Rant Room

Trolls and flame wars are an occupational hazard at the halfbakery and we’re never going to eliminate them, no matter how hard we try. Personally, I prefer either a single pithy anno or just the silent treatment when dealing with these situations but clearly there are some of us who feel the need to vent their spleen in a public, and probably very cathartic, manner against those who offend them.

Now, being of the ‘just ignore ‘em and they’ll go away’ school, I find this reaction almost more irritating than the original trolling. Almost, but not quite. After all, those who get caught up in these little spats are, in their own way, just trying to keep the ‘bakery clean for us decent folks.

My, tentative, solution for this is the Rant Room. A link over there, on the left hand side under the ‘meta’ tag, that would operate in a similar way to a Guestbook. Got a problem with someone’s attitude? Post it in the Rant Room. Fed up with the latest outbreak of adolescent humour and the lack of decent ideas? Have a rant in the Rant Room. Can’t stand DrBob’s ‘holier than thou’ attitude? You know where to go.

Basically, those of us who want to just log on for half an hour a day and dip our toes in the dubious and murky waters of bakerydom can avoid having to spend twenty of those precious minutes wading through an extended argument that has little to do with the purpose of this esteemed domain.