Posted on Feb 22, 2017
For the old timers, have the questions/discussions on RallyPoint improved, maintained, or decreased in quality over the years?
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Through the years RallyPoint has continued to grow and add sponsors, etc. as any budding business. Has this improved, maintained, or decreased the quality of questions/discussions over the years?
Posted in these groups: 
RallyPoint
RallyPoint
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 20
LTC (Join to see) I hold out hope that the political posts will decrease. I am seeing more active duty service men and women submitting posts which is very good news. I am also seeing more responses from civilians which is also good. We have civilian supporters who provide good feedback and are here to help us. We also have potential recruits, who we may be able to guide to a successful military career.
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As one of the first members of RallyPoint, I feel I should weigh in here on this interesting topic.
It is no secret that RallyPoint has exploded since it's launch 5 years ago. We went from a small group of users to having over 1,000,000 members with thousands of active logins per day. It is also no secret that because of this volume of traffic, things have changed. When RallyPoint first launched, we only had the forum, there was no "share a link" or "share an update" option. But when these features were added we saw a jump in posts. Now, don't get me wrong, I think these features are great. Sometimes you just want to share an interesting link or thought with just your connections here on RallyPoint but I think some members have lost sight of RallyPoint is all about.
When the election mess first started, the RallyPoint User Admins got to talking. We knew it was going to get crazy here. People have been more opinionated over this election than any other; at least that is how I felt. And things only continued to get worse within the political space. With the flood of hashtags, Facebook pages, twitter accounts and everything else, people were voicing their thoughts about everything surrounding the election. And that behavior continued onto RallyPoint. Now, I will say as one of the first 30,000 members to join RallyPoint, the thing I like about this site is that I can come here and voice my thoughts so I was okay with this. What I wasn't okay with was the increasing numbers of personal attacks sent between people here. That's like fighting with your family. The great thing about RallyPoint is the huge number of different thoughts and ideas so why personally attack someone just because he/she doesn't see something exactly like you do? As I said before, how boring would this world be if we all thought the same?
Following the transition of power from Obama to Trump, I was holding onto hope that things would return to normal. Heck, I was even hoping for a "Should a 2LT Salute a 1LT" type discussion but instead these behaviors have continued. And as a senior User Admin, I been spending a good part of my time working with other admins like SSG Carlos Madden, SSG James J. Palmer IV aka "JP4", SGM Erik Marquez, SrA Edward Vong and LTC Kevin B. to help maintain damage control around here.
Now, I know I've rambled on log enough and I'm sure 90% of the people have stopped reading this but I have to end with this. The only way we can see a return is to be the change. Over the last few years, I've slowly moved away from posting discussions until I have a good idea. People have been chasing points in a game where the points don't matter. If you don't want to see the political craziness then start coming up with some ideas of discussions that will help and will push us forward. Just like in the military, we will not just lay down and take it. Be that change.
It is no secret that RallyPoint has exploded since it's launch 5 years ago. We went from a small group of users to having over 1,000,000 members with thousands of active logins per day. It is also no secret that because of this volume of traffic, things have changed. When RallyPoint first launched, we only had the forum, there was no "share a link" or "share an update" option. But when these features were added we saw a jump in posts. Now, don't get me wrong, I think these features are great. Sometimes you just want to share an interesting link or thought with just your connections here on RallyPoint but I think some members have lost sight of RallyPoint is all about.
When the election mess first started, the RallyPoint User Admins got to talking. We knew it was going to get crazy here. People have been more opinionated over this election than any other; at least that is how I felt. And things only continued to get worse within the political space. With the flood of hashtags, Facebook pages, twitter accounts and everything else, people were voicing their thoughts about everything surrounding the election. And that behavior continued onto RallyPoint. Now, I will say as one of the first 30,000 members to join RallyPoint, the thing I like about this site is that I can come here and voice my thoughts so I was okay with this. What I wasn't okay with was the increasing numbers of personal attacks sent between people here. That's like fighting with your family. The great thing about RallyPoint is the huge number of different thoughts and ideas so why personally attack someone just because he/she doesn't see something exactly like you do? As I said before, how boring would this world be if we all thought the same?
