Lets put on some Hank Sr and have a good manly cry together one and all
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If a troll was so dedicated to attaining status that they behaved themselves and contributed to the community, MISSION. FUCKING. ACCOMPLISHED.
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Was that a me âyouâ or a different âyouâ? Because I donât think I ever expressed an opinon about that, and I do frequently find BBS comments more enlightening or amusing than those of the Authors.
Because for the most part it was. Anyone who posted anything personal was met with nothing but support and concern â no matter what the problem was. Maybe thatâs not the textbook definition of âsafe spaceâ and maybe Iâm the fool here.
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Would you believe that I got introduced to both Hank and Johnny by the singer of a deathmetal band back in the 80s?
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And hereâs what I think the âleast worstâ (actually, the best) option would have been:
Have some trust in your community.
Let me repeat that with emphasis:
Have some fucking1 trust in your community.
I am a reasonably intelligent person. I am not the most intelligent Regular here, and I am certainly not the most intelligent member of the community.
We have some of the smartest, the wisest, the most eloquent, the most ethical, the most moral, and all around, some of the best people on the Internet in this community, and many of them are Regulars.
Come to us. Tell us what the issues are. All of the issues (because this still does not add up, based on the information given).
Tell us, for instance (I am not saying this is actually the scenario that happened):
[One of t/T]he Authors [is/are] not content about the current existence of the Lounge, creating a two-tiered community within the BBS. After a discussion, the Authors have come to the decision that the two-tiered nature of the community must be ended.
The only options on the table at the moment are shutting down the Lounge, or shutting down the BBS altogether.
Do we have any suggestions on how the BBS can be made more egalitarian without resorting to either of the above, neither of which seem like they will be popular options?
And then let the community come up with solutions. That âfifty daysâ thing? That literally took me a half-second after I read the word âexpireâ to come up with. Until I hit the words âno more than a week maximum,â that is what I thought the solution would be.
Imagine what one hundred and sixty of the best and brightest of us could have come up with, given a week.
Imagine what the full community, because I fully support this discussion happening outside of the Lounge, could have come up with, given a month.
I imagine that the Authors would want to present a united front. Fine. Have them appoint a representative to express their views, and have the community appoint a representative to express their views, and talk about it.
But no, instead of trusting us with the question, instead of trying to find a solution that was, if not best, then, at least, workable for everyone, we get notice that this is a fait accompli, and we have minutes to pack our shit and get out of the #lounge
Perhaps closing the Lounge was inevitable. Perhaps that part of it was the âleast worstâ solution. I donât believe so, but I am increasingly convinced that we havenât been trusted with all of the facts needed to see the big picture and determine what a âleast worstâ solution would have been. And that hurts, more than anything else does.
But not even soliciting input, not giving us any advance notice, not treating us as anything more than users of a freeware product that was always subject to be terminated and/or modified without notice, rather than valued members of a communityâŚ
I cannot call that anywhere near what I would refer to as a âleast worstâ option.
I cannot call that an attempt to provide âa modicum of respect.â
Now, to be sure, this decision must have come from way over your head, @orenwolf and @codinghorror, so I hold you in the highest respect, and appreciate all of the hard work that you put into moderation and development respectively. Iâm sure that, if you were offered any input at all on this decision, you would have valiantly argued to at least involve the community in the decision.
And maybe Iâm a fool for whinging about a product that I get for free.
But if I am, Iâve become that fool by reading @doctorowâs work. And Coryâs protagonists are always the little guy, fighting for solutions developed from the bottom up, as opposed to those imposed from the top down. Theyâre always fighting against someone telling them what they can or cannot do, with no explanation given, no input requested, and no recourse but to band together and fight.
And if that fight isnât winnable, then perhaps itâs time to walk away and build another community elsewhere. Itâs not a solution I like, and weâd be less than we were for itâŚ
But given that our safe space has been ripped out from under us, Iâm not sure that I see a betterless worse option.
1Please note that I donât often use expletives, so that particular one should be given some extra weight.
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I think the best part of having the lounge was the welcoming committee. I know when I first stumbled in I was bewildered as to how I got there or what was happening, but it made me feel genuinely included in BBS. It was much like wandering into a bar and having everyone happy to see you.
Unlike RL bars, I had no worries about being hit on and everyone was supportive of everyone else even if in other forums they were arguing. It was mostly happy, quirky, random and the best part of my internet surfing.
