Thread hijacking

[mahagonny]

Maybe a thread or two on adjunct issues would be good,

not interested, thanks anyway

...which belies the statement that they want more emphasis on adjunct issues.

The fact remains, an article that purports to be about the state of academia generally, or student experiences generally, or about academic job searching and hiring generally, and has nothing in it about the adjunct world is a hijack.

[marshwiggle]

There's really no reason to discuss adjunct faculty POC concerns on this forum. It's toxic for that. However, occasionally mentioning how the tenure track whiteness is not the savior of the free world that it envisions itself to be might be interesting.

(Changes which sound like "anti-racist"-speak.)

Do you notice that your tone flips when you go from discussing racial issues to discussing faculty issues? In one case, you disparage the victim mentality and blaming others for the problems, whereas in the other case you embrace the victim mentality and blame others for the problems.

[mahagonny]

There's really no reason to discuss adjunct faculty POC concerns on this forum. It's toxic for that. However, occasionally mentioning how the tenure track whiteness is not the savior of the free world that it envisions itself to be might be interesting.

(Changes which sound like "anti-racist"-speak.)

Do you notice that your tone flips when you go from discussing racial issues to discussing faculty issues? In one case, you disparage the victim mentality and blaming others for the problems, whereas in the other case you embrace the victim mentality and blame others for the problems.

Do you notice that the woke, left American tenure track's tone flips, inversely to mine? Do you notice how they, not majority faculty, hold the views that ostensibly represent the well educated?

[marshwiggle]

There's really no reason to discuss adjunct faculty POC concerns on this forum. It's toxic for that. However, occasionally mentioning how the tenure track whiteness is not the savior of the free world that it envisions itself to be might be interesting.

(Changes which sound like "anti-racist"-speak.)

Do you notice that your tone flips when you go from discussing racial issues to discussing faculty issues? In one case, you disparage the victim mentality and blaming others for the problems, whereas in the other case you embrace the victim mentality and blame others for the problems.

Do you notice that the woke, left American tenure track's tone flips, inversely to mine? Do you notice how they, not majority faculty, hold the views that ostensibly represent the well educated?

I'd say they mostly claim that all faculty are victims of the cruel administration and government; so they see themselves more as innocent bystanders.

[mahagonny]

There's really no reason to discuss adjunct faculty POC concerns on this forum. It's toxic for that. However, occasionally mentioning how the tenure track whiteness is not the savior of the free world that it envisions itself to be might be interesting.

(Changes which sound like "anti-racist"-speak.)

Do you notice that your tone flips when you go from discussing racial issues to discussing faculty issues? In one case, you disparage the victim mentality and blaming others for the problems, whereas in the other case you embrace the victim mentality and blame others for the problems.

Do you notice that the woke, left American tenure track's tone flips, inversely to mine? Do you notice how they, not majority faculty, hold the views that ostensibly represent the well educated?

I'd say they mostly claim that all faculty are victims of the cruel administration and government; so they see themselves more as innocent bystanders.

They see themselves as nobly fighting the system on our behalf when no one requires them to.
Actually the question for me is not how we could get them to think or act differently but how could you have a system that does not use sacrificial positions, personnel who are presented to the students as fully professional but behind the scenes regarded as imposters. Does not run on lies, internal contradiction, lack of intentionality, or a one-size-fits-all requirement for research, resulting in colossal waste of energy and money.
People want their tenure because they worked hard for it, beginning with finding the job offering, moving, etc. There's no reason to expect them to feel any other way. The question shouldn't be how should they change, but more, what should be done about them.
It's striking to me, and not at all impressive, that despite widespread consensus that something has gone terribly wrong, i.e. the widespread use of temporary teaching positions in place of regular ones, there is virtually no call for reform.

[polly_mer]

If you don't like it, then don't read it.  I had to put two forumites on ignore because I was dumber for reading what they wrote.

In general, I'd much rather read a vibrant discussion on something than have someone who practically never contributes on a given thread come in to scold about how the thread isn't what that person wanted at this point.  That's how normal conversations work--people want to talk about something and then continue talking about that thing.