Following the transition of power from Obama to Trump, I was holding onto hope that things would return to normal. Heck, I was even hoping for a "Should a 2LT Salute a 1LT" type discussion but instead these behaviors have continued. And as a senior User Admin, I been spending a good part of my time working with other admins like SSG Carlos Madden, SSG James J. Palmer IV aka "JP4", SGM Erik Marquez, SrA Edward Vong and LTC Kevin B. to help maintain damage control around here.
Now, I know I've rambled on log enough and I'm sure 90% of the people have stopped reading this but I have to end with this. The only way we can see a return is to be the change. Over the last few years, I've slowly moved away from posting discussions until I have a good idea. People have been chasing points in a game where the points don't matter. If you don't want to see the political craziness then start coming up with some ideas of discussions that will help and will push us forward. Just like in the military, we will not just lay down and take it. Be that change.
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SGT Dave Tracy
Politics affects the military in ways it simply doesn't those in the civilian world, so it should come as no surprise that there would be spikes in political talk and posts laced with deep passions around election cycles on a military-centric social media platform, but I certainly didn't see the other stuff go away in favor of politics. So take heart. Granted, my posts and posts I commented on were--generally--outside of pure politics and more in line with military related matters, so perhaps the perception circles back around to what one seeks out to begin with. Even if that's true, it's not so bad out there.
I haven't seen much of the personal attacks; although that may depend on how liberally one defines being "attacked". And for all the talk about RallyPoint turning into Facebook, there's far more to contrast between the two social media sites than to compare. In terms of the professionalism on display by those on RallyPoint I'll be honest, I would not rank it with LinkedIn, but it's orders of magnitude higher in terms of quality discussions than is found on Facebook. No need to beat ourselves up needlessly over ideas this site is no better these other social media outlets.
Passions are still enflamed. The country is still polarized. Posts of righteousness (self or otherwise) are still to be found on social media, including here. But relax everyone. Given time, when all is said and done, RP will return to an equilibrium. Until then we'll take from it only what we wish to.
p.s. I'm one of the 10% who read 'til the bitter end. ;-)
I haven't seen much of the personal attacks; although that may depend on how liberally one defines being "attacked". And for all the talk about RallyPoint turning into Facebook, there's far more to contrast between the two social media sites than to compare. In terms of the professionalism on display by those on RallyPoint I'll be honest, I would not rank it with LinkedIn, but it's orders of magnitude higher in terms of quality discussions than is found on Facebook. No need to beat ourselves up needlessly over ideas this site is no better these other social media outlets.
Passions are still enflamed. The country is still polarized. Posts of righteousness (self or otherwise) are still to be found on social media, including here. But relax everyone. Given time, when all is said and done, RP will return to an equilibrium. Until then we'll take from it only what we wish to.
p.s. I'm one of the 10% who read 'til the bitter end. ;-)
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SGT Ben Keen
SGT Dave Tracy - Great comment! I fully agree with that you that we are impacted more by politics than some others who haven't served or who are not currently on active duty.
I will say, as far as the personal attacks; the reason you don't see them is because we as User Admins jump on them and remove them. Now I'm not referring to some little joke or something but we have seen some comments that left us wondering how could someone say that to another human being. Our goal is to not let those types of comments be seen by to many.
I agree that we will reach an equilibrium again as well, the question that can't be answered is when.
I will say, as far as the personal attacks; the reason you don't see them is because we as User Admins jump on them and remove them. Now I'm not referring to some little joke or something but we have seen some comments that left us wondering how could someone say that to another human being. Our goal is to not let those types of comments be seen by to many.
I agree that we will reach an equilibrium again as well, the question that can't be answered is when.
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Well I remember when you were a mere wet-eared Captain! :) Does that make me an old timer?? Anyway. I think the election kind of wrecked RP for a while. It's all about politics, now, salted with the occasional 'not politics' posts. I try to contribute to that side of things. I really, really think that the 'new' question/link/update thing is a step down. For example, I have a lot of things that I think are unique to me, and unknown to most of the RP crowd...that I want to share, but RP made it nearly impossible with the new system. Anyway.
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MCPO Roger Collins
I'm a relative newbie and topic/questions are pretty much the same everywhere. In fact, similar character types. What makes RP unique is the admins aren't into the power thing and let us work things out. Topics are driven by events, if they are boring, they drop like a rock.
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