Why do YOU care?

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

Here's a quick inquiry to our regular denizens, the occasional passers-by, and all secluded lurkers. In other words: everybody. [Poll #1861477]

Comments

[myste-uk.livejournal.com]

Usually, especially in this community which tends to be very US-centric, I just don't know enough to comment. So I read, follow links, and learn about stuff that otherwise I wouldn't know about, and form and change and modify my views as I do so. I read communities like this because I find them interesting, and most of the time I only comment to challenge someone's position if I don't see their logic. I may or may not agree with the view I'm challenging.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

Actually in my obesrvation it's much less US-centric than most other (non-Russian) forums on LJ. Although it's US-centric enough, yes. Because probably 95% of its regulars are American.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

I must admit the US-centrism could get a bit tedious at times. The taste it leaves you with is not exactly of an echo-chamber, but maybe of a very spiceless soup.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Whatchu talkin 'bout Willis? I like delving into abstract, academic stuff about distant things that matter to everyone outside America no one important.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Truth is, the well-written posts usually leave me in a thoughtful mood and I go away contemplating new perspectives.

Then there's the kind where people are defending something terrible and some guy is defending that person and my Enrage bar fills and I respond in an unfortunate, emotional way.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I like going away contemplating new perspectives with a few table-fellows over a bottle of rakia with Shopska salad.

Here. I confessed that I spend most of my offline time phislosophizing and politicizing, duh... Nerd, nerd, neeeeerd!

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

A well-written, comprehensive post necessarily has less to discuss because it is well-written and comprehensive.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

If you were aiming for DQ...



...you got it!

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I'm here solely for the abstract stuff, yo.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

And the good excuses for hitting the rakia.

[oportet.livejournal.com]

I don't mind using sub-theory #2 as an excuse sometimes.

I have a basic knowledge of Iran, but really - I don't know shit about Iran. So a month or two back, when someone did a really good post on Iran, it's history and present and future, all I did was read it. It was interesting, I learned from it, but I figured saying anything would just get in the way of everyone else having a good discussion.

On the other hand, I'm an expert on saying stupid shit - so when one of my politicians does that, of course I'm going to chip in.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

I remember that one (http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1489971.html).

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I tend to skip the trivial bicker-inducing stuff and focus on the more general and abstract, and distant one. Also I prefer to stay away from too much controversy.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Long, well written and researched posts are often interesting in of themselves, but due to their own excellence and even handedness, they don't leave much room for debate. When a post is thoughtful, honest what more is there to say than "good post," even if you have quibbles with the point of view or the conclusions. Quibbles don't make for interesting discussion, in my opinion. You need a fracture point between two or more points of view where people can really pry apart the issue and make for a more lively debate.

Debate is drama and drama is about conflict.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

That's the reality, yes. But wouldn't it discourage those who are more prone to thoughtful, well researched writing, from putting effort into it, if there's little feedback?

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

I care, just sometimes I don't have a horse in the race, like in some social issue topics involving people groups I'm not apart of or topics involving cultures I don't know enough about. I do read those, just don't have anything worth while to comment about.

I don't know anything about everything I'll be the first to admit that.

Also sometimes I simply have other things to do then Livejournal XD

[kayjayuu.livejournal.com]

HERETIC!

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

To say I participate mostly because I'm fascinated with people and their interactions would be only half of the story, not to mention how admittedly populist it'd sound. The other half is the information - but not raw info that I could easily get through the news flow. I'm talking of information as it's relayed after being broken through the prism of perception of people of various background and convictions. Which leads us back to the first half, but that wasn't in your poll so I chose "Other" ;)

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

Whoever invented the tag system, deserves a cake. Tags have been immensely helpful. It's enough to see who's posting and the tags below their post, to know if it's worth my time or not, and how I am to approach said post. We've grown so accustomed to each other here that this is pretty easy to figure out.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

This.

[politikitty.livejournal.com]

1. If my beliefs are not open for discussion, I'm much less likely to discuss it. Abortion, gay rights, etc all lead nowhere. The sorts of interactions that will lead to greater tolerance are not the sort of interactions that happen here. It's having your roommate contemplate a bad pregnancy. It's seeing your gay cousin get ostracized. While you can rationalize those beliefs after the fact, those beliefs have already been formed in your lizard brain and rational discussion doesn't enter into it.

2. If there exists a data set that would change my mind, I'll jump into it. While I'm skeptical about the possibility of changing minds, I like the excuse to google the latest data. Good policy is really hard, and I try to be vigilant about the difference between my unchanging policy goals and the intermediate policy plans to get to those goals. I believe that Democrats currently support a lot of economic policies that harm those weakest in society. They support a lot of regulations that are intended to punish imaginary villians and are thus more likely to hurt the economy than help it. I also believe that Republicans are so committed to the myth of small government and the rich as wealth-creators, they do not represent a rational option for a liberal capitalist. I don't think being a smart voter will make the parties cater to me, but I do recognize the Republican party needs to ditch some views to appeal to a new demographic in the next twenty years. If they're willing to court my demographic, I don't want to be too stubborn to change.


3. Time constraints. I currently have about 250 articles in Instapaper. The truth is that I'll read the short articles and skim the long ones. I have about 20 journal articles that will probably go unread beyond the abstract. I've had the window open on this comment for five hours now. If I reply, it will probably be brief. A good chance it will be sarcastic. After all, I'm at work and if I'm looking for a distraction, it's probably because something is stressing me out.


