I can read a newspaper feature and recognise the humour where intended. Newspapers don't use smilies either.

Some people on message boards, seem to depend rather a lot on smilies.
Perhaps the problem is that some take message boards and particularly this one about an entertainment programme, far too seriously.

Newspapers have editors and the journalists need to pad out column inches with generalities. Forums & Blogs tend to be comments and sound-bites and often reply to a particular post, so are more personal & need a smiley to smooth over any misunderstandings. More like telephone conversations when a smiley is used to convey the emotion that would normally be heard in conversation.

The book and music forums are usually ok, in my experience, though I don't post all that much in them. The appreciation forums, though I'm interested in only a few of the threads.

To the (decreasing) extent that I enjoy coming on DS, it's primarily about finding some threads and forum-members interesting, rather than because I think some forums are pleasant.


They're becoming more similar, unfortunately.


I think that forums such as this one, and the BB one, seem very different when you have a minority opinion than if you fit in with the majority. If, for example, you dislike a contestant who's forum favourite, or like one who's strongly disliked.

It certainly hasn't been my impression of any newspaper I've read that articles were padded with generalities.

Re smilies -- I suppose they might sometimes head off a misunderstanding, but often they're attempts to sneak something past the forum rules when the meaning is actually what it would seem without the smiley.

Which would be why I said - when they are used correctly.

Also, as I said previously, when reading a newspaper you're not engaging in a debate with anyone which is the difference between a book, an opinion piece in a newspaper, a blog or anything else which is laying out a single person's opinion on something, and a forum where people are debating.
On a forum there is plenty of room for misinterpreting someone's intentions. The same thing is not the case for a book or a newspaper article.

That doesn't make sense.

It doesn't matter whether a passage of English is on a message board or in a newspaper. The reader should be able to understand it without the need for the writer to include "helpful hints" to explain what they've written.

Is that because I used the word "view"?

I read your earlier posts, and I knew you were talking about tone. You said you thought "what has been gradually changing is the number of regular posters who post as if they are spoiling for a fight by adopting a tone that is totally at odds with the mood of the thread."

But differences in tone and differences in views / opinions often go together. If a thread is all positive about one of Chelsee's dances, for example, and someone who didn't like it posts, that post can be "totally at odds with the mood of the thread", especially if that opinion is expressed with strength equal to that if the positive posts that preceded it.

And such posts often meet with complaints that they have spoiled the mood of the thread, or disrupted it, or that they were "vitriolic" (even though they weren't), and so on.

Anyway, you now seem to be talking about posts that break the forum rules:

I think there has been an increase in people going after the forum-member who posted, rather than sticking to what the FM wrote; but I think that's largely due to new forum-members who haven't read the rules, or at least not very carefully.

(For example, the rules explicitly say we mustn't label forum-members "haters", yet "haters" often appears, as does language that implies someone is hating.)

I think the moderators will take action, but people have to alert the posts. I don't think it takes a lot of alerts, but the moderators probably won't see it at all if no one alerts.

Occasionally, when there's been a lot of trouble, the moderators put up a sticky thread to remind people of the rules. Perhaps (because so many people are reluctant to alert), they should do that more often.

I agree about the occasional use of smilies as "mitigating circumstances" when the true intentions are in the text.

People also on message boards sometimes take throwaway remarks literally to bolster a converse opinion.

When I suggested that Chelsee was "always on the phone." I think someone actually thought I believed that and felt they needed to explain to me the joke compilation made for ITT.

Of course it makes sense. When writing on a message board you are engaging in a debate where people are going to read and potentially misinterpret your words.

When I write a piece for a newspaper I'm usually writing something factual or, when I write an opinion piece, it is clearly labelled as such and I'm not inviting people to debate it. The understanding of what is being written is entirely down to the context of what it's being written for.

Shakespeare didn't sit down to write his plays thinking that English Literature students hundreds of years later were going to be debating what exactly he meant by "this way something wicked comes" or whether the Three Witches were the cause of Macbeth's decent into murder or simply articulating out loud his pre-existing inner desires.

There's a whole publishing division devoted entirely to explaining what Shakespeare (and every other major literary figure) meant when they wrote X Y or Z and most plays and novels which are studied in any depth have "notes" for the reader.

An internet forum is an utterly different medium to a newspaper opinion piece or a book even though they are all in the written form.

Thanks for that, I'm now beginning to understand your position.
I've never tried the Book or Music threads, must take a look sometime. I find the Movies/Cinema forum ok, but it's not very busy. That's the problem, you want plenty of "action" in the threads (or I do anyway)..but that often comes at a price.
Even the TV forum can turn quite nasty, views about different shows, comedians, dramas etc are always going to be subjective, but people forget this and try to somehow "prove" the "unprovable", getting irate if you don't see things the way they do. One man's meat, is another man's poison, as they say.

