Message boards are funny places

[elcorazon]

They have a life of their own.  They even have their own language.  Here at this board the most common insult or complaint is that a boarder is guilty of "hackery".  I sort of understood this to mean any post one doesn't agree with or that is based on mere conjecture, I guess.  I've been accused of it a few times and so I decided to look it up.

here's the definition:

Hackery

\Hack"er*y\, n. [Hind. chakr[=a].] A cart with wooden wheels, drawn by bullocks. [Bengal] --Malcom


I suspect that's not exactly what people mean when they use the term though.

What do you mean when you use it?

and I know this doesn't belong in this forum... but it's the one everybody's on these days so that's where I'm putting it.

[John Dibble]

This should be in the "Forum Community" or "Off Topic" boards, not the election discussion boards.

[minionofmidas]

"Hack" is an insult for a bad journalist, especially a partisan one. Here, it's applied to people who behave like hacks.
"Hackery" is the act of being a hack.

[elcorazon]

"Hack" is an insult for a bad journalist, especially a partisan one. Here, it's applied to people who behave like hacks.
"Hackery" is the act of being a hack.

I've looked at every definition of "hack" and none are that one.  Usually a hack refers to one who has a quick job to do and isn't really good at it.  I've seen no specific reference to journalists other than stuff like this:

1. a person, as an artist or writer, who exploits, for money, his or her creative ability or training in the production of dull, unimaginative, and trite work; one who produces banal and mediocre work in the hope of gaining commercial success in the arts: As a painter, he was little more than a hack. 

I just find it interesting that one would never hear the term "hackery" anywhere but on THIS MESSAGE BOARD.

yeah, I know this belongs elsewhere, but no one would read it if I'd put it there.

sorry.

[minionofmidas]

1. a person, as an artist or writer, who exploits, for money, his or her creative ability or training in the production of dull, unimaginative, and trite work; one who produces banal and mediocre work in the hope of gaining commercial success in the arts: As a painter, he was little more than a hack. 

I'm fairly certain that the extension to other forms of writing or art was a secondary development, and the term (which is a couple of centures old) originally applied to journalists (although the definition you give of what makes a journalist a hack is most certainly the standard one.)
And yeah, message boards are micro speech communities that may develop their own jargon. Quite possible that we have with this word.