Two and Three are always at odds with each other internally. One and Two stem from my long love affair with the realities of bipartisanship. Institutional ways to increase co-operation and interpersonal ways to increase communication and understanding. It differs wildly from the common view of politics as sport.

[kayjayuu.livejournal.com]

But seriously folks. I'll comment when I have something to add to the discussion, or a question that can help me understand better.

I'm trying very hard to get away from correcting misinformation unless the person is open to that. It's difficult.

[paft.livejournal.com]

k: I'm trying very hard to get away from correcting misinformation unless the person is open to that.

That's part of the problem.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Actually. . . . ddstory wrote:

Why do so many people speak of attention as if it's some sort of commodity?

Well, for starters, its the only commodity LJ offers.

Don't get me wrong. I started punishing keyboards here years ago simply because I am lazy. I didn't like printing everything I write and stuffing it into a binder as I have for years. Those binders are unread, unsearchable, and generally unused. Now I can google search keywords I vaguely remember combining in a post and find topics years old. Go, technology!

So when I started here, I started realizing that sometimes something I said made sense. What was weeeeeeird is that it made sense to someone else. In a nutshell, commentary became a metric, sadly the only metric we have.

Hey, I skip past stuff I feel either is silly to the core or too similar to my own viewpoint to warrant comment all the time. You'll notice these categories are complete opposites.

And here in TP, youze guyz have created another metric, the Recommended tag. Brilliant! Mods for the win! Even with moderate to non-existent commentary, feedback!

So here's a question: Why not expand that? Why not create a hierarchy of recommendation tags based on the number of nominations? I'm not sure, but I think three levels of recommended awesome would be sufficient. Perhaps Recommended, Highly Recommended, and Strongly Recommended, though final verbiage might be far more awesome. Importantly, the difference between the levels should be substantial, though how substantial would be open for debate and/or tweaking in a closed community with a limited membership. The Ultimate R-tag should be reserved for the Rare and Wow posts.

That way, people chiming in (or wanting to chime in, but not bothering because the R-tag has already been assigned) can continue to offer positive recognition of posts well done, perhaps elevating them to Epic status.

Sorry for the ramble.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

"Punishing keyboards".

[root-fu.livejournal.com]

When I'm active, I respond to almost every post.

I care about everything and would guess your post doesn't apply to me. d :

[musicpsych.livejournal.com]

I think that if someone "gets something wrong" (according to us), we want to correct that, lest that be the final word on the subject. Especially if it's someone from across the political aisle. They can't get away with that!

I've noticed that if I can't get pulled into the post from the subject line and first paragraph, I tend to skip the post. I check LJ and Facebook and other sites at night when I get home from work, so it's just a blur of information unless something stands out to me. I think the well-researched posts can sometimes be longer than I'd like, or don't include jumping off points for discussion. It may help to have some kind of discussion questions.

And yeah, I think that a lot of the reasons you identified are true. I'm guilty of the "not my country" reason. If I'm being honest, it is sometimes that the story doesn't seem relevant to my life. Though that's not always the case - the "Pussy Riot" story didn't affect a lot of us, yet it was still a big story. Sometimes I feel like I'm too ignorant of a region or a topic to have anything worthwhile to say, or that I'll reveal my ignorance by saying something stupid. And I guess that gets to the "not knowing jack shit" point.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Yep, the first paragraph matters. That's why I put all my trollbait in there.

[fierceleaf.livejournal.com]

I'm very ignorant, thus it doesn't matter what thread to comment. On the other hand, I love to comment articles about my country.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

If we are defining "caring" as "why participate in an internet political forum" my answer is pretty much for the lulz.

I genuinely enjoy disecting people's thought processese and fucking with preconceptions.

If we're talking about caring in the broader sense of why certain issues and not others? well that gets complicated.

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

Each of us has their favourite topics, or topics they have more knowledge and interest about. Some might call that one trick pony, or two (three) trick pony, but we cannot know everything.

Still, learning something new about a topic that we had previously been ignorant about, is one of the things I love this community for. The news networks are fine, but this is something different.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

I'm getting older. I use the internetz to get my blood pumping. Being outraged and appalled seems to work.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

How about this one: "That topic makes me so uncomfortable that I would prefer to curl up under the covers with a steaming cup of cocoa or a smoking bowl of ganja."

[paft.livejournal.com]

How about... and yeah, I know this is crazy talk, but I'll post it anyway... How about conversations in which everyone agrees and just posts messages that are variations of "yeah, you're right," not being especially interesting after a while?

Seriously how long do you expect various versions of "I agree" to carry you in a discussion?

I've posted to forums where people get all upset when controversial subjects are posted, or (horror of horrors!) someone DISAGREES WITH THE CONSENSUS. I'm always reminded of those people who insist that only the weather should be discussed at their parties because, no matter how civil and polite everyone stays, they get all weepy and nervous if people start arguing about something.

From "Song of a Thread"

Peace reigns upon the online sea
And all is copacetic,
For on the forum all agree,
Each poster thoughtfully says "B"
When they respond to the OP,
Some gaily and some solemnly
Some off-hand, some emphatic.

Yes, "B" says 1
And "B" says 2
And "B" says 3 and 4,
And "B" says 5
And "B" says 6,
Who knows how many more
Would’ve anted up their B
If 7 hadn’t wrecked the thread
Gone on a savage, trolling spree
By coolly and deliberately
Posting a “D” instead?...

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

You have no idea how ugly a weather discussion could get!! TEH HORRORS!!!11!