Civility impossible?

Think the reason more threads don't show up in CDZ is just as Prof. Moriarty said in "Game of Shadows" about how people crave conflict, though Holmes stymied his plans for WWI, they'd do it themselves in time. I think there's something to that about human nature. As animals conditioned via fight or flight, many of us choose to fight on discussion forums instead of flight and ignoring things.

There is a reason that the coders made space bar act as Page Down in web browsers.
 
I'm often tempted to ignore people online, but I've yet to encounter someone I disagreed with 100% or thought was irredeemable. As SunniMan mentioned the other day in some thread, "wow finall ysomething I agree with you on." :) Had I ignored him disagreeing on the other 99% of stuff I'da missed that :) Plus it teaches tolerance and self-control having to put up with people's shennanigans.

I don't ignore those who are arguing a point of view I disagree with. Ever. And while everybody enjoys agreement and being affirmed in their opinion--I'm not knocking that when it happens--how boring would a message board be if there were no differing opinions? But the problem comes when people cannot focus on an expressed concept and rebut it with a reasoned argument. The problem comes when other people resent those who express a different opinion or point of view and attack the other person instead of rebutting his/her expressed opinion. The problem comes when the immature are unable to separate the person from his/her opinion and if they hate the opinion, they hate the person.

The ones I most often ignore are those who can't express an opinion without being personally insulting. The ones I most often ignore are those who throw out inflammatory comments and make no effort to participate in the discussion. The ones I most often ignore are those who are unable to read or understand and who regularly misrepresent and mischaracterize whatever others say. The ones I most often ignore are those who are incapable of or unwilling to stay on topic. And when a thread is populated with mostly those or even too many of those, I will go find something else to do.
 

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