Poll: Should OT posts be banned from cpaptalk.com?

[Vader]

> to deprive them of their chance to troll on OT subjects would be just plain cruel!

Only a fool would condone trolling. On any forum. Especially a medical forum.

I could say... "only a fool" doesn't know the difference between a joke, and being serious.
....but I won't.

[Alshain]

I'm kinda surprised how civil this forum really is considering we are all a bunch of sleep deprived lunatics.

[chunkyfrog]

Sometimes, I find the political OT threads give insight as to the other views of members.
I feel I know them better, even if I think they are wrong.

[Starlette]

I voted no

[Vader]

Sometimes, I find the political OT threads give insight as to the other views of members.
I feel I know them better, even if I think they are wrong.

I know you were part joking, but you are absolutely right! That's what makes this a family!
And as someone else suggested, sometimes even families disagree.

[BlackSpinner]

I came here because I needed support when I was diagnosed with SOSA. There are many politically based forums on the internet, as well as anything else one might be interested in. I think people who want to be involved in discussions other than cpaptalk... should go to those forums.

Nobody is forcing you to read the OT threads or to post on them. Adults are quite capable of making a decision like that. If you are on a bus do you feel the need to jump into every conversation?

[jabman]

[quote="xyz"The kindest things to be said about that post is that it is naive. Experienced computer users (forum participants) understand the issue of "signal to noise ratio". OT posts _dilute_ the useful, informative information. At some point people get turned off and don't return. [/quote]

what I said may very well be naive but it is still the truth. I am sorry if people have left here because of OT topics especially if they needed help, But it was there choice. You are right there are more approite forums for posting some of these OT's but I think that this forum would loose more people if we wern't able to have OT's.

[ameriken]

I'm kinda surprised how civil this forum really is considering we are all a bunch of sleep deprived lunatics.

LOL, thanks for cracking me up. I guess everyone here is way too tired to really fight it out.

[Janknitz]

I find some of the OT threads offensive, but as long as they are marked OT I don't think they should be banned. I can usually tell by the title or the very first post, and I don't have to read it if I find it offensive.

If someone gets really out of line and it's personal against another forum member, that should not be condoned. But last time I looked this was still a free country, and even if I don't agree with a person's political, philosophical, or religious point of view, I do agree that they have a right to express it in a public forum.

[Vader]

If you are on a bus do you feel the need to jump into every conversation?

ROFL!!!
BlackSpinner, Even though we've disagreed sometimes, I gotta give you credit, sometimes you have some incredible one liners!

[Alshain]

Nobody is forcing you to read the OT threads or to post on them. Adults are quite capable of making a decision like that. If you are on a bus do you feel the need to jump into every conversation?

Lol, You really shouldn't ask questions you don't already know the answer to. They might surprise you.

The kindest things to be said about that post is that it is naive. Experienced computer users (forum participants) understand the issue of "signal to noise ratio". OT posts _dilute_ the useful, informative information. At some point people get turned off and don't return.

what I said may very well be naive but it is still the truth. I am sorry if people have left here because of OT topics especially if they needed help, But it was there choice. You are right there are more approite forums for posting some of these OT's but I think that this forum would loose more people if we wern't able to have OT's.

Even worse, the people it would lose would be the one GIVING the information away. Then you're left with a bunch of people and a bunch of unanswered questions.

But last time I looked this was still a free country, and even if I don't agree with a person's political, philosophical, or religious point of view, I do agree that they have a right to express it in a public forum.

Not that I disagree with you, but this isn't a public forum. It's a private one owned by CPAP.com. No democracies here, so this vote means nothing except to possible sway the owner.

[Vader]

Hey! I wanna know why this post isn't marked "OT"!


I would have skipped over this if I knew.

[scrapper]

The OT posts give me insight to individuals...........like the OT posts, some I agree with, some I do not. Some I like, some I do not..........

There's no reason to ban them........OSA affects every area of our lives.

[Uncle_Bob]

There is nothing in the user agreement regarding OT posts

There is however the following item relating to all posts and all members

While using CPAPtalk.com, you will not:

post any material, or links to any material that is (at our sole discretion) knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise violates any law;

[JointPain]

Although I don't particularly like to see the purely political threads, health care related discussions can have political aspects as well, and I think it would be hard to draw a line between what is acceptable and what is not. You would end up with lots of posts questioning whether some thread/discussion was allowable or not. So I appreciate where you're coming from, but I voted no.

I would like to see such threads clearly labelled with OT and an informative title. Many times I've clicked on an interesting thread title only to realize that it has nothing to do with CPAP, and that I've "read" that same thread several times already. I'm really not interested in that thread at all, but I have to "read" it multiple times. Very annoying. It'd be nice to have a "Hide this thread from me" button.