Dolores
May 19th, 2009, 08:33 PM
Was this too long for you guys to read and/or respond to? Because I feel like I brought up, and backed up, some points that are pretty hard to dispute about the subjective interpretation of "serious" and what a complete failure it is to have a sub called "serious" anything, and then, by moving their threads, penalize users for having a different definition of "serious".
I'd like to point out that I have colleagues who use Twitter as a marketing tool.
The problem I have with the "you know what's serious and what's not" answer is that no, as a matter of fact, serious can and does mean different things to different people.
You have no serious use for Twitter so you cannot conceive of why or how someone might discuss it as a "serious" topic. Meanwhile, on another web forum, there is a 12-page thread discussing the effectiveness of using Twitter as a business marketing and customer outreach tool. Is that not "serious" to you? Because it is to me. But then, I am a business owner and making use of marketing tools is crucial to my survival.
It sounds like you are defining the word "serious" to mean "controversial, extreme, or politically and socially divisive". In which case, I recommend renaming this forum "Controversial Discussion". Even that is subjective, though; what scale of controversy is controversial enough?
What's happening is that people are looking at the word "serious" and applying their own definitions to it. A user might want to have a "serious" (non-joking) discussion about engine repair, for instance, and post their thread here. Is that not "serious"? What about Daruko's post about his latest made-up illness? Surely illness is "serious", right? Surely it's not humorous.
Then mods are coming along and deciding that, according to whatever definition of "serious" they're using, some of these posts aren't serious enough, and they're getting moved, and the OP feels insulted. It's like a comedy of errors.
My best suggestion is, either rename the forum something more specific and less subjective, or mods should stop applying their own subjective definitions of "serious" and leave posts where they are unless the OP requests a move.
Maybe instead of "General" and "Serious", the subs should be:
*General
*Politics
*Sociology
*Science and technology
It would be pretty clear what goes where. No need for a "debate" sub, because debates would happen, or not, naturally.
I'd like to point out that I have colleagues who use Twitter as a marketing tool.
The problem I have with the "you know what's serious and what's not" answer is that no, as a matter of fact, serious can and does mean different things to different people.
You have no serious use for Twitter so you cannot conceive of why or how someone might discuss it as a "serious" topic. Meanwhile, on another web forum, there is a 12-page thread discussing the effectiveness of using Twitter as a business marketing and customer outreach tool. Is that not "serious" to you? Because it is to me. But then, I am a business owner and making use of marketing tools is crucial to my survival.
It sounds like you are defining the word "serious" to mean "controversial, extreme, or politically and socially divisive". In which case, I recommend renaming this forum "Controversial Discussion". Even that is subjective, though; what scale of controversy is controversial enough?
What's happening is that people are looking at the word "serious" and applying their own definitions to it. A user might want to have a "serious" (non-joking) discussion about engine repair, for instance, and post their thread here. Is that not "serious"? What about Daruko's post about his latest made-up illness? Surely illness is "serious", right? Surely it's not humorous.
Then mods are coming along and deciding that, according to whatever definition of "serious" they're using, some of these posts aren't serious enough, and they're getting moved, and the OP feels insulted. It's like a comedy of errors.
My best suggestion is, either rename the forum something more specific and less subjective, or mods should stop applying their own subjective definitions of "serious" and leave posts where they are unless the OP requests a move.
Maybe instead of "General" and "Serious", the subs should be:
*General
*Politics
*Sociology
*Science and technology
It would be pretty clear what goes where. No need for a "debate" sub, because debates would happen, or not, naturally.