Near Troll posts

Kitsun said:

I apologise Trainspotter, as we have now gone off on a complete tangent on your thread. However, it was done out of concern for Blueray’s wellfare (I fear, from previous threads this week, that she may have been feeling a bit belittled and unvalued), not with any intention to annoy or irritate yourself.

No need to apologise for that, I regard people's welfare as paramount whatever I have said and that is more important.

And I am guilty myself of going off on tangents, but I hope I never go off topic to spout controversial views.  I always try to 'engage brain' before opening my metaphorical mouth when replying to the posts on these forums.  Many posts I make take literally hours to put together, I tend not to put my thoughts down quickly and many times I write but don't post because I think it comes across the wrong way or in a way which wasn't intended.

Whether my post does or does not refer to someone who has thought it is about them and replied here is not really my point. And I still will not single out any one person, there are posts from several different people over a period of time that are 'guilty' of the same thing.

With freedom of speech comes responsibility.  A topic on say, favourite castles could go off topic occasionally to some town which has a castle,  and then another post could mention a famous inhabitant of that town or the beauty of that town and that would make interesting reading in that topic.

But if someone then went on to write about their thoughts on global warming and putting controversial views that it was caused by the ingredients of milkshakes, that would in all probability be off topic and not suitable for that thread, especially if this then became a discussion about global warming or milkshakes rather than the original purpose of the thread.

I just wanted to try to encourage the people to whom I was referring to think a bit more when posting, controversial posts will usually bring strong views which can then bring robust replies and in an off-topic post things can become unpleasant to read.  And it begins to look as if the only purpose of posting is because someone only wants to see their writing on the screen with no regard to the relevance to the topic or others reading it.

I hope people continue to post on controversial subjects but please make a separate thread for it, and not change a 'friendly' thread into something controversial. 

And that I hope will be my final word about this!

I apologise Trainspotter, as we have now gone off on a complete tangent on your thread. However, it was done out of concern for Blueray’s wellfare (I fear, from previous threads this week, that she may have been feeling a bit belittled and unvalued), not with any intention to annoy or irritate yourself. Unfortunately, I can’t find a means to send her a private message on here otherwise I would do that rather than gate crash your thread. 

As I said I was having a bad day!

I do think there is a tendency on these forums, perhaps unsurprisingly, for people to go off on tangents half way through a post. There’s been a few posts which have started off on one topic but by the end of the thread people are discussing something completely different. I can understand that that might be a bit annoying, especially if you were enjoying the initial conversation topic but at the same time its probably fair to say that most of us on here have a tendency to go off on a tangent from time to time.

There have also been occasions where a post topic  that been started, is also a topic that one particular user feels very strongly about so they feel the need to interject and put across their point of view. I guess if someone feels that strongly about a topic then it is understandable, though if they are stating their opinion very strongly it may irritate those who have a different viewpoint.

Im not sure that I’ve correctly interpreted what was bothering you? 

No, you didn't, not how I mean it to mean.

It is posts that hi-jack another post with drivel.  Or, with nothing to say, have to go off and say things that are not remotely connected to the initial post just to put over a load of tosh.  Posts being made that contribute nothing to the conversation that have no logic, rhyme nor reason, and seem to be only to satisfy the ego of the poster.  It is not the off-topic nature of the posts but more the nature of the off topic post.

If the person wanted to start a post of their own spouting their ideas, that would be acceptable.  But what happens is another, quite interesting, thread can be hijacked in such a way that the original purpose is lost and the thread then gets bogged down with the off-topic matter.

I should have called the post 'pseudo Trolling' if I had thought of it sooner.  Perhaps I should just have started a post for people to spout rubbish, to release other posts from this burden.

Hi, hope you’re having a good evening? The thing I’ve noticed lately is a few posts trying to recruit people for research purposes, I thought they had to contact the moderators rather than post directly onto the forums? Not sure that that’s troll like though, more just not playing by the rules. What sort of posts do you mean?  I certainly hope that I didn’t appear troll like when I was ‘throwing my toys out of the pram’ the other week regarding my dual diagnosis. I certainly didn’t mean to cause offence, I was just in a really bad head space that day.