I think this is a good idea

[Dill]

(06-27-2020, 02:35 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I agree with you, Dill is not a major offender.  Some of his buddies are and I'm largely calling out his hypocrisy for refusing to even see that in them.  There are a very large number of people who either stopped posting entirely or post very little because of the barrage of condescension and smarmy attacks directed at them by two of the major posters on this board.  I stopped myself for a while as I was simply growing tired of ti and things have been stressful enough for me of late with a death in the family, buying a house and all of the current unrest.  But I've been posting in this subforum longer than both of those posters and I honestly enjoy reading the takes of Bel, yourself, Vas, michaelsean and others.  Bfine and I used to be at each others throats but that hasn't been the case for years.

I decided I wasn't going to let three (mainly two) people keep me from interacting with people I've "known" for over a decade.  That doesn't mean I'll suffer their insults in silence though, which is the main difference between me and the people who just stop posting or severely curtail how often they post.

I think there are two primary reasons why people stop posting.

1) the mods instituted the "no personal attack" rule. Over time that cleared the board of four or five, maybe more, posters. Others who relied primarily on that mode stopped posting.

2) The other is Trump was elected. His behavior boxes his supporters into absurd corners.  Defending Paul Ryan's stance on tax cuts doesn't leave one stained as does defending a guy who mocks a woman who claims she has been sexually assaulted or fires IGs who investigate him. Difficult to explain why that is bad behavior without appearing condescending. Trump supporters may FEEL attacked just by the sheer volume of threads responding to the latest Trump atrocity. And they may confuse cause with effect, blaming the threads' authors. Trump's behavior also creates "defenders"--people who don't necessarily support Trump, but who don't want Dems benefiting from Trump excesses. That drives them to look for "hypocrisy" and other personal flaws in Trump opponents. 

I don't think "smarmy posts" and "condescension" are big problems driving people away. Outright personal insults is still the main reason threads degenerate and get shut down. They drive people away from such threads. They're a lot easier to see than "condescension." And that could account for my "hypocrisy" with regards to Dino. If someone demanded I produce an example of a Dino personal attack, much less a series of them bold and frequent enough to drive someone from the list, I could not.  I wonder if anyone else could.

I can produce instances of "condescension" as referred to in 2 above. That is, people boxed in by the persons or principles they have chosen to defend. But that is a structural problem inherent to such positions. Until the list is turned into a "safe space" for posting only good things about candidates, I don't see that changing.