Middlesex Marquee (again)

[jd-science.livejournal.com]

I just sent the following to the Middlesex Bank. I also e-mailed Rebekah about it. Does anyone else ever notice this trend on the marquee but me? It's annoying and depressing.


Hello-

I sent a comment on June 27, 2006 about the scrolling marquee outside your bank. I have not yet heard a response.

This is what I sent you then:

"I live in the Davis Square area and wanted to express my unhappiness with the new scrolling marquee above your bank. This weekend I was sitting in the square with some friends, and within five minutes we saw the words "death" and "kill" repeated several times. This does not seem appropriate at all for large, bright broadcasting in the middle of Davis Square.

I realize that the marquee was just scrolling news headlines, but I don't believe that news headlines - particularly those types of headlines - are really that important to building a truly informed public and in fact contribute to a destructive social atmosphere. If the marquee must be there (which I don't think it great, but I understand you've probably put a lot of money into it), I'd prefer it just to scroll the time, temperature, and maybe sports scores. And please nothing about death, killing, children being bombed, and so forth. We can get enough of that everywhere else."

Today, August 3, I was eating lunch in the square at around 1 pm, and one right after the other, I saw the following headlines scroll across, multiple times:

Iranian Woman Awaits Death By Stoning
New Surgical Procedure for Incontinence
Woman Afraid of Height Dies in Plane Crash
Israeli Bombing Kills 7
Welcome to Davis Square

There was another headline after the stoning that had something to do with death, but I don't exactly remember what it said.

This hardly seems appropriate to be displayed in large orange letters in the middle of Davis Square. Death, destruction, ridiculousness, and hey! Welcome to Davis!

I went into the bank to ask who to talk to about my issues with the sign, and the tellers told me Mr. Smoliss (?) was in charge. I asked if I could talk to him, and they said, “Well, his office is upstairs.” I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to just walk up and there and knock on the door, so I am writing via the official channel on your website.

At the recent Davis Square Task Force meeting, it was noted that the sign is only allowed, by law, to display the time, temperature, and public service announcements. The president also said he wanted the sign to promote community events and activities.

(for notes, see http://community.livejournal.com/davis_square/565301.html)

It hardly seems that what I saw today is in line with any of this. In addition, after all these useless, dramatic headlines were several about mergers and business acquisitions, also not of local community interest.

I would appreciate a response from you about this problem.

Comments

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

You may disagree, but I don't see this as self-censoring. It's a matter of being polite to the audience, and making sure their "friends" pages remain reasonable.

As I post, there are 80 replies to your thread, and LJ has automatically begun collapsing most of them into just the subject lines. Evidently, my request that you lj-cut your post hasn't detracted from people reading and discussing it, and LJ's automatic truncation of the replies hasn't detracted from the discussion in the least.

Imagine, if you will, how impossible this discussion would become if LJ were including the full text of every reply. You would be perpetually scrolling and never reading. Now imagine how impossible someone's "friends" page would be if nobody used LJ-cut. It's the same thing.

Again, thanks for using LJ-cut.

[nalz.livejournal.com]

Huh - I don't really care about lj-cuts one way or the other - but I do find it funny that you like it when LJ shortens comments into subject lines, but I wish there was a way to make it never do that.

[ron_newman]

Me too! I'd really like an option to turn that off, either globally or on-the-fly.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

There is a greasemonkey script which will unfold these comments on the fly, called "LJ Thread Unfolder" and available at http://clear.com.ua/projects/firefox/unfolder

(It seems to only work when you're viewing with the default style, but it does work for that).

[simplicitynow.livejournal.com]

Nice! This is perfect.

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

We're nearing a hundred comments in this thread. Can you imagine how impossible it would be to find anything if LJ didn't shorten comments into subject lines? Seriously, even with a full DSL connection, a scrolling mouse, and an extra-large screen, I would find it impossible to navigate.

And that doesn't even consider visually impaired people, those who pay by the byte for downloads, or people using mobile devices with limited screen real estate.

But that's just me, and my personal presumptions about others. Yes, there are some who would like all text visible at all times (for one thing, it would make searching easier.) And I acknowledge that there doesn't seem to be a way to make LJ not compress long threads, for those who would prefer it that way.

[nalz.livejournal.com]

In all honesty - the users on BOTH sides of this debate are wrong. You want it your way because its what you feel is right. Those who are handicapped want it their way so they can see it. I want it my way because that is my preference. We're all about the mememememe - with the exception of those who are handicapped that have no choice.

The *real* problem here is LJ and their archaic software. It would be very easy for them to allow all users to set a global preference. They don't care to/its not on their priority list for whatever reason. So everyone who is annoyed by this, and is arguing about it, should do what I have done and request the feature as well. The more people who ask, the more clout the request will gain.

In the mean time I think both sides are just going to have to deal. It would be nice if both sides shut up about it more, though.