[Joe Bonforte]

Some serious advice:

Avoid the following types of threads unless you have a strong interest in the topic:

- Evolution/creationism
- Drug War (often starts with an article about another drug bust gone bad or something on medical marijuana)
- Pornography
- Whether Bush is a conservative or not

For all of these, it's the same arguments over and over. (I say this even though I participate on a couple of these types of threads.) So if you read a few and get the gist, and don't care to get any deeper, just skip them from then on. You won't really be missing anything, especially if your mind is already made up.

You can also save a lot of time by avoiding the Zotted threads. (Do you know what a Zotted thread is?) They are funny, but they are often time-sucking monsters that build up huge numbers of fairly trivial replies. If you want to read them for entertainment, fine. But don't expect to learn anything from them.

[Joe Bonforte]

Oops, I forgot to mention another type to avoid - the free trade/NAFTA/decline of manufacturing/unfair Chinese slave laborer/etc. threads. The also just go round and round, and never really get anywhere. (Not to mention exhibiting that some posters are abysmally ignorant of economics.)

[bwteim]

"Avoid the following types of threads unless you have a strong interest in the topic......."

Joe,

In your list of threads to avoid, you left off the OS War Threads... (PC vs Mac vs Unix vs Atari vs Commodore vs Kay-Pro)