The newsvine minefield: reflections from a self-confessed naif

It has by me in many ways, then its called complaining or moaning. Everybody normally goes through this stage after a few months or so, its okay your get over it.

There are methods of controlling abuse, Killfile and many other long term viners have learnt how to beg to disagree, however even Killfile gets annoyed and lets his guard down, but not drastically he called me a coward once in not standing up for one of his views.

There are people on the vine from all walks of life and levels of education, unfortunately we do have people that think they are more superior then us poor mortals, that they must be right. Many are highly Indoctrinated in religion some with outrageous views due to their indoctrination. Thus political indoctrination is also a problem on the vine.

I myself try to take a middle of the line approach and one learns whom to avoid on the vine and whom will give a sensible debate even when they are opposed to your view. One must remember you can not change the vine to suit your needs, we all start off here with opinion that our articles and seeds should be read, but the vine is not the place to do that its more of a debating platform, but you have to find a debate that is suitable for your attention. Though after many months more people read your seeds and articles, some times your lucky and an article stays at the top of the vine and read by many.

I have been abused and have abused others, now I have learnt to be more diplomatic especially with the young viners, that have not had a lifetime experience to fall back on. In any case if you give a good and sensible comment it gets voted on. The vine is not just about seeding and writing articles.

Some of my best enemies on the vine concerning a subject matter are my friends concerning others where we agree in most things.

There are a lot of people who throw around generalizations and labels and enjoy the spats.

You'll learn to see which topics to avoid (i.e. athiesm, patriotism) if you don't want to see flare-ups,flames, etc.

Newsflake,

Being a newer newbie than you, maybe my total disillusionment hasn't set in yet.

Don't get me wrong, this is a lot of fun (and perhaps the best procrastination ever)

Yes indeed.........maybe this is explains why my pile of dirty laundry is higher than Mt. Everest.......Hey, that reminds me........

Assuming that all christians think the same, all lefties, conservatives, or all martians think the same is patently ridiculous.

I didn't know that all ....left handed, conservative, Christians were martians. You are correct, with an open mind we can learn something new every day. (I didn't know about that martian part)

If I read one more person bemoan

At times I think of newsvine as a big whine and cheese party. There is already plenty of whine, so I bring the cheese. btw- my investments in cheddar and brie are doing quite well, thank you.

On a more serious note.....You are correct. I have already learned to recognize some of the "players" here on the vine.

I no longer read their comments because I can guess what will be said, and how it will be said. The use of multiple adjectives (or adverbs) adds nothing to the discussion, so I do not waste my time trying to read their indecipherable dribble.

Who looses, we both do. They may have an interesting point to consider, which I do not hear.

I hear preaching to the choir is both fun and satisfying

.......and enjoyable to read.

Nice piece.

pfffft. You peacies are all the same!

...

You make a lot of good points here...

I, who am far newer than you here, was very disillusioned with Newsvine in the first couple days of using it. My first day I was called a "Jew-hater" only for pointing out that it was odd and Israeli firm was tallying the Iowa caucus. The next day, for trying to take the middle ground in a creation/evolution debate I unwittingly stepped in, being labeled an ole-time religion bible-thumper (or something to that effect, which I am not).

But, I'll say that Newsvine, after trying Digg & Reddit, is far better than any other option I've seen available...

Those unnatural divisions and "cliquish" behaviors are a sad by-product of the world we're socialized in...

Good luck to you, and the rest, who try to hold the middle ground ...

talk of politics is immensely disgusting. i used to belong to another community on the web a coupla years ago, for a considerably long time, in internet time. they had several discussion boards. one was called "poetry and politics" or something like that. it was horrible. people would spend a few weeks or months active on that board and then ban themselves because they couldnt take it anymore. but the one rule they had, which actually helped a lot, was that instead of pretending that they could ban "name-calling" etc within such a contentious environment, they also had a board called "flames", which was kind of like the place you went on the site when you needed to "take it outside". it kept the worst of things off the debate board but gave users a chance to rail at each other at a place where going overboard was the rule, which actually then brought a tone of tongue-in-cheek-ness to the worst kind of arguments.

Maybe they feel empowered by the distance and the kind of anonymity a site like this provides

Sometimes I feel like I am in high school again.

You wrote this before my little flame war occurred. Thank God, I don't have to take this personally.

What I find ironic is that I read an article just before this about "bullying" by one of the biggest bullies here! roflmao!

A timely column and I am a neophyte viner of 2 months as well.

Thank you for writing this.

I DO know several people here who have matured past the high school level. It is why I am still here.

Self-awareness and personal growth can be developed here. That is another reason I have not given up yet.

Nice article, and welcome to the Vine. (not that I've been here all that long either ;-)