I think it is usually people cutting her down with at least surface politeness. Sometimes this seems to me to be real politeness, and sometimes ... not.

To put it bluntly, the word that occurred to me was not "politeness" but "set-up".

Yes, I'm annoyed. But this didn't have to become something officially recognized, it could have stayed backchannel. Now that it's open for comment, though, I'm gonna comment.

And for a while, I think Step 2 was civil. It was after repeated attempts to engage in any sort of conversation, and being met with incomprehensibility or outright rudeness, that people got frustrated and snappy.

I wish Zoe would come over here, and participate, since she's clearly reading the boards right now. But we can't make her do that, can we?

Connie, it's not the non-sequiturs that tends to get in my hair; it's the intentional rudeness. There was an exchange that got me to the point of all caps in Unamerican a few weeks ago, whereby she dismissed Betsy's knowledge of British history out of hand (i.e. inserted herself into an ongoing conversation), and then, when offered citations, called Betsy "granny" and got snotty.

Obviously, I didn't bring it to Bureaucracy and/or stompy feet, because I could tell I was losing my temper and because I wasn't sure that we all were ready to handle Stompy Foot Warning Mark II. But it keeps coming up, you know? If it didn't keep coming up, we wouldn't have found ourselves talking openly/publically about it.

I lost a post but it turns out that it would have been a massive cross-post anyway.

Basically, the collective fuse is getting shorter. MARCIE would solve this issue. HostRocket sucks.

I think that sums everything up.

I think the disconnect I'm seeing is that people don't seem to consider their responses to Zoe as rude. I'm afraid I feel differently.

It was after repeated attempts to engage in any sort of conversation, and being met with incomprehensibility or outright rudeness, that people got frustrated and snappy.

I dunno. I remember a post from Allyson asking Zoe if she'd suffered a brain injury that was worse, on my personal rudeness scale, than anything Zoe had said to that point. (I thought 'Gay sex is ICKY!' was a dumb thing to say and a viewpoint not normally expressed beyond your more backward 10th grades, but I don't think Zoe was making the connection between her personal reaction to slash fiction and RL gay relationships. Which is to say, it was stupid, but not intentionally cruel. )

To be honest, Zoe's refusal to apologize when caled on stuff bothers me more than anything else -- and makes me wonder if she's playing us.

Hi people, weighing in on the Zoe thing. I know we can't really make expceptions for people, but I'm starting to think she's, well, special. She receives disability payments and has mentioned other things that make me think she may not quite filter reality or express herself the way others do.

I know the things she says do get annoying, but if you read them with that perspective, they become less annoying.

IMHO, of course. Ignoring works pretty well, too. Or just playing it off.

eta I want to agree with Victor that people also respond to her rudely.

I am feeling conflicted over this. Most of my frustration with Zoe comes out of the fact that her posting is incoherent--or else coherent but bears no relationship to the text--and she does not provide more clarification when requested or make an attempt to improve her communication.

I feel that she is nothing but noise on a board that is generally pretty high on signal.

I also feel that this is not a legislatable offense against board rules. We regulate content, not quality.

There was a filter at People's Forum, and glancing through a couple of LJs of friends, it was clear it was being used and why. When we came back over here, I noticed a few people bemoaning not having the filter.

I would like to remind people that the first rule of backchannel is don't mention backchannel. That goes for people's LJ's, esp. as many of them are group protected posts.

OK, I don't hang out in UnAmerican. But in the boards I've been in, I haven't seen her be rude first. Arguing with the clueless is a mug's game, anyway. I generally don't respond to her, except with an occasional "I wonder what that meant?" to myself.