the people that like the show dislike the way the forum is. So the fact is that the people that like Enterprise are just not gonna be able to enjoy the forum and will have to endure the negative vibes. So in other words nothing has changed. We are at exactly the same place or worse because it is affirmed what was always thought. So let the heated exchanges continue until Enterprise's run is over.
Posted by Galactus:There is no proving or disproving an opinion, something most of the people on this board refuse to accept. So I chose simply to continue to engage in the continuing flame wars with people that continue to watch Enterprise and hate it. The thinking of the forum and probably the whole board is flawed and there is no fixing it. It is not my board and I don't run it so I play by your rules. So if a negative forum is what TPTB want then that is what I will give them.
(Emphasis mine.)
I think
Galactus has made his position quite clear, he intends to continue to ignore moderators asking him to quit with the questioning of posters motivations because most of the heated exchanges are sparked off by the “justify yourself to me” arguments.
Now, I have been on the receiving end of most of this type of stuff, so it’s my turn to question
his motivations on this board.
(a)
Galactus , why do you post on a message board only to complain about other posters?
(b) And why do you actively seek out a forum that is not to your liking, then complain about how it is run,
and complain about other posters when there are other boards more to your way of thinking (
www.brannonbraga.com)?
Another interesting thing to note is looking at his profile, guess what he calls himself? He calls himself “The Anit-Anti-Enterprise Guy”, I lifted that straight out of his profile complete with spelling mistake. Now moderators, don’t you think taking the above quotes into account, plus his name he is here to intentionally troll members of the forum who don’t like Enterprise?
Posted by Galactus:Look at it this way. Do you have friends that you don't like? I am not talking about disagreement on different issues. I mean don't like or hate. What about do you have a spouse or girlfriend/boyfriend that you hate and hate to be around yet still are. The have words for people like that and none of them are good.
I am not saying you have to love Enterprise but at least like something about it. But this is an argument I am not gonna win, so I would like the people that love Buffy and/or Firefly to reccommend a message board to me. I will take Lindley advice and start watching both shows in detail and go to these board and come up with will thought out reason and observations why these shows are awful. I want to see if I will be received as nicely there as people are here.
I remember back to my school days a very important lesson I learned about other people; “if you expect all your friends to be perfect, you will never have any”.
Posted by George_42:
If the forum was only open to people who felt a certain way about Enterprise, there would be no point in posting.
TPTB could save themselves a lot of bandwidth by just posting a new gushfest everyday for "The Real Fans" to come and gloat over.
Regardless of how you feel about what other people post, and it can be irritating at times, you can't dictate what their opinion should be.
If all you want is to sit and read a bunch of messages all saying how good Enterprise is find another board.
If you find you don't like what certain posters have to say, don't read their posts, or like me search them out and laugh at the inevitability of it all.
With so many people expresing their opinions on one subject I am surprised that there is as much consensus of opinion as there is.
I remember when ENT discussions were taking part only in Future of Trek, and over the course of the last few years the ENT forum has had its ups and downs but at the moment I think that the forum is in pretty good shape.
And in closing I'd just like to say be good to yourself and each other.
I couldn’t agree more, frankly if I were the webmaster of this BBS and the Enterprise forum was getting as many hits as brannonbraga.com, I’d probably not have the sponsorship of UGO for very long. I’m sure
Lisa is quite pleased that there is as much activity as there is here, and it’s all because this forum is based on discussion rather than dis
gushion.
Posted by NX-01 Plumber:Raz, I think that you genuinely (or perhaps disingenuously) don't get the point. The point is not "If you don't like the show, don't watch it." Rather it is: "if you (don't take this personally, Raz) disagree with the show's premise, do not find that it has any redeeming qualities, hate the actors, hate the Akira-prise, wish that the series was cancelled, call the series Enterfake, etc. you probably should not be watching it because (i) you're inflicting unnecessary pain on yourself (which, if one is a masochist, may be what they're looking for), (ii) you're keeping the ratings artificially high and (iii) you're probably in this forum to troll people who actually enjoy some episodes or part of the show (and again, if that's how one gets their jollies that's fine, but against board rules). (Oh, and in passing, how is this different from if you don't like what's being said in a thread or by a poster, ignore it?)