The music forum is hilarious, if people think the SCD ones are bad they should take a look there at some of the threads.

The X factor makes me laugh .Full of young kids and teens screaming " Dont you dare not like who I like " at each other .

Heh, I avoid that one like the plague but the general music thread has some hilarious "my favourite sells more records than yours" threads even when published figures demonstrate the opposite.

My apologies for padding out my point with trite information. However, you did understand the gist of my post

There was one guy on there that used to make me laugh though.
Every year he supported the complete "no-hoper". Full of ridiculous praise for the most terrible performances, he wound them up rotten, and he was quite clever at doing it. He took all the flack, and just carried on without getting nasty.
He's been sussed out now and only the newbies fall for it, but it was amusing while it lasted.

Is that Mr Blonde?

That's it.

Why?

There are columnists in every newspaper, they post serious stuff and amusing stuff on their page. They don't need smilies for people to work out which is which.

There are some on message boards who get themselves worked up about a topic and look for the downside interpretation in any post.


I used Shakespeare as an extreme example and later qualified this with a more general comment about authors and books.

So none of this is really relevant.

That's my opinion and no disrespect, I'm not bothered about any further debate, you of course are entitled to your own opinions.

There's a surprise.

Well what were you expecting?

A further "Yes it is!" "No it isn't!" so-called "debate?"

I don't think anyone wants that.

You seem to like having the last word for someone whose not wanting to engage further in a "debate".

Said Cadiva, expressing a personal opinion regarding another poster's intentions.

In a Forum post you are mostly posting quickly whereas in a piece written for a newspaper or an article you self-edit much more and have the time to do so. You would not be writing it in the same circumstances. In an article/ poem/story/book/play/parody etc. you would hopefully hone every every word/nuance. There would need to be a good opening, substantial content and satisfactory ending.

A bit like like a performance.

Re smilies --

When I misunderstood someone's post, it's seldom because of something a smiley would have helped.

I understand the idea that we lack the sights and sounds that would be there if we were talking face-to-face, and I agree that that can mean we misread emotions. I even agree that a smiley can help to make it clear how a post (or part of one) was meant, for instance whether it was in fun.

However: (1) Smilies are often used to provide "deniability" or "sugar coating" rather than to clarify. (2) Most genuine misunderstandings I see are contrary to the plain meaning of the words. They tend to be of two sorts:

(a) Deliberate misreadings, We've all seen these. Someone say X, and they get a reply as if they'd said XXXXX, where XXXXX is much more extreme than X, and often only tangentally related to X. This is VERY annoying, and it makes meaningful discussion difficult.

(b) Genuine misreadings because of a mistaken assumption about what the poster thought.


I agree that is a problem, but I think reading too quickly is matters more. That and the adversarial nature of forum "debate".

That's because, I've found personally, that smileys don't usually get used "correctly" or rather they're not used in the manner in which they were originally intended when they first started being introduced in message board software.
If I am writing something which is tongue in cheek, I will employ the use of the wink or the raspberry smiley. If I'm writing something where I am agreeing with a fellow poster over an amusing post or suggestion, I will usually use the basic smiley or the big grin one. I rarely use any other smiley.

As for the adversarial nature of debate, I think that's usually down to the type of forum. Anything which involves a competition is generally going to give rise to conflicts. There's rarely any vitriol posted in the Sci-Fi or US TV show forums as they're more often than not talking about things people all like. Even where there are disagreements, they don't tend to get anywhere near as confrontational as they do here on the SCD forum.

I moderated one of the biggest Sims related gaming forums on the internet for more than five years, we rarely had arguments there. I also mod a gaming forum which has been going more than 12 years, we only occasionally had arguments there and they're more often related to "real life" as we all know each other personally as well as on the internet having met over the years we've been gaming together.

I'm not sure what you mean by "correctly".

When smilies are used to provide "deniability" or "sugar coating" rather than to clarify, they're being used dishonestly or deceptively, but I don't think that's a matter of correctness, It's just as if they'd said "just joking", or something like that.

But regardless of how we talk about the deceptive cases, most misunderstandings I see are ones smiles wouldn't have prevented or even made less likely. They aren't about or because of the sorts of things smilies address.


When debate on the internet isn't adversarial, it's generally because there isn't much disagreement. Your first example seems to be of that sort ("they're more often than not talking about things people all like"). In your second example, there also doesn't seem to be much disagreement, but in addition you all know each other personally, so it's not a purely internet-based discussion.

I don't think it matters whether the forum's about a competition or not. The Big Breakfast wasn't a competition, for example, but discussions in the old C4 Big Breakfast forum were very like those in the Big Brother and SCD forums here.