Forum Sensitivity

High five?

~Rob

Im sucking up cause I'm glad I'm not the only person still awake tonight to see your insane post?? Yaaaaaaa, ummmmmm I'm gonna go take another neuroleptic pill.

Shouldn't you people be at HWN?

Shhhhhhhhh Im sleeping now. ;)

CoasterDiscern said:

Glad your still up Gonch

Now THAT should get a high five!

Okay, I'll admit it. I don't really get about 70% of this thread.

Why? I suspect it is because I'm reading CB a lot less these days. There are a bunch of reasons for that, most of which have nothing to do with this place.

But, there is one reason that is relevant: the signal-to-noise ratio has gone down. Way down. That's been discussed upthread, so I won't re-hash it. But, I do wonder whether or not the site is close enough to a tipping point that this becomes an irreversible change. Back In The Day, when we had the annual What Happened to Coaster Buzz threads, this was mostly an offseason phenomenon. But, the beginning of the season for those of us not living in FL/CA does not seem to have helped this year. That's troubling.

I wonder if it's a decrease in signal as opposed to an increase in noise. I'm surprised that I haven't seen any trip reports from SFFT or SDC and both coasters have been open for at least a few weeks.

I don't think it's that out of whack given the traffic increase this year. The proportion is about what I would expect, but I would obviously prefer less noise.

Andy, I made a trip report about SDC and Outlaw Run back on May 3rd if you'd like to check it out.

I'm with you, Brian Noble. I don't get half of this either and I'm ok with that.

I'd venture to say that I'm older than most of you here, and while Internet chat may be relatively new to me, I'm no stranger to organizations and have dealt with large groups of employees, friends, and volunteers. I have worked for and with the general public my whole life. What I've found over the years is while things change, nothing is really new. There will always be the small percentage of people who seem to care the most and do most of the work. There are those who stay on the fringe and observe, chiming in and taking credit when it's convenient. There are those who complain constantly that things aren't like they used to be. And there's those whose sole purpose seems to be to get out the big ugly stick and stir things up.

Coasterbuzz has currently has all these personalities and I'd guess always has and always will. I liken the Internet to the telephone work I used to do as a younger man. I was always astonished at the things people would say to me over the phone when i knew good and well they'd never dream of it if we were sitting face to face. I think that's why we frequently hear "Gosh, he/she has always been this way/that way on line, but when we finally met I found them to be .... [fill in the blank with whatever]."

I'm not worried about the future of Coasterbuzz. There may be a perception of noise here, but mercy, not like I've seen and experienced elsewhere. I'm no expert, but I am a Libra and believe things have a way of leveling themselves out eventually. I'd bet with enticing events like Cedar Point media day that membership is up and revenue is up with it, and that's never a bad thing. Worth a little noise.

So I'll continue to read here and post my long winded stories and smart ass remarks til I get thrown out, I guess. I like it here, have made some good friends (some actually in person!), I get a few of those life-affirming votes, I've learned a lot, and can't wait to move forward. I'd high five you all if I could.

Well, most of you. Cropsey, I hardly knew ye.

I have so many thoughts on this subject that this post could have an index. So, I'll just try to focus on one thing I've repeatedly seen that I struggle to understand. I've gotten sensitive myself or for others at times, and it seems all the harsher posters respond along the lines of "This is the Internet. I don't know you nor do I care about you. This is a place to debate. Get over it or leave." Then, you'll read about how nice these same posters are in person.

It's as if people of this mindset switch off their real-world counterparts on the forums and view other posters as emotionless robots. It's interesting, and completely unlike how my mind works. When posters interact with me and I read their posts to others, my mind forms human characters of how I think they'd act and even look in the real world. With every post they make, it's another piece of the puzzle in forming this real life character.

Therefore, I obviously feel much more emotion and even feel like I know these forum posters without ever having met them, especially after years go by. This mindset also influences the way I post. I tend to post much more carefully, weighing in the emotion of others. If I wouldn't want to hurt someone in the real world, I don't want to hurt them on the Internet.

So, you have posters of these different mindsets clashing here, which can cause conflicts. If forums seem like they're getting more sensitive, maybe it's because people are growing increasingly dependent on virtual friends (forums, Facebook, etc.) and feeling more emotion toward them. They're taking things more personally, because the virtual friends are becoming an increasingly important part of their social life.

Well, that's my theory, or at least one of them. The thing is, I do prefer the more mature, intellectual discussion on Coasterbuzz. It can be exhausting having to sift through posts that are immature and barely-legible on other sites. Is this one of those situations where in order to get more refined discussion, there has to be harsher, more direct moderation that might hurt some feelings? I'm not sure, but it seems to be working.

I am just catching up with this thread....

I can't believe that one of my older posts (A neurotic one about bedbugs) kind of was the thread that caused some of this. Most of my posts end threads because of lack of interest or relevance, or poor spelling, or any combination.

One one hand it's like....well...bedbugs....you can't knock out every one and in time they will return.

Seriously though...Carrie, I know I wasn't called out by you - but I apoligize to you and to anyone else offended by anything in a thread that I created.

I hate the bedbugs...but respect those who posted.

