MFP has really changed

Hear, hear, OP!!

I am relatively new to the site, but I have not encountered such uncivility since Jr. High School. So many seem to revel in being called mean. They defend their right to be mean and claim they are just "helping" or they were driven to it lesser minds.

I have also noticed Jr. High type "cliques". One person will post something snarky or rude and suddenly a bunch of others start in. Often the same group. I assume these are from their 'friends' list. Because if a group is rude, then it's not really rude, right?

It's so juvenile and silly.

I guess I will have to say this again... this place is unicorns and rainbow glitter compared to the likes of Babycenter, the Knot, and Sodahead... among many others, those are just the places I have been myself... so please... join another forum and then comeback and see how uncivil this place is... Hell, there was a time where even NEOPETS was worse than this place has ever been... yes, a game website.

I am a member of three other forums (all organic farming sites). They are nothng like this. People disagree, sometimes it gets a little heated, but I've never encountered anything like this. I suppose there are moderators on those sites, though I've never known one to have to step in.

I'm not familiar with the sites you mention, but are they geared toward juveniles? .

Hear, hear, OP!!

I am relatively new to the site, but I have not encountered such uncivility since Jr. High School. So many seem to revel in being called mean. They defend their right to be mean and claim they are just "helping" or they were driven to it lesser minds.

I have also noticed Jr. High type "cliques". One person will post something snarky or rude and suddenly a bunch of others start in. Often the same group. I assume these are from their 'friends' list. Because if a group is rude, then it's not really rude, right?

It's so juvenile and silly.

I guess I will have to say this again... this place is unicorns and rainbow glitter compared to the likes of Babycenter, the Knot, and Sodahead... among many others, those are just the places I have been myself... so please... join another forum and then comeback and see how uncivil this place is... Hell, there was a time where even NEOPETS was worse than this place has ever been... yes, a game website.

I am a member of three other forums (all organic farming sites). They are nothng like this. People disagree, sometimes it gets a little heated, but I've never encountered anything like this. I suppose there are moderators on those sites, though I've never known one to have to step in.

I'm not familiar with the sites you mention, but are they geared toward juveniles? .

Dang, I must be tired today...I got halfway through the OP before I realized it was a mean people post.

This site doesn't suck because of the group of people that sprinkle their knowledge where it needs to be sprinkled, it's ruined by people who try too hard to take everything personally. People who want to find something to complain about and find a way to be upset.

THIS.

I spent a while actually crafting a response in another thread a while back, making sure I used "I/me/my/mine" and what I found solved MY problem, and "YMMV" and all that PC stuff, only to be immediately responded to by someone who thought I was telling them what the hell to do.

Jesus, take things personally much?

I just throw up my hands and walk away after that.

And lots of people do that way too often because they don't see the point.

I keep offering my opinions, experiences, and advice because I hope someone reading my posts but not posting will maybe take them to heart and try them out. I don't necessarily post just for the OP, my friends, or anyone else, but I'm also posting for someone who has a question about something that they don't know how or are too afraid to ask. It's almost never because of one specific person that I offer advice.

I started on this site for the first time about three years ago. At that time it was a wonderful place to get motivation and support. I found a lot of nice and helpful people. This site is suppose to be about supporting each other, but more and more I see people being less supportive and just down right mean. Some users seem to have an attitude that they are better because they have been a successful where another user wasn't as successful or is taking just a little more time.
I have read multiple post today where a person asked a simple question and they were ridiculed for it. One poor girl simply asked what was the difference between light cleaning and heavy cleaning. That's all she wanted to know, but there were post after post about how she shouldn't log cleaning. It's not anyone's right to tell another person what they should and shouldn't log. If I decided to log "walking to my fridge to get a snack" it's no one's business but my own.
I think some users are forgetting the reasons for a site like this. I also want to make it clear that I'm saying "some users", because there are still a lot of genuinely nice people on here.
We all need to be kind to one another. Most of us have all been in the same situation and for the few of you that have always been fit and use the site to keep track of your fitness then you need to understand that it doesn't come as easy to some as it does to you. For the ones that have been overweight and out of shape remember where you have come from and how you felt in the beginning.
It shouldn't matter if you are morbidly obese, too thin, or have never had an issue. We are all here for the same reason and that's to be the best us we can be. So, as I said before be kind to one another or you're disrespecting the site, the members, and yourself. It's fantastic to look good but real beauty still comes from within.

I'm gonna try to address this without making it a whole thing.

Yes, you can log whatever you want. But when you ask for advice, you'll get advice. And anyone who cares is gonna tell you logging things as exercise that aren't really exercise is a bad idea.

It may not be what you want to hear, but it's good advice. And that's the problem. Some people want advice, some people want to be told they're doing everything right no matter what.

I've seen people be unnecessarily rude, I've seen people be extraordinarily kind. Just like life. It's no different here. It's everyone's choice if they want to focus on the positive or the negative.

I've seen some 2 and 3 year old zombie threads where this was extremely clear: people were being super sweet and supportive, but of really horrible ideas. I'd rather have someone embarrass me, and make me think twice and do some research before trying a method that would either waste my time and money or potentially hurt me, instead of being supportive of some cockamamie fad just to make me feel good.

This site doesn't suck because of the group of people that sprinkle their knowledge where it needs to be sprinkled, it's ruined by people who try too hard to take everything personally. People who want to find something to complain about and find a way to be upset.

THIS.

I spent a while actually crafting a response in another thread a while back, making sure I used "I/me/my/mine" and what I found solved MY problem, and "YMMV" and all that PC stuff, only to be immediately responded to by someone who thought I was telling them what the hell to do.

