why is Suffolk co. so crappy? (Brentwood, Florida: appointed, sales, big home)

[sean sean sean sean]

Originally Posted by GCGuy

C'mon. If anything, LI defense is a new phenomenon on this board. There was a time, maybe 6mos to a year ago that it was virtually all "LI suck" posts, with nary a person to defend it...there were a few, but not many. Now, it seems more balanced, fair, and much more helpful overall.

Absolutely, compared to when I joined this board almost a year ago it seems posts have gotten not only more balanced but also much more informative. The normal crew on here nowadays paints a much more realistic picture of the island, IMO. Sorry to veer off-topic!

[newtoli]

Wow, that is a little much. You just don't get how message boards work. If there were no "Opinionated Posters", no one would be able to get real advice! It would just be pages and pages of everyone agreeing with each other.

What if someone was asking about moving to say, Spanish Harlem? By your logic, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all... So no one should inform said poster of crime issues and back it up with facts?

GCGuy, I know you haven't been around much lately, this whole diatribe was not due to the NC people coming back and bashing LI, it was from a post where people advised someone interested in Huntington Station that there is a problem with crime and the schools.

[quote=GigiBowman;3645464][font=Verdana]I wrote this a few weeks ago when I saw all the bashing on Long Island...it seems to have calmed a bit since then.


Tag(s): American Research Group; Bigotry; Dept Of Housing And Urban Development; Fourth Amendment Searches; Hate-Racism-Bigotry; Housing Crises; Internet; Internet ID Theft; Internet Cybercrimes; Internet Email; Internet Fair Use Doctrine Copyright; Internet Legislation Regulation; Internet Regulation; Internet Social Networking; Race-Racism; Real Estate


[font=Verdana][SIZE=2]April 17, 2008 at 10:24:28[/SIZE]
When Opinions Effect People & Their Communities --Is the Internet Such a Wonderful Thing?
Gigi Bowman Page 1 of 1 page

OpEdNews.Com Progressive, Tough Liberal News and Opinion[/
The internet is a wonderful tool for research of every kind. If you need to find out about anything from soup to nuts you can Google it, find it in Dogpile, Ask it or even Gigablast it to name a few....never in our history has such an abundance of information been so easily retrieved.....but is it really such a wonderful thing?

City-Data.com- Relocating, Moving, Local Discussions http://www.city-data.com/forum/, is an interesting enough website with lots of information. If you plan on relocating to a new city or state it could be very helpful. The website is broken down state by state and then each state is broken down by city or county as well. I found this site by accident from a real estate google I was doing to find information about a particular area for my customer. The potential of a site like this was, I thought, fantastic!.....until, I looked further. Instead I found that it is a website that could have been great had it not been for the one factor they probably didn't count on, the Opinionated Poster.

You see, unless you find yourself relocating to a place that is wealthy and perfect with little ethnic diversity, you'll find that any ordinary working class town with moderate priced homes and a reasonable amount of crime has an Opinionated Poster steering people in other directions. I've seen threads with titles from "Avoid Long Island If You Can" http://www.city-data.com/forum/long-island/116749-avoid-long-island-if-you-can.html which included everything negative about the entire area, to the name of a particular town highlighted with a ? next to it leaving it completely open to public judgement http://www.city-data.com/forum/long-island/250915-baldwin-bad.html--and public judgement it gets whether the poster lives there or not! You get an awful lot of "I heard" or "I drove through and saw" and, needless to say, gets pretty ugly. From insults of storefronts and shops and citizens with animated descriptions of their dress and the cars they drive to ethnic slurs describing whole neighborhoods and shopping areas with actual streets named, town bashing has become an artform on this website. Which leaves one to wonder, is negative honesty a good thing?

[SIZE=2]Well, not when it comes from the mouth of the Opinionated Poster it's not! It starts out innocent enough. You see the name of a town you walked through and read what posters believe is gospel because they say it is....you might even laugh or shake your head in agreement --and then....you find your own town becomes the focal point of the newest thread --and it hurts. They call your streets dirty, they rip apart your child's high school and they call your neighbors drug dealing Mexicans. http://www.city-data.com/forum/3303908-post18.html People start jumping on board like a mob squad until you're almost embarrassed that you live there and want to put your family home up for sale. And is there anything to stop someone with a vendetta from destroying a neighborhood? Yes...there is something called the Moderator. And I found out when I complained about the different forms of racism, steering, blacklisting and hatefulness I witnessed that there was only one Moderator. So essentially, the answer to that question was really no, there's nothing to stop this.

You can tell on a poster or thread and express a complaint...but another one just pops up 30 minutes later. It's a never ending cycle and the more popular it gets the more out of hand it gets. The worst thing about it is that it's advertised for Relocators so you will find out-of-towners who know nothing about a particular place being totally turned off to it from a group of Opinionated Posters and essentially, your town will be skipped over to potential growth which can effect your property value.

