Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Drib
BACKGROUND:
What prompted this thread is some disgruntled "critics" who find my sense of humor (in some cases and on some subjects) to be offensive.
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On threads, you will NEVER see me post an intentionally silly and/or stupid comment on MobileRead again; silly and stupid comments will only appear in the CHAT. All my future contributions (from about 3 weeks ago), are now ONLY serious.
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Don, I had noticed you comment about this in another thread, but didn't comment because I didn't want it to seem like an attack but it seems to keep escalating so I thought I'd chime in and give you an outside view. Personally I don't find the humour offensive, I actually don't read the chat area that much, primarily because as I pointed out previously I view it as a glorified comments box and not a real chat program (no offense to those that enjoy it)...
I had seen a couple people request you to not post such jokes there as it offended them. While I understand your perspective from a viewpoint of freedom of speech I would like to point out to you that you happened to chose the most visible area of the forum to post to. (Barring frontpage/announcements which aren't postable by the regular user) This means that anyone using the chat box is forced, at least in part, to read those jokes. It isn't like a thread in a forum, which one can bypass. In fact, many of the users on this forum, for obvious reasons, are efficient readers and will read an entire line as quickly as they would identify that that line was posted by Dr. Drib so wouldn't even self-censor themselves when they realize who the author was. If you were to post a thread, then the user can make a conscious choice before opening the thread and reading the jokes.
To give an example, recently a user posted graphic pictures of an excised organ from a surgery she had. She put this in a thread warning the users of the nature of the post so that they could avoid it if it would bother them. Think if this was just posted directly at the bottom of the forums page. I don't think that it should be mandated or written as law. It was a courtesy of her to post it in that fashion. If I were you, and others had mentioned these issues, I'd have moved it to a thread.
I don't think you are trying to be rude, just exercising your freedom to post, but I think perhaps you might not have realized that where you are posting these jokes to makes a huge difference. As you were one that felt that even when posts are properly tagged they still are a flood in the Lounge area, I think maybe you can see where others would have an issue here when you have no means to avoid it 'cept by avoiding the chat altogether.
I'm not even certain if a user put you on (or anyone) ignore if it would matter in the chat box. Which would further exacerbate the issue. I don't personally have anyone on ignore, perhaps you or another mod could answer that.
Again, I really don't care one way or the other, I just thought I'd play devil's advocate here...
As for the 3 weeks, and others, etc. I'm in the dark so I won't comment...
As for what I consider bad taste? I don't know, I can joke about anything...
-MJ