What you are not getting, (like
Galactus is not getting either) is that no matter what you may think of posters motivations privately, judging posters and discussing your theories about those posters on a message board, which has rules against it, is simply trolling in itself. And quite frankly, why in the name of hell should I justify myself to you? You don’t make the rules on this board and you have no place making posters feel unwelcoming, which is exactly what you are doing when you bring these sorts of things up. It’s up to the Lisa/Admins/Moderators to make the rules, not you and frankly they decide who’s trolling or not.
And by the way, the word “Enterfake” has been outlawed by the mods over 8 months ago now, nobody has used that phrase since, except IIRC for one person who was warned, so what are you complaining about?
Again, for the umpteenth time, I think most posters in this forum would agree that criticism is welcome and oftentimes warranted. Unmitigated and unbridled negativity for the sake of negativity is what is intolerable.
I can only speak for myself here, but I know I am not here for negativities sake at all, and you and I have different interpretations of what exactly “negative” actually is.
What pisses me off is not a well taken argument from Ptrope or you or others criticizing the weak points of an episode, but people whose avatars openly call for the cancellation of a show and people who trumpet with glee each week's ratings as the doom of ENT (and frankly, while we're at it those that see in every little upwards bump in ratings a groundswell that will eventually make ENT one of the top-rated shows).
If you don’t like what they have to say, don’t read it just ignore it. Don’t confuse an alternate point of view of an aspect of the Star Trek franchise as a whole with trolling. The two are very separate things. Just because you don’t happen to like the opinion given however repeatedly doesn’t mean it should be silenced for
your sake.
What pisses me off most, though, is that the mods cannot make the difference between criticism and trolling because they hide themselves behind the "everybody is entitled to their opinion, all opinions are valid, if you disagree with someone's opinion prove them wrong" mantra.
Again, you simply don’t understand the major differences between actual trolling and actual debate.
We are a community on this board and if certain members of this community manage to piss off a significant portion of the posters and a thread like this one is required to try to ease some of the palpable tensions, then someone is not doing their job. Although, I cannot but applaud the calls for civility and good "citizenship", there is a point where that is not enough and if warnings and bans are required, so be it.
There would be no tensions in the first place if
(a) Posters have a clear understanding of Trolling and Flaming (In other words understand the forum rules)
(b) Posters have a clear understanding of what debate/discussions actually is
(c) Posters have a respect for other poster(s) opinion(s)
The way I see it, is that you want a community of only like-minded people, the people you think should be here. There are plenty of places where this is encouraged and
www.brannonbraga.com is one such place. And actually, I did a bit of lurking there and even posted there once (as a poster called “naysayer” as an experiment to see how long it takes to get banned for posting an opinion which is contrary to what people there have, it took 24 hours after only making about 3 posts), and I found just as much “basher-bashing” in there as what I see in here, which is remarkable considering bashers are not welcome there in the first place. I find it is quite interesting in a way that “bashers” seem to be the more interesting topic for those posters on that board than the show itself. I don’t feel that surprised as it seems to be the only topic of discussion among some people on this board too, I suppose they simply ran out of different ways of saying “this show is brilliant”
Quite frankly, it’s a selfish opinion to want a forum the way
you want it, with only the type of people
you like, you have to remember not everyone thinks the same way you do. A community is built up by a coming together of all sorts of people; the way I interpret it, a cheerleading group would be the result of the type of community that you would prefer.
My point to everyone participating in this thread is that suppressing the bashers will not alter this forum one damn bit, my above example proves that some people who like the show are going to bash the bashers
anyway whether we are here or not, which is still against the rules. The way I see it, clamping down on this type of behaviour will go a long way towards solving this forum’s problems once and for all.
You have to ask yourself, is it really worth breaking the rules over something, which is none of your business? Think about how you would feel for someone to make judgements about you personally week in and week out for over a year and a half, it’s unfair, unjustified, rude, and impolite and it happens to be
against the rules .
And if you still feel the need to continue to do it, then why can’t you do it in a PM instead of on the boards themselves?
I disagree that they don't harm the general [italics]ambiance[/italics]. Say what you will, but I don't think that a post saying the GR was a womanizing idiot unconcerned with continuity would go to well with the TOS posters.