Now don't get me wrong, there are some pretty positive threads on this service board. People ask questions about everything possible to do with home buying or selling or general questions like "What's the Housing Market Like in Kansas" to "Where can I find a Home Inspector I can trust" http://www.city-data.com/forum/long-island/301877-home-inspector.htmlor "What's the best burger on Long Island" and they are quickly answered by people who have had previous experience and want to share their knowledge. Some of these posts can fall by the slanderish side as well if Vendetta Man http://www.city-data.com/forum/long-island/290769-landscaper-rant.htmlwants to rip apart the Termite Inspector he felt overcharged him or Angry Customer wants to ruin the reputation of a Shopkeeper. So the ugliness isn't reserved for town-bashing. I actually had a pretty bad personal experience. On the link to my signature I put my Real Estate website figuring if anyone was looking for pet friendly rentals --my specialty-- I might be able to help. Well, I had an altercation with a few of the posters when I exclaimed my dissatisfaction with what they were saying about the town I lived in and they took it upon themselves to post a thread titled "Real Estate Agents Pictures" which they used to smear myself, my husband and expressed how they would never use particular agents based on how ugly their pictures were. I think they called mine "A shot away from a glamour shot" and my husband was reduced to a "goon magician who would make their house disappear". It was pretty childish but also damaging as plenty of posters who go to this site and who might recognize me by my advertising can now find a negative thread about me and my services on the great wide internet.

So where the Internet is an amazing fabulous place with a wealth of information we never dreamed possible it also has it's negative aspects that can hurt people and their personal property. What can we do? It's a hard one to call. I guess all we can truly do is moderate ourselves, try and be nice people and think about who we might hurt before we take liberties with our opinions. Guess it comes down to what kind of person you are....and karma ---because eventually....what comes around goes around


Moderator cut: no private e-mails , advertising or websites, please

[BovinaCowHateWindTurbines]

Originally Posted by sean sean sean sean

Absolutely, compared to when I joined this board almost a year ago it seems posts have gotten not only more balanced but also much more informative. The normal crew on here nowadays paints a much more realistic picture of the island, IMO. Sorry to veer off-topic!

Perhaps but it's not as fun since clamboy left lol.

[NYNewbie]

Originally Posted by BovinaCowHateWindTurbines

Perhaps but it's not as fun since clamboy left lol.

Maybe there's a point at which nothing is gained by bashing anymore. I was a very active voice is pressing against the anti-Long Island sentiments, mostly because I'd just gone in over my head in order to live here. I didn't need people reminding me just how difficult living here was going to be. Still, if anyone needs to be told of all the positive things about this terrific place, just write me. When I can pinch a few pennies to get us out once in a while, life is much, much better here than it ever could have been in Florida, anticipating my son's introduction to their terrible schools.

[caliguy92832]

I was reading that Long Island, NY has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.

[BovinaCowHateWindTurbines]

That's cool I am glad your happy on the Island. I do think things get a little sugar coated, but if the most vocal people are happy then all power to em. I truly hate the Island with a passion, but I'm long gone and see no point in bashing it. That would be a full time job anyway.

Originally Posted by NYNewbie

Maybe there's a point at which nothing is gained by bashing anymore. I was a very active voice is pressing against the anti-Long Island sentiments, mostly because I'd just gone in over my head in order to live here. I didn't need people reminding me just how difficult living here was going to be. Still, if anyone needs to be told of all the positive things about this terrific place, just write me. When I can pinch a few pennies to get us out once in a while, life is much, much better here than it ever could have been in Florida, anticipating my son's introduction to their terrible schools.

[iluvmycuties]

I was born and raised in Nassau, and my husband and I bought our first home from an aunt in Nassau, even though we wanted to live in the Stony Brook area. When the market was at it's peak we sold and moved out to Suffolk. And I instantly regretted the decision because there wasn't a store on every corner as there was in Nassau. So I was hellbent on moving back, and we did. That is when I realized how much I really missed all of the things I "hated" about Suffolk--the country feel with every shopping amenity, the large properties, the lower property taxes (go ahead and laugh). Sooo...we came back! LOL And we're very happy. I didn't know what I had until I lost it.

[pdcnret]

Originally Posted by caliguy92832

I was reading that Long Island, NY has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.

It's true. The Nassau/Suffolk MSA has the lowest crime rate of any similar size area in the United States. Lots of reasons for it ... but let's not start a whole discussion or argument on why it is what it is.

[GigiBowman]

Originally Posted by newtoli

Wow, that is a little much. You just don't get how message boards work. If there were no "Opinionated Posters", no one would be able to get real advice! It would just be pages and pages of everyone agreeing with each other.

What if someone was asking about moving to say, Spanish Harlem? By your logic, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all... So no one should inform said poster of crime issues and back it up with facts?

GCGuy, I know you haven't been around much lately, this whole diatribe was not due to the NC people coming back and bashing LI, it was from a post where people advised someone interested in Huntington Station that there is a problem with crime and the schools.

lol I don't think I need you to tell me how bad my town is...or my real estate picture I'll live without that knowledge.

[diamondplayer]

Originally Posted by NYNewbie

Who is that directed at? Who nominated you the arbiter of relevance?

Are there no work houses or jails or HUMOR! YOUR STRESSFUL LI LIFE IS SHOWING