Jesus, take things personally much?

I just throw up my hands and walk away after that.

And lots of people do that way too often because they don't see the point.

I keep offering my opinions, experiences, and advice because I hope someone reading my posts but not posting will maybe take them to heart and try them out. I don't necessarily post just for the OP, my friends, or anyone else, but I'm also posting for someone who has a question about something that they don't know how or are too afraid to ask. It's almost never because of one specific person that I offer advice.

And I'm sure you offer reasonable advice.

I saw the post he was talking about. The responder was all "how dare you....blah blah blah...about my way of eating." Utter...insanity...

It's one thing to respond with your POV, just to offer another viewpoint or more info to anyone who'd be reading it. It's another to take someone's post as a personal attack on you when it clearly wasn't and try to start *kitten*. That's what was going on.



But it's generally true that you must recognize MFP Club rules:
1st rule of MFP Club: Don't say sugar, carb, processed, junk, or clean. Ever.
2nd rule of MFP Club: If someone can take it the wrong way, they will. Murphy's cousin, I'm pretty sure.
3rd rule of MFP Club: Some people are going to bring out the snark, whether or not it is merited. Because some people just have nothing nice to say, and they keep saying it often and loudly.

It's all in how you respond. We are all just typing hands. You can only be hurt if you let them hurt you. No battles or worldly issues will be won or lost on here. Your life isn't changed one iota in reality just because some fake person on the interwebs talked mean to you. (And you can deny it all you like, but there are still jerks on here that prey on people for their entertainment.) Let it go. People, trolls, arseholes; they will be as they are. Here or in life. It is what it is.

Hear, hear, OP!!

I am relatively new to the site, but I have not encountered such uncivility since Jr. High School. So many seem to revel in being called mean. They defend their right to be mean and claim they are just "helping" or they were driven to it lesser minds.

I have also noticed Jr. High type "cliques". One person will post something snarky or rude and suddenly a bunch of others start in. Often the same group. I assume these are from their 'friends' list. Because if a group is rude, then it's not really rude, right?

It's so juvenile and silly.

I guess I will have to say this again... this place is unicorns and rainbow glitter compared to the likes of Babycenter, the Knot, and Sodahead... among many others, those are just the places I have been myself... so please... join another forum and then comeback and see how uncivil this place is... Hell, there was a time where even NEOPETS was worse than this place has ever been... yes, a game website.

I am a member of three other forums (all organic farming sites). They are nothng like this. People disagree, sometimes it gets a little heated, but I've never encountered anything like this. I suppose there are moderators on those sites, though I've never known one to have to step in.

I'm not familiar with the sites you mention, but are they geared toward juveniles? .

You've clearly never ventured into the viper pit that is pregnancy or "mommy" forums. Organic farming forums aren't going to be a good indicator, because I'll hazard a guess that--while disagreements may occur--you're too similar in general things.

Venture onto forums or discussion boards with broader subjects, like MFP, and you'll find much worse. News sites are a stunning example.

I actually used to run an internet forum with about 900ish users. In the beginning, nobody knows each other and everyone is, for the most part, reasonably polite. They are on their best behavior while they feel things out. Once people start to get to know each other they tend to loosen up a bit and form cliques, in a sense. Once this happens (and it has happened here, I can see it), newbies or less active users start to feel out of the loop. And when it is obvious that a lot of the people know each other and are bouncing snarky remarks off each other, or sharing inside jokes, others start to feel like outsiders and take is as "mean".

Just my opinion from 3 years of owning and moderating a very active forum.

But that's not the fault of the majority. I'm serious, if you approach anyone that's part of a "clique" on this site, they will try to help you. A lot of them will give you any advice they can and welcome you to their friends list if you ask properly.

On the other hand, if you respond to their genuine attempt to help you with an attitude, yeah, they're probably not going to like that. Most people wouldn't. So many people on this site are unnecessarily combative when people are just trying to help.

I didn't say it was anyone's fault. It's just my observation. I've watched this forum evolve very similary to how my old forum did. Nobody's fault, it just happens.

This is not my first account here, I cancelled an account a couple years back and came back recently, and it has changed since then, in my opinion. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but I do think that some people can be a bit harsh on people who come in here asking questions. I've seen a whole lot of "Not this again" followed by snarky responses and users bantering back and forth on a topic that maybe they just should have stayed out of if they weren't going to be adding any substance to the conversation. Not always, just sometimes. So I get what the OP is saying, but I'm not the type to complain about it, really. I just mostly avoid the forums and comment only on threads I deem to be "safe" for me to be in.

I think the "not this again" refers mostly to people trying to bring in MLMs and magic diet snake oils.

As for the other stuff... it's amazing how many questions get repeated around here. There IS a search function, and a lot of the time using it will garner much better results/answers than posting a thread that's been hashed out 50,000 times.

ETA: I'm not trying to argue with you and I don't mean to sound aggressive. I do agree with the points you're making, but the community as a whole can't go back to square one so that everyone has the warm fuzzies, either.

I agree with OP I mean Have you read an article and there was like 5 tips to get healthier today, one way to do it is to do some light-heavy cleaning…this way your getting things done and working out.

One day i had too much energy and I cleaned the entire apartment and that means taking the rugs out from my rabbits area, vacuumed, laundry…bathroom+rugs…I was SWEATY lol I burned like 400 calories that day from those 2 hours of cleaning i was WIPED OUT…Idk how people can say that housework isn't working out?? so all the thin moms out there must be dumber than doornails when it comes to strength and energy hauling them kids around and cleaning after them pfft