Could at least the BBS be kept alive until US elections results are available?
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Another thought - will BB make the effort to call out the racist substacks they are setting up shop beside? Or do they keep schtum to avoid embarrassing their new landlord?
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And @jlw, @beschizza, @frauenfelder etc are all on board with this?
Their silence makes me wonder whether the BBS was ever considered anything more than a comments section for BB. It’s really sad to think the community is so easily discarded.
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The slew of conspiracy/clickbait-y articles recently, all seeemingly stemming from from allan rose hill, has been putting me off. Now having to pay for the comments section is the final straw. My decade here has been fun, I’ll see you in another place 
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Since everybody else is reminiscing: I’ve been reading boingboing since sometime in the early to mid 2000’s, when Rob Cockerham said it was the first site he visited every day.
It’s ebbed and flowed over the years, and recently the BBS has been what makes this place unique and worth visiting. I rarely comment, by the time I read an article the discussion has usually presented all my potentially interesting viewpoints, thoroughly dismantled them, and linked me to a great article about ducks.
Boingboing will stay in my RSS feeds and we’ll see how it goes, but the BBS going away feels like a big loss.
Disclaimer: When the transition from disqus to discourse happened I figured it would never work so its safest to assume I’m wrong
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So, this is goodbye, my friends. Here unfortunately I’m forced to part ways with this community.
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Were the costs & burdens of ever-vigilant moderation a factor in this move? You’ve often noted the huge amount of moderation this place requires.
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Under your Profile → Preferences, right at the bottom is “Request Archive”. That archive has all your posts in a CSV/spreadsheet format. I’m writing a quick script to export all of the threads as PDF’s and raw markup, that seems easy enough. Formatting HTML from that in the BBS/Discourse way would be next, I haven’t figured that out yet. An archive of the linked articles in Firefox “Reader” format would round out the archive; save a bit of history. If I get this all done in time I’ll post a link to the code.
(I like to keep a local copy of my stuff on a live, maintained, spinning hard drive. It may or may not survive the vagaries of time, but material on other people’s computers almost certainly won’t, for me anyhow.)
As my mutant children (whose mutant friends describe our family as “like something out of Harry Potter”) have gone through their teenage years, I’ve found this a super place to be. Your perspectives have helped me enormously, your gentle corrections were appreciated, you all have my deepest respect.
Cory Doctorow runs a Discourse server https://chinwag.pluralistic.net/. Just sayin’.
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Thank you! I did not know this existed.
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Eh . . . In retrospect, I bet @beschizza 's comments about trying to get engagement with non-outrage content were a reflection of change on the horizon.
Sad passage of an era that, in reality was mostly gone already. We just didn’t realize it. Look back a ways and it’s clear BB was already a pale shadow of itself.
But hey, “NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!” Right??!
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Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere folks are laughing, and somewhere children shout,
But there is no joy in BoingBoing—Fucking Substack has won out.
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That’d make a lot less money though, people being able to talk about the election without paying.
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Assuming the typical 10% pay 90% non-pay ratio for transferring to a pay service, it doesn’t seem to be priced reasonably given that the remaining users will only see 10% at best of the commenters.
The export function is already overloaded and/or broken.
At this point, my only question is “How do I delete my account?”
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It is. Worth a gander.
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May I ask what “other place” were you referring to?
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I’m holding off saying goodbye just for a hint!
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I understand why you’re doing this, I really do.
But it’s not for me.
Buh-bye.
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I’ve been reading bOINGbOING since it was a zine. The quality has gone up and down, but it’s always been worth visiting daily. But at this point the main thing that keeps me coming back is Rob and the BBS. This has been a wonderful community, and I’m sad to see it go.
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