I think the trust level is important because it created the safest place on the internet I have found to be as serious or silly as I needed to be. In the open forums it was always possible for random people to pile on you for saying something unpopular, whereas I found in the lounge area everyone was supportive no matter what you shared.
RIP Lounge. I will miss my internet troll free zone.
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Agony Column were great, theres lots of their stuff on youtube. âHellbilly Deathmetal Onslaughtâ was their tagline.
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Wow. And a fine Coitus Interruptus it is on BBS this morning! I will miss the way it was. Feeling like I just watched a special girlfriend drive away forever into the mist with the top down flipping me the bird.
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I know splitting the community is the last thing anybody wants, but read my lips: the community IS the Regulars and the near-Regs, #NotAllMutants at large. It is a community where membership is contingent on first being a good person for a period of time. It is a community where good people can share personal stories in peace, not just you weird post-privacy ciswhite men.
If you havenât noticed, that community is none too keen on having anybody access what is left of Lounge. The community is not the posts, but the relationships and trusts that developed because of those posts.
You are aware of Dunbarâs number: 130. After that point, a community is no longer as tightly knit nor as trusting. And the result of Regulars Are Dead is now we have to put a lot of effort into figuring out who can be trusted, rather than having the system carry much of the weight.
If the move was intended to promote openness and trust among BBS posters, this venture failed from the very beginning.
There are now not just one, but several mutants building shard realms of an alternate BBS. And I hope they succeed.
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Trust me, the feeling is mutual now.
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Yes, but driving away in my car with my best friend.
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Please expunge my posts from the archive.
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Some of the authors were a bit more invested in the bbs than others. Which is fine.
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Apologies if this is not the right place to ask.
Where are we on ten year bans?
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Simi-Off Topic. The âRegularsâ status is very inconsistant. Iâd been here since the BBS started, been fairly active⌠and Iâm not a regular. So for me knowing that a whole huge area of the board was there but I wasnât allowed in because I couldnât meet some sort of requirement set I didnât know about was offputting. I could add in other reasons this is frustrating but itâs finger pointing at user behavior in general which is conterproductive.
So on the one hand glad to see âregularsâ getting phased out, but on the other still annoyed in spite of me being here but not spamming endlessly I apparently never measured up. As the first post mentioned it has a very âsecond class citizenâ feel.
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Totally OT, but youâve just made me realize that when I go to other cities and meetup with Happy Mutants, I need to bring some sourdough starter to pass onâŚ@lethe brought it to me from Europe, and wouldnât it be fun if it ended up in a hundreds of Mutant kitchens?
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You were about [75% of the way there] (Boing Boing BBS) in terms of posts read in the last 100 days.
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Dafuq?
Iâd have considered myself âreasonably active.â Especially given in spite of lack of employment I tend to stay busy. So⌠Just. Oi.
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Wow. I leave the place for the night, and suddenly thereâs a ~300-post-long thread (and now that Iâm done typing, more than 300âŚ) that I absolutely must read through in its entirety.
Not much to add here that others havenât already said.
This, right here, pretty much sums things up for me. If The Management really felt that âthe most invigorating conversationsâ were being held in certain areas, then thereâs very likely a reason for that. And itâs pretty clear that the reason wasnât that Mods were âletting down the communityâ, since those certain areas werenât moderated more than others⌠if anything, they were a place where some kinds of hyper-strict moderation which are arguably necessary in the fully-available threads could be avoided.
Somehow, a safe space organically evolved from having a very minor and objective set of restrictions on top of the normal subjective moderation actions. And now itâs being tossed, essentially, for being that safe space.
Now, Iâm not a huge participant in the community⌠Iâve been around and posting through multiple major changes in the commenting system, but only relatively recently became a regular (primarily, I think, because my comment reading didnât quite hit the standards). Although Iâve been more active recently, Iâm not losing nearly as much as others. But I do feel like a big chunk of the âcommunityâ feeling is going to be lost by this.
This too. Back in the day, I used to read through the chronological blog (and participate in the threads attached directly below the article! with threading! *ahem*, sorry, sidetracked), every day. Somehow, the front page changes broke that for me completely. The âblog viewâ kludges gave a compromise, until they started to frequently break or change URLs without notice. Nowadays, the BBS view seems to be the closest thing there is to the view of activity here that had me coming back to the site in the first place.
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