Just a reminder for everyone ...

[smokey the elder]

One poster's pointless thread is another's earth shaking event. I don't think it's fair to judge. One always has the option to not open the thread, after all.

As far as "trolls" are concerned, I believe there have been only a few over the last several years that are really bad, i.e. nearly universally offensive. Most of the time there may be some bored kids who, if given a chance, may actually stick around and learn something.

I've written before about the "one-dimensionality" of type (no vocal tone or body language). Especially for folks for whom English is a second (or later!) language, we should not judge grammar so much. I wish I could find that funky paragraph with all the letters jumbled up, to show how we read words!

One thing I would prefer is that people don't use texting shortcuts. These are very hard to read for those more "chronologically gifted" folks like me.

[Alysser]

Another thing I have noticed is that people post smilies with sentences that have nothing to do with the smiley. For example, if they say "I took Fido for a walk today!" They post with smilies like this . What's the point in that? I find they just want to post smilies and it gets annoying to see 100 smilies in one post. It's been one person doing this around Dog general.

Another thing is, some people post in EVERY single thread they see, even if there is no need to. It's great to want to feel involved but do they have to post on every thread. The comments they post are usually 1 to 5 words and it's annoying to go through a thread and have to go over comments over and over agian made by the same person.