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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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Fair enough. I’ll spend time expunging posts from the archive tomorrow.
RIP lounge.
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For all who are now asleep, but maybe also interested.
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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.
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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?
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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!
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##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…
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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.
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Also the moderators, if there are moderators who are not BB authors (antinous, Falcor, et al). That’s yet another tier.
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True. Until we are all able to give out 10-year bans to other users, this place will never be equal.
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Outcomes to what?
What is the issue causing all of this?
If the issue is “a two-tiered community,” then I can’t see a worse outcome from trying to fix it than “shut down the upper tier with no notice or consultation.”
If the issue is “administration and moderation discussion happening in the upper tier,” then I can’t see a worse outcome from trying to fix it.
If there are worse outcomes here, then what issue are they stemming from? I’m not buying that they’re from either of the two listed above, which are the only issues leading to the closing of the Lounge that we’ve been offered.
ETA: Okay, making the Lounge public would be a worse option, granted, but that still doesn’t make this the “least worst” if those are the only two issues we are trying to solve
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… not existing comes to mind.
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“Not existing” does not seem like a likely outcome to either of those issues. Unless those aren’t the issue causing the Lounge to be closed.
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Was that really a considered option?
The response to whatever drama was to (potentially) pull the plug on it? To effectively rage quit the entire bbs?
I’ve always been struck by the apparent unhappiness of the Authors that the BBS is a thing- resentment might be a better word? It’s a tiny part of the site, I understand. Very few of the Authors visit, and it seems to do little more than irritate most of them. And that leaves me not understanding why it exists, really.
Clearly, there’s a community that wants to be here- but stuff like this (St Elsewhere, lounge destruction, etc) seems to indicate the Authors don’t really want or value that community.
It leaves me deeply conflicted about how much of myself to invest here.
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An example of a “less worse” option:
Fifty days.
Fifty days is the minimum amount of time it takes to become a Regular, and the maximum time that a Regular can be away without losing their status.
Fifty days would have given us enough time to save our memories, pack our shit, get used to the idea, and finally, say goodbye to the Lounge.
Time to get closure.
Time to figure out how each of us fit into the community without the Lounge.
Time to say “farewell” to those who didn’t want to stay.
Time to set up a new community, if that was how some Regulars chose to cope.
Fifty days. Just a hair over seven weeks. In which no new people would be granted Regular status, but those who lost it could still lose it.
The Lounge has existed for four years. There’s no reason that either of those issues needed it to be closed, literally, overnight.
Every #boing post has a counter on it:. “This topic will close in five days.”. It’s a humane way to say, “Hey. This topic is going away. Get your comments in before it closes.”
Would it really have been so hard to set the Lounge to close in fifty?
ETA: And if “Hey, Rube” and “Kvetching about the usual trolls” really were an immediate problem, they could have been locked immediately, with the rest of the #Lounge set to close organically. Again, coming up with “less worse” options to the issues listed doesn’t seem so hard.
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The decision to make the site more equal was arrived at unilaterally.
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