The rural/urban split in the US on many issues is pretty interesting and will not be going away anytime soon.  Insisting that matters of education aren't influenced by the type of life one has and what one values is foolish. Insisting that something meaningful like that belongs on the politics thread is why people don't really believe that SPADFY applies in higher ed and why many, many people are confused to find out that their ideas are just one of many possible realities.

If a long-running thread isn't speaking to you right this second, then go away for a few days/weeks and check back in later.  Or don't and do something else with your life.  But being only a reader instead of a participant means that you, complaining reader, are the problem in not contributing something worth responding to.

[lightning]

If you see posts on a venerable thread, and they are irrelevant to you, then just ignore and scroll on by--just like you would do on social media platforms. It's really easy to mentally filter out posts and posters, and scroll on by. Nobody really owns these boards (well, maybe Polly_mer since Polly_mer probably has access to the self-destruct button for the fora), nor does anyone own how threads are supposed to evolve. I'm actually very surprised at how someone even thinks it's even a major problem. The fluid, somewhat de-centralized, and somewhat unstructured nature of the fora is part of what makes them so useful. Yeah, someone might chime in and go on a tangent and take the thread with them for a little bit, and someone might even start yammering the same hackneyed talking points. But, so what. Ignore what you don't care to read, and scroll on.

[ciao_yall]

The "ignore user" functions has changed my life.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Just sayin'.

[ergative]

Is this a hijack, or not?

Poster A:  I'd like to discuss this article about levels of stress and substance issue abuse vulnerability among college professors. (Poster A then includes a link to an article claiming to be about college professors generally and contains zero data about, nor mention of adjunct faculty.)

Posters B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J:  Well, here's what I've experienced.

Poster K: Uhm, wonder why they didn't include adjunct faculty in the study?

Poster B: You're supposed to quit and get a real job, then come back and teach in your spare time so you can give back to the community....us! How many times have you been told...

It's like the person at the conference or workshop who always has to ask why the author isn't addressing the thing they study. Sure, sometimes neglecting something can be a glaring omission, but everything can't be about everything else. Just because some article doesn't specifically mention adjunct faculty doesn't mean the person is ignoring them.
And, yes, the second thing is thread hijacking too.

Actually, an article such as the one I made up will have already taken into account the view of the culture at large, to wit;

"Stress and substance abuse vulnerability among tenure track faculty are matters of general concern; whereas, if it were to become unmanageable for people to succeed on the tenure track, academia falls apart at the seams. OTOH, stress and substance abuse vulnerability among adjunct faculty have never been matters of general concern for a variety of reasons, among them (1) they are easily replaced, (2) the presence of adjunct faculty is already the sign of the decay of academic life, therefore; the focus should be on pretending we're going to avoid adjuntification rather than addressing calamities that befall adjunct faculty when adjunctification has taken hold (which is just about universal); (3) their job being something that can be integrated into a well adjusted life has already been mostly given up on; therefore (3) solutions available are only individual solutions, i.e. giving up teaching permanantly following high levels of stress, leading to the solution for the group referred to in reason (1.)"

'Therefore, a piece delving into stress levels and substance abuse vulnerability among college faculty should not include anything about adjunct faculty. It should include only data of general interest.'

Wasn't this a thread about hijacking and forum etiquette? Why are we suddenly discussing adjunctification again?

There's really no reason to discuss adjunct faculty POC concerns on this forum. It's toxic for that. However, occasionally mentioning how the tenure track whiteness is not the savior of the free world that it envisions itself to be might be interesting.

(Changes which sound like "anti-racist"-speak.)

Do you notice that your tone flips when you go from discussing racial issues to discussing faculty issues? In one case, you disparage the victim mentality and blaming others for the problems, whereas in the other case you embrace the victim mentality and blame others for the problems.

Do you notice that the woke, left American tenure track's tone flips, inversely to mine? Do you notice how they, not majority faculty, hold the views that ostensibly represent the well educated?

I'd say they mostly claim that all faculty are victims of the cruel administration and government; so they see themselves more as innocent bystanders.

I could have sworn this was a thread about hijacking and forum etiquette, but suddenly people are complaining about adjunctification and getting cranky about woke culture. Again.

The "ignore user" functions has changed my life.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Just sayin'.

Yup.

[Caracal]

<<If you (or anyone) can point to an example of a thread that got clearly and permanently hijacked I'd be interested to see it.>>

When someone tries to re-enter material more germane to the overall thread topic and the other three or four hijacking posters keep going back to their pet peeves, it gets really tiresome.

