Originally Posted by Mad Puppy:
“Why are you all posting bad things about Davina in an appreciation thread?
If you want to slag her to off to your hearts content, go somewhere else.”
Appreciation threads have been shown to not work.
Over the past couple of years when they first started popping up all over the place,...everybody respected them at first.
No more.
While at first people respected them and let people get on with it,..some of the people who used appreciation threads would feel okay about leaving the sanctuary of their precious appreciation thread, and go around the forum jumping on anyone like a ton of bricks whenever somebody criticised their beloved favourits on ANY OTHER THREAD.
Threads where the subject matter was open to everyone, and where a certain contestant could be criticised or praised equally, were swamped with people threatening to alert the mods if anyone said anything critical of their beloved favourite.
People would maybe start a thread being very critical of a particular contestant, but some of the same people who had the luxury of immunity on their precious appreciation threads, and felt their beloved was beyond criticism, would feel they had the right to be insulting and abusive towards other people who had criticisms to post about their favourites.
As though they had some special priviledge over others.
When appreciation threads became more popular,....the forums for the respective realty TV show became more hostile at about the same time.
I'm no expert, but that's what happened.
Don't know why, but the forum atmosphere often took on a more puritanical tone in nature.
This could well be due to popularity threads unwittingly encouraging a kind of forum behaviour that is very partisan in nature that spread beyone the appreciation threads.
I don't know, but it seems that was what happened in reality.
Or maybe it attracted a certain type of new forum member who misundertsood what DS was about, and maybe felt that DS was like some fansite that could be used for extreme celebrity worship.
I don't know. But when appreciation threads became fashionable, I felt a change in DS and saw much more petty forum wars and flaming. An atmosphere of double standards seemed to emerge. And many, many threats to alert the mods over very trivial posts that were mere criticims of a reality show contestant.
So therefore I have no respect for appreciation threads,...I just have respect for people as individuals.
If I have a point of view about something I will post it in any thread I happen to be reading at the time, and don't want to feel that I should be censored for simply expressing a respectful point of view.
I don't know if you were directly responding to my post above. But most people would, or should realise that it was a mere joke, that was making a bit of a small point too. Very mild indeed.
I said nothing bad about Davina whatsoever in it.
Which kind of illustrates the points I have made in this very post if you actually were posted in response to my last Endemol "Appreciation" quip.
When things go a bit "fansitey" in nature, that's when I think problems tend to arise.
I will not respect appreciation threads in themselves, but I will respect the people themselves who post in them.
They tend to polarise different factions together on the forums, which has in the past led to much aggressiveness and petty forum wars.
You'd think that once a certain set of fans get their appreciation thread they would behave themselves. It doesn't tend to work like that in practice. A hardcore element of the fans think it's a place to regroup before the next battle.
I think shes a GREAT presenter, and she seems like a real sound person!! 
But for all her bad points, I for one quite like her on BB (love might be a bit strong 
) - saw her at a couple of evictions and she was a bit of a babe 
