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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5432559" data-attributes="member: 54877">One of the things that has (is?) taking me a long time to learn on internet forums, but that I hope I'm finally grasping is:&nbsp; When you don't have anything useful to contribute to a particular discussion, you should be aggressively not doing so. I've learned this from the many examples afforded me of people not following this suggestion. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue&nbsp; &nbsp; :p"&nbsp; data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />&nbsp;The biggest reason why this is so is that--by nature--negative, repetitive &quot;shouting&quot; will take up a lot of attention, driving interest away from any more useful topics that happen to be competing for attention.&nbsp; You see this most commonly in the excellent topic that disappears off of the front page in less than 24 hours.&nbsp; And really, when the OP is that good, what is there to say about it, beyond multiple kudos?&nbsp; The XP system actually contributes to this, because people give the kudos, but don't generate much followup discussion.&nbsp; (From this, one could suspect that the ideal topic is an optimistic, constructive OP, however one with enough flaws to generate discussion. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink&nbsp; &nbsp; ;)"&nbsp; data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />)&nbsp;Also, I'm fairly certain that a certain amount of this at the moment is being driven by volunteer astroturfers--that is, people deliberately stirring up flames in order to drive more positive topics out of mind.*&nbsp; The best way to deal with such people is to ignore them.&nbsp;* There are some subtle difference between such and trolls, but the practical response is pretty much the same.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 5432559, member: 54877"] One of the things that has (is?) taking me a long time to learn on internet forums, but that I hope I'm finally grasping is: When you don't have anything useful to contribute to a particular discussion, you should be aggressively not doing so. I've learned this from the many examples afforded me of people not following this suggestion. :p The biggest reason why this is so is that--by nature--negative, repetitive "shouting" will take up a lot of attention, driving interest away from any more useful topics that happen to be competing for attention. You see this most commonly in the excellent topic that disappears off of the front page in less than 24 hours. And really, when the OP is that good, what is there to say about it, beyond multiple kudos? The XP system actually contributes to this, because people give the kudos, but don't generate much followup discussion. (From this, one could suspect that the ideal topic is an optimistic, constructive OP, however one with enough flaws to generate discussion. ;)) Also, I'm fairly certain that a certain amount of this at the moment is being driven by volunteer astroturfers--that is, people deliberately stirring up flames in order to drive more positive topics out of mind.* The best way to deal with such people is to ignore them. * There are some subtle difference between such and trolls, but the practical response is pretty much the same. [/QUOTE]

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