My would you not answer if you don't expect someone? Pranks? Sellers? I have never experienced any door knockers that are obnoxious, except one seller once. Mostly it is friends, neighbours or missionaries who are unannounced.
I've had plenty of obnoxious salespeople and other solicitors, especially religious ones. They even have the nerve to claim that they aren't soliciting because they're not selling anything for money. And none of them have the good sense to accept that they're bothering someone that is obviously not happy that their door was knocked on.
Unless I'm already in a really bad mood, I generally start off nice, but I turn serious as soon as they refuse to take the first 'no'. Except for the ones I argue with for a while to waste their time and energy.
Can you explain how talking to my neighbors about important social issues falls under that criteria?
People they don’t know trying to convince them they should care about a political issue they don’t care about or they are terrible and bad people is what people don’t like. It’s usually the second one, even if someone thinks it’s the first one.
I think if you want to live in a community, you have to be open to having conversations with your coinhabitants about polemic issues. Anything less is unkind.
Regardless, persistent lobbying from a stranger is no more solicitation than softer lobbying from a friend.
People in battleground areas often have buses of activists brought in from neighboring states to do door to door canvassing. Among other things.
Thanks for calling everyone who wants to be able to cast their vote without active harassment from people with no stake in their community or reputation to worry about first ‘the root of the problem’ though.
Still, does someone in Georgia not have a stake in whether Florida lines their roads with radioactive agricultural waste? In our industrialized, globalized economy stakes reach much farther than a neighborhood or city level.
Bit of a straw man to quote something nobody in this thread said.
Nobody said civic duty is champagne and French fries. Just that rejecting it has a cost, and the people who cause that cost have a tendency to congregate. That, in turn, frees up resources for the communities who bother organizing.
And you’re the one that keeps beating ‘civic duty’ when I’m pointing out the disingenuous and manipulative nature of a lot of the current political strategies - including fake grass roots ‘neighbors’.
Which people have a right to ignore, despite your statements otherwise.
Personally, I’d argue they have an actual civic duty to ignore or even ostracize folks doing that, as that kind of manipulative lying is what poisons actual civic discussion.
These aren't neighbors. We're talking about neighbors.
> everyone who wants to be able to cast their vote without active harassment from people with no stake in their community
Your neighbors have a stake in your community. It's almost part and parcel with the definition. Refusing to engage with them because you assume to know better obviously impacts the community's strength, cohesiveness and civic integrity.
Campaign staff are not welcome.
That would be an interesting case in the US. A country deeply steeped in God.
I guess it comes down to the effective wanna answer the door to not wanna answer the door ratio. I don't want to miss someone I'd like to meet to avoid the 1/X chance of a seller. As sibling comment noted that ratio probably depends on local circumstances.
My thought is that you knocking on my door does not oblige me to stop what I'm doing and answer it, any more than someone saying, "sir, do you have a minute for..." while I'm walking down the street obliges me to stop and hear their sales pitch, or seeing an unknown caller on the phone means I ought to pick it up.
I have my other communication (mostly FB Messenger, but also Discord and SMS/MMS) set up to work on my computer, so I rarely look at my phone at home.
Also I live in a condo, nobody can really "knock on my door" unless it's someone who lives in my building, in which case I'll answer.