I'm largely indifferent although sometimes a streak of pessimism wells up in me.
I'm largely indifferent because ultimately it just boils down to how fast wheat and chaff can be separated client side. True, whatever forum should have screened out to some extent so that the information accords with its aims and objectives, but on no forum can I rely on that to do everything for me. The buck squarely stops with me as to how fast I can pick the informational cherries or how quickly I can allocate someone to the browser bozo bin or or put them on ignore. Given how fast the web is now I don't care so much. It's not like I'm getting suckered into loading gigantic image files of a family making pop tarts in a toaster. Still, I'll agree that some stuff gets repetitive.
Repetition isn't necessarily irritating to me. mtnfolk mike has a thread running on lanyards now. I know I answered a previous thread that was pretty much an exact match with this one. Normally that would make me not bother with the new one, but I was actually temped to go grab some photos for it. So I guess provided the thread is a little different somehow all is good. It just strikes me as stupid when they loop round and round a familiar track like an idiot in a car that doesn't realize he's just gone passed where he started.
As far as the off-topic stuff goes, I sure can find that annoying. However, I tolerate it because of a vital service it provides. As much as I'm not here to join in a backslapping fest, a celebration of some 2yr old having a birthday, random photos of some bloke in a bunch of cities on vacation, whatever, gossip provides a useful function. I see it as the flow of babble like a river, that is necessary for genuine logs or packets of information to float on. In short, whilst I try to filter out the babble I do need it to be there. Although when there's too much gossip babbling along for the amount of logs being carried, or those logs start to look more like turds, I do get a bit despondent.
The last time pissing-contest thing came up I said I thought that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Two or more people getting into a debate is more interesting to me and often throws up more interesting information that just the backslapping stuff. As far as any notion of contest goes I've got no problems, but there's a whole bunch off dim shit stuff that I could well live without. I've bailed far sooner that I otherwise would precisely because of that. I was into a thread on whether carbon steel
is better. We were quite happily knocking some ideas about when a wave a pointless needle just welled up in it. Similarly the coyote thread; whilst I'm totally at peace with the first few pages I'm so glad I bailed before that raggedy arse thread met its tawdry conclusion. Others I've been fortunate enough to have never taken part in but strewth fingers on triggers people:
What is the protocol for dealing with something trying to bite you in the woods?
1] Avoid it.
2] Take your beats it's probably not going to eat you.
3] 1+2
4] You've been eaten
5] Llarma lips only tickle
6] It's a dog a)bring tank, b)make spear, c) bucket of hot oil out the window of your ATV, d) you only have a folder, grab throwing stars, e) pop smoke, f) pop poo, g) pop tart.
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