Mostly, after three off-topic posts, I just give up and stop looking at the thread. So it's hijacked from then on from my perspective. I might try a couple times to re-route it back, but if the hijacking persists, I consider the thread dead (a la Fiona of blessed CHE memory) and just read the ones that haven't been so infected yet.

I teach my music students not to be Johnny- or Jill-one notes. I want expressive range and a variety of tones from them, and I expect the same of an academic discussion.



M.

That's well point, when I was in my early years in grad school I would often approach everything I read through the lens of my own embryonic research concerns. If it touched on things I worked on, but didn't spend much time on them then I thought it was ignoring a crucial issue. If it approached the subject differently than my work, it was garbage. In general, I was sure that my area of interest was criminally ignored

Maybe that's a necessary stage for a grad student-but its embarrassing to think about now. I still think what I study probably should take a more prominent role in the field, but that doesn't mean that it is useful or helpful for me to rant about that in response to every other thing I read.

More to the point, I really don't think adjunct issues are underrepresented on here. Quite a few of us are adjuncts and things directly about adjuncts get posted all the time. There's a poster who tends to hijack those discussions, but the best approach is to ignore that kind of thing-not replicate it.

[mahagonny]

Wasn't this a thread about hijacking and forum etiquette? Why are we suddenly discussing adjunctification again?

It's not a call for stricter etiquette in that sense. It's an inquiry into what constitutes thread hijacking and what doesn't.

The "ignore user" functions has changed my life.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Just sayin'.

Yup.

Doesn't seem like it.

I have work today. Many hours will pass before I post again. Enjoy.

[marshwiggle]

It's interesting to note that even as people debate whether this thread has been hijacked or not, the ratio of views to replies is (as of when I write this) about 10 to 1. Presumably if many people were using "ignore" OR simply saw this as a slanging match and gave up on it, the ratio would approach 1. (Since people who are logged in will have the flag to indicate if there are new posts, then those "views" aren't people checking to see if there's anything new.)

Summary: Even apparently hijacked threads still get read a lot. So maybe people who read but don't post frequently are getting more out of these threads than we realize.

Question for admins: Is there any correlation between the use of "ignore user" and the user's own posting frequency? In other words, do people who don't post frequently use that feature any more or less than the frequent posters?

[polly_mer]

Ah, Mahagonny, you're not using the Ignore User function correctly if it hasn't changed your life. 

Someone mentioned the in-post quotes sidestepping the ignore.  That only works if someone writes something worth quoting.  If it's truly just noise, almost never does someone get quoted for a response.  When it does happen, it's mostly worth reading.  Even a stopped clock is right enough twice a day.

Why are we discussing adjuncts again?  As much as Mahagonny is wrong on the details and what could be done, Mahagonny is not wrong that adjuncts are often overlooked when discussing higher ed.  Unlike Parasauralophus' example of things that aren't directly related to actions people could take in higher ed to address the problems of higher ed, keeping adjuncts in mind and then acting accordingly is something people here could do as individuals to address the problems of higher ed.

[polly_mer]

Question for admins: Is there any correlation between the use of "ignore user" and the user's own posting frequency? In other words, do people who don't post frequently use that feature any more or less than the frequent posters?

I have not done that research and it's not interesting enough to me to devote time to it in the near future.

What I have noticed (definitely subject to selective memory) is the people most likely to repeat already made points on a thread with no nod to previous posts are those who are familiar enough names, but not power users, which could indicate using ignore for some users.  The power users often post a summary of standard advice, which may indicate ignoring some users or that may simply indicate having limited time/patience on well trodden material.  I certainly skim to see if something fabulous has been written and then write the standard response if there's nothing fabulously new.

[AvidReader]

There's really no reason to discuss cat owners' concerns on this academic forum, either. However, extensively discussing the whims and quirks of forumites' particular cats clearly brings pleasure to many, and sometimes spills over onto other threads. That's fine too.

On a more related note, I do like it when obvious digressions are split off onto new threads (as recently happened on a politics thread, I think, but I can't find it now), because it makes it easier to find information later and also to stay abreast of the topics that are more interesting to me as they occur.

AR.