This really bugs me. I use facebook fairly regularly, as it's my primary method for keeping in contact with friends and family in all the different parts of the world that I've lived in or spent significant time in and suits this job very well. However over the last few years an annoying trend has popped up. People will post something interesting (in amongst the stuff I don't care so much about) and I'll write a long and thoughtful comment as a reply. The response is then "Ugh, you're so wordy", "TL;DR", "geez, I didn't need an essay", or similar.

Meaningful thoughtful statements have somehow been declared 'out of fashion' or otherwise no longer acceptable.

I also run a facebook page for the book(s) I wrote/write as well as a twitter feed. Interaction thought the facebook page is excellent; however I've basically given up on twitter as I can't really say anything useful in that small number of characters. I could in theory start my own blog, post information there and then link to it from the twitter feed, but that just seems like significant extra work compared to what I'm doing on facebook (honestly, I'd rather be spending my time writing books than promoting them).

I believe that says more about you than it does about other people...

When will people just say "Thank you France but we'll take our goodies elsewhere."
Let the Belgians and Germans get all of the benefits and leave the French out in the cold. The only way to stop this bullshit is to opt out of it and let them suffer the consequences.

LK

I'm pretty sure his name is Mel.

I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, but have you considered it might be because of how you phrase the view or evidence?

I've also from time to time posted minority views or evidence, but have never been modded down because of it. In fact, I'm generally always either unmodded or modded up for all my posts.

On the occasions I've been modded down, it's usually mixed with up-mods. For example, I'll often post something only slightly interesting, watch it go up to "+5 Interesting" and than down to around +3 from a couple of "Overrated" mods. This seems fair to me.

Wording is usually the culprit when people complain about unfair downmods. You should read your post back to yourself and consider if someone may be able to misinterpret it, or assign a 'mood' or 'feeling' to it that you didn't intend.

Of course, there is always also 'reputation' to take in to account. There are probably people who see "cold fjord" and immediately want to mod down. It sucks, but it happens. Perhaps try creating a second account, post a few replies with the same viewpoint that you'd normally use but be painstakingly careful about the wording. Then, if those get modded down, you may be right; but I suspect they won't be.

Granted, I'm a boxing fan so I don't claim to be objective but it's insanity that someone can have a history of making false rape allegations and the judge doesn't allow the jury to consider that.

LK

I have attended one college and one university since Wikipedia was created and it's not permitted as a source *at all*. You, clearly may use it to find actual sources but it shouldn't even appear in your bibliography or sources.

LK

Namely, this was in the page for Desiree Washington, the woman that Mike Tyson was convicted of raping.

In the section about the rape accusation, trial and conviction of Mike Tyson, I added information about a previous false allegation made by Ms. Washington against a high school friend.

Someone reverted my change with a cryptic comment about "BLP". I saw it a few days later and re-created my change. Again, my change was reverted with more comments about "BLP".

This was several years ago so I don't remember exactly what was said back and forth but the gist of it is that the other party thought that there was something in the wikipedia rules about the "Biographies of Living Persons" that prevented me from including the information about the false rape allegations Desiree Washington made in the past. I challenged the person to show specifically where BLP precluded me from including this information, they could not so I restored my change.

Apparently this other editor had wikipedia political connections because I received a "Warning" for making my edits. I was willing to be banned over this because for me it's about the principle of the thing. If wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, I was going to make sure that this factual information was included. Hell, I can generate throw-away email addresses and wikipedia accounts. I'm not sure who resolved this but what happened in the end was that Desiree Washington's page went away and the information about the false rape allegations in her past were included on Mike Tyson's page.

After this, I stopped editing articles. I realized that situations like this are precisely why wikipedia isn't considered an authoritative source in the academic sense. People with more knowledge about a subject and with the supporting documentation can lose edit wars if the ignoramus on the other side has the political clout to have them blocked.

LK

Dawkins is concerned only with enriching himself, hence his assholery.

You don't convince people that you're right by being an asshole.

You can prompt people to question their beliefs by asking the right questions.

Be friendly, be personable, don't be an asshole.

Be Penn Gillette, don't be Dawkins.

Evangelical Atheists are just as annoying as Jehovah's witnesses.

LK

The first thing is to remind them that you could be hit by a bus or win the powerball tomorrow and they need to have at least one more person who knows your job in order to stay in business.

Keep it in terms that they will see as practical.

LK

Where/When during Shaun of the Dead did they establish that one had to be in close contact with a zombie in order to become one?

This was explicitly established in Zack Snyder's Dawn remake and in 28 Days Later, one could only become infected by exposure to bodily fluids from infected but there's nothing that establishes this rule in Shaun.

LK

Maybe you should less worried about the camera on a private citizens glasses that can only run for a few hours at a time and more worried about the government owned cameras on every street corner and the business's cameras in every corner of every building that run and record 24/7.

While I don't disagree with you in principle - I too would be uncomfortable with someone having Google Glass on in my vicinity when I'm out enjoying myself - this is something I see a lot, and almost exclusively from residents of the USA: employers shouldn't care what you do in your off time. I find it disgusting how many people simply accept that their employer is their 'owner'.

When I released my book (see sig), my boss even showed significant interest. Several people in the company have now bought it. They know I take illegal substances from time to time. They know I have had illegal substances on me at work (last year's Christmas party was straight after work with no easy opportunity for me to go home between work and party, so I simply took my substances with me to work). They also don't care: I do my job extremely well and am praised for my work. If I did my job poorly, I'd expect to be spoken to about it. If it were because I was turning up to work high and having difficulty concentrating on work, I'd expect them to tell me to stop doing that or face disciplinary action. But as long as I do my job well, it's none of their business what I do outside of that time.

For reference, I live in Germany and work for the European head office of Konica Minolta (business equipment) as a software developer ("Software Development Supervisor" is my actual title, which means I actually spend too much time doing management stuff and not enough coding; but I'm a developer at heart and still get a decent amount of code written myself).

What's really annoying is that you CAN do that as a "page" but not from your private account.

Example here.

I've seen this numerous times and it's usually one of the following cases at work.

1. Sometimes managers have a specific candidate in mind for a job but the rules of the business require that they use a job posting system to announce any openings. So, the opening is tailored to a the person that the manager wanted to hire from the beginning. Very few people will meet those exact specifications and in the end, they'll be able to hire the person the manager wanted from the beginning.

2. Because they know that no one will meet the requirements so they can hire a H1B worker and drive down the cost of tech labor.

LK