Jeph said:

When posters interact with me and I read their posts to others, my mind forms human characters of how I think they'd act and even look in the real world. With every post they make, it's another piece of the puzzle in forming this real life character.

Unfortunately, we have you at a disadvantage. Many of us know and talk to each other outside of these forums. We're working in exactly the opposite direction - we know the people and understand the tone and nuance of the written word.

I don't say anything here that I won't say to your face. But I think the directness and enjoyment of the mental sparring gets (mis)interpreted as mean or rudeness...and it's anything but.

Oh my, no need to apologize, Richie.

This thread was started to create interesting fodder over some vague feedback I had received about being mean/rude. It turned really, really ugly when in response to the thread I received even more very specific feedback.

I'm sure there are some folks who think I handled it badly. I think I did, too, in some ways. But I didn't want to have to cope with the feedback on my own. It feels very unsettling to be sought out individually just to be told that people hate you. I felt easier about it sharing it with the group.

And given the really ugly, ugly things that were said about me in the deleted posts, I'm glad it was here and not in an individual message to me. That's the extent of what I can offer on it. Folks will draw whatever conclusions suit them best. But my sincerest apologies for all of the ensuing drama.

The strangest feedback I ever receive is that I am different in person than I am online. I just don't see that. The only difference between the two in my mind is the context. Here we discuss topics often in the interest of debate. I don't usually do that in real life when I'm hanging out with friends.

Should we debate in real life, you would likely have the same reactions. In fact I was recently told by a colleague that they enjoy being in meetings with me because of all of my pithy comments. That's me, for better or worse.

Carrie J. said:

Here we discuss topics often in the interest of debate. I don't usually do that in real life when I'm hanging out with friends.

And that's another great point. If you meet me in person, odds are we aren't going to get into amusement park ticket price, per caps and the best approach to maximizing revenue or why it's unreasonable to expect a cup to be refilled or the logic behind offering such deals.

It's a different environment here with the point being discussing amusement parks and the industry than it is in real life situations.

My future step-mother-in-law said something to me that still makes me laugh. I was telling her that I really enjoyed staying at her house, and that she was a wonderful host. She said, "That's high praise coming from you, because I know you wouldn't candy coat how you really feel." In other words, I'm pretty straight with what I think. I'm not entirely sure how people interpret that in real life (whether it's abrasive or insensitive), but like anyone else here, I don't think it's that hard to understand that it's never my intention to hurt feelings.

More to the point, this is me in real life. Sure, there are a subset of people who embrace the anonymity of the Internet to be someone they can't be to your face. But most of us here aren't those people. I'd like to think I know Gonch and Carrie pretty well, and what I see online is not a persona, it's who they are. Get the three of us talking about higher education and watch the **** fly. At the end of the day, it's still not personal.

Maybe that's it. The suggestion that you can make something personal over wires without really knowing someone seems absurd to me. Then again, people often approach me like we're long time best friends, all because they visit my silly Web site, and they wonder why it makes me uncomfortable and short with them. Maybe it's not a sensitivity issue as much of an issue of not really understanding the depth of online interaction (hint: it's mostly trivial).

I can almost guarantee I won't say the same things in person. I hardly speak at all.

And I sort-of met Jeff at Cedar Point, from a distance, outside Maverick. I pointed him out to a friend of mine. (Does that count?)

I'm sure I've seen others as well, but I tend to keep my distance.

Another thing to consider is that for all the teasing, in real life, some of these people might be the coolest people around. I've met Mike Gallagher in real life, and he's a heck of a nice guy. My jokes about his El Toro volleying experience are in pure jest, and at the end of the day, he knows I'm joking and that it's nothing personal. Honestly, I do actually think that I'm more comfortable cracking jokes about it because I have met him.

Shoot, for all the grief all of us give Timber-Rider on here, he's probably a heck of a nice-guy, and if I met him in real life, I wouldn't harbor some pre-developed animosity. Who you are in a debate-setting, which is what these forums often are, can be completely different than who you are outside of one. He's probably a pretty nice guy, and certainly until proven otherwise, I give him the benefit of a doubt. The fact that he's the subject of several memes is just humor, in much the same way that we're all probably subjects of them either here or in the real world at some point.

At the end of the day, we're just goofing around, and how anyone could think that what we're doing is bullying is beyond me. Making jokes about what somebody says is one thing. Making jokes about them personally is another, and I'd like to think that we do a pretty darn good job of the latter. We're certainly much better about it than a lot of other places. As such, how Cropsey could think what he or she did is way beyond me. If Cropsey was genuinely upset about a comment due to personal experience none of us really knew about or understood, there are ways of handling it immediately that could resolve the issue smoothly. Holding on to a silly grudge for years is not how you go about it.

enfynet said:

And I sort-of met Jeff at Cedar Point, from a distance, outside Maverick. I pointed him out to a friend of mine. (Does that count?)

Depends, do you like pancakes?

...and did he have his clipboard?

I met Jeff when I was driving the Paddlewheel Excursions boat many years ago, and he was riding. I announced to the unenthused crowd that we had an online celebrity on board. We have been the best of friends ever since the one minute conversation after the ride. ;)