Transparency - changes to the BBS

So other than your word, what assurance is there that my shit ain’t gonna end up, say, all over the chans?

7 Likes

Mate, when I think ephemeral, I think IRC. BBS is all about a paper trail.

I’m not posting the archive for world and dog. But I am preserving it for those who contributed to writing it.

Did they asked you to do so?
Are you a trusted and well known and curated archive?

7 Likes

I didn’t say anything about ephemeral. Thanks for “explaining the techs” to me though. Much appreciated.

2 Likes

To archive the lounge thread? No. But most were angry their access was revoked; an archive is the closest thing I can do to restore them the access to their conversations. I don’t have enough bandwidth to upload a friggin’ mp3 file let alone the last 1000 posts (total: 170mb of HTML. Alone.)

This. Potentially anybody could reach that level (or it could have been made possible for anyone to potentially reach it without favouritism by tweaking the criteria), but it took effort. People felt safer sharing because not every random trolley could see those posts and anyone who wanted to do damage based on those needed to play a long game.

I wasn’t on the “inside” for long, but what I saw was a supportive, welcoming group of people who cared about each other, even if they didn’t all like each other. This seems partly because everyone had gotten a chance to know who they were dealing with. This is basically the “trust” that the trust level engendered. ‘We trust you because you’ve been round long enough and revealed enough of yourself that we know who you are.’

Trust and feeling safe aren’t easy for vulnerable people on the Internet. I can see why a lot of people are mad, hurt, or feeling betrayed now that is being taken away.

38 Likes

What would your answer be if I asked you politely not to “archive” my posts?

@MalevolentPixy - I nearly broke my mouse button clicking Like on your post there.

12 Likes

Sorting out which of your posts got scraped and then deleting them from the archive would take time, but if that is what you want, can do.

From what I have seen of the archive, it is mainly drinking gifs and making sense of the St Elsewhere’s Day Massacre. Do you wish to proceed with expunging your posts from archive?

2 Likes

This, many thanks M_M. I also nearly broke my mouse with liking that.

@tinoesroho, put me also on the list to remove my posts.

11 Likes

Yes. There may be stuff that that I’m not comfortable being in the hands of an unknown quantity. No offence, but I don’t know you well enough to trust you.

7 Likes

Fair enough. I’ll spend time expunging posts from the archive tomorrow.

RIP lounge.

7 Likes

For all who are now asleep, but maybe also interested.

10 Likes

But are you sure it’s a mistake? So… BBS is an intentional community; IRL, it would be a share-house or co-housing community. There’s nothing in the rules that prevent us from hosting parties, having guests, bringing in new members, but instead of plunking down cash to buy into the community, we earn our places through participation and contributing social capital to the whole. (Sure, sometimes that social capital comes in the form of posting beer gifs. Just like in co-housing/intentional communities. But without hangovers.) But in an intentional community, the guests/prospective/seekers don’t have access to the membership meetings, whether those house meetings are for monthly chore distribution or just a house community building. And the key in a cohousing community is that the community recognizes that transparency amongst the members is essential, but that internal transparency is the what we get in exchange for social currency. Privacy is not antithetical to transparency; it’s essential. A community cannot function as a community if the community cannot safely talk amongst themselves.

I know this isn’t a perfect analogy, but I am publicly female, and I already police a lot of my thoughts because I have better uses for my time than weeding out gaters, MRAs, Puppies and other pro-am disrupters. This is the reality of being female on the internet, and it sucks. BBS has been one of the few places where I, as a maker and geek, have felt comfortable speaking.

34 Likes

To be clear this has been in the works for a long while, so it is definitely not a reaction to white avatars. Though transparency is always a good thing, wouldn’t you say, in all matters?

So, how long has this been in the works for?

5 Likes

You can see the actual dates and times on this topic … remember to click the little edit pencil at upper right to see a full revision history of each change, along with dates and times of each change:

Looks like Feb 6th 2017 to me, but be sure to double check my work. Thanks!

5 Likes

##ON TOPIC

I was a regular, then for whatever reason I stopped being one. Maybe due to missing time from religious holidays, maybe a stretch of time where I had nothing to say or maybe because I get flagged sometimes. Who knows? Since this is about losing something that I lost already and it turns out didnt benefit me much at all anyway I honestly cant get all that upset.

Tiered communities are something I dont like. Goes against my nature. Real life is full of tiers and in-groups and so on. I don’t tend to make it in with the fancy people and honestly thats fine as well. Tiered online communities are no different; there’s the in-group and there’s the out-group.

As for the BBS, well, it aint my house and I am here subject to the willingness of the admins not to ban me and BB not to shut down commenting overall. That is OK, the internet does not owe me a darn thing no matter how much I participate in it.

##OFF TOPIC

I’m kinda surprised I seem to have been the only one who knows that one. Then again Technodon is a bit of an obscure album.

Not to make light of your troubles but that sounds like the tracklist to an awesome country album!

In the trenches and at the barricades? Is there some special veterans charity for those wounded in this battle?

To me thats on the same level as washing my hands before I eat, but then again some call me paranoid…

7 Likes

21 Likes

It’s been a three tier system. You forgot about the authors. The authors on boingboing are still more equal than the rest of us.

16 Likes

Also the moderators, if there are moderators who are not BB authors (antinous, Falcor, et al). That’s yet another tier.

14 Likes

True. Until we are all able to give out 10-year bans to other users, this place will never be equal.

18 Likes