Hey everyone, remember how hard @Cowicide had to push for his self ban?
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Nope, 100% sincere. It feels like a huge loss.
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I just noticed this thread. Like many I am disappointed with this change. I do really appreciate @orenwolf commitment to the community and so will keep an open mind about this change.
But the only thing I see this changing is that there wonât be a group of people here that feels the deep level of commitment that there used to be. I guess that was the problem last week. A clash between regulars that had a deep sense of commitment and âownershipâ and the authors/mods who actually own the place.
The message I see from this action is: read some posts, make a few comments, buy something in the store and move along. No one is special regardless of how involved or committed a person is to the community. We donât want that level of commitment because then people get all emotional about this place and cause a ruckus eventually.
Change is inevitable. Regular status and semi-private areas are going away. They could come back or some other variation could be tried in the future.
meh.
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I disagree. I do consider the community to be special. I take it as a personal burden of trust to ensure that those who have been here for ages (either because theyâve been here for a long time, or theyâve been here everyday) are recognized for their involvement. I appreciate that community. But this needs to be done while still allowing for transparent discussion here on the BBS, and without unnecessarily dividing of the community into âinsâ and âoutsâ.
I am open to any suggestion for recognition that does not involve a private, exclusive area for only one part of the community to post in.
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I donât agree, but many appear to see it this way:
I donât see posting to the blog instead of the BBS as any kind of privilege. If anything, it is more limiting. All of us who post here are authors. Our commitment to discussion - here as well as elsewhere - is what creates culture, and cultural capital. Social life is essentially participatory, and I see that process of participation as being encouraged here, for the most part.
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Itâs pretty clear they donât give a damn about recognition and only care about the private space.
If you want to do recognition just use your algorithm to post a trust score.
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weâre all filthy n00bs, now
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Just throwing this out there but⌠what if âregularâ (or âmemberâ) status was granted to people whoâve reached a simple low threshold, such as 30 days or 10 posts, and until that time, new posters were limited to responding to threads based on articles on the BB homepage. Threads created by members or mods for general discussion would be open to people whoâve at least minimally proven they arenât drive-by trollies or astroturf puppets. It seems like when it comes to private space, itâs not that people want to hide from other regular members, itâs that they donât necessarily want to tell the story of their private lives to an angry trolley from Breitbart who just made an account to yell KEK a lot.
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Thatâs 100% true. Goofy titles or fancy colors donât mean a thing. Iâll go out on a limb and bet that very few regulars here are children. This isnât a videogame forum. Most of us have jobs and/or driver licenses and/or spouses, and even those who donât are used to being treated like responsible, respectable adults.
The Lounge wasnât meant to be a cliquish reward akin to the public space on Mercury in the Destiny videogame, accessible only to those who are truly elites at the game. And thatâs not at all how it operated. It was a haven from trollishness, from noise, from the relative cacophony of the BBS at large.
It was therapeutic. By now youâve heard many testaments to this. Nuking it was a mistake, and one that wonât do anything to improve matters on the BBS. How could it?
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Iâve got no skin in this game, so Iâm not going to comment too much on how I feel about what has transpired.
From what I gather, Iâm just too stingy with my likes to have gotten a chance to glimpse the secret halls of regular. (by golly, if itâs going to stamp my approval on something, Iâm going to carefully consider every one of them.)
In other online communities, I generally opt-out of being âactiveâ because doing so feels (to me, personally) too much like spamming and otherwise sticking my thumb in everyoneâs pudding. Around here Iâve began, revised, and abandoned at least 3x as many replies/topics as I ultimately submitted. (I even de-like things semi-regularly)
Ultimately, I think I would have joined and even appreciated the regulars community if qualification was treated as a privilege to be lost, more assumed than âearnedâ. If moderation is more open and active, perhaps the ânormalâ community here can become something like that. (edited to add emph)
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Please know I have nothing but respect for you. You have consistently been fair and transparent. You keep an even head when people (authors and members) get crazy. My comments are not an attack on you but just how I am left feeling. Ive been around long enough to know that online communities go through these cycles. Sometimes they survive and sometimes they donât. I will shake off this melancholy and hope for nothing but the best. I donât plan to jump ship. I will continue to try and add to the community.
Does it need to be all or nothing? I get that itâs fair for moderation to in the open. Why should I be able to call out a possible trolley but not another member that hasnât made regular status?
My concern is more about the regular threads about personal subjects. For example the relationships thread. I was actually planning to write a lengthy post there sharing some personal things that I have been struggling with. But now I wonât make that post and I wonât have interactions with others here that is more substantial than making fun of the latest GOP gaff. Having a somewhat private area fosters interactions that are deeper and more significant than what you will find on a areas in full view of the public.
I see that one can create PM groups. I guess that will be the thing now. The tough thing will be how and who ever gets invited to these cliques once they form. I think the barrier to entry will be higher than that of regular status and will come down to who you know rather than your behavior here on the BBS.
Time will tell. Iâm going to go out into meat space for awhile and have some lunch.
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We can definitely have a conversation around that sort of thing, for sure. Discourse offers us quite a few tools for helping us decide when someone really wants to be a âmemberâ of the community. Iâm not against the idea of changing the definition of TL1 (new member) so that trollies are a little more discouraged from putting in effort to be allowed to post in community-created topics.
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Let me be clear about this. I completely understand the sentiment here. I have been personally lamenting the fact that some of the methods Iâve enjoyed to start personal relationships (and even marriages!) in my life, including the likes of IRC, online gaming, etc., are no longer true communities in the sense they once were. Their loss is our loss, and I sincerely hope that something will appear again to fill that void.
But the BBS, as with all commenting systems for Boing Boing before it, had a goal of creating an equal place for all who are willing to abide by our community guidelines, and that necessitates public discourse. It was our mistake to fail to realize the effect that a private area would have. a small, tight-knit community grew within, and while I believe that community is strong enough to exist as part of the larger BBS, I do entirely understand that this comes with a necessary loss of privacy that a public space can never really provide.
Iâve offered in the past to host a private space for those who feel they cannot participate in a public BBS. That offer still stands, but I genuinely hope that instead the community will try and come together in the spirit of equality, rather than divide off and move even further from the public arena.
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I agree - if it exists at all it needs to be merit based (and demerit lost) though I would caution against a removal process that allows for mob rule.
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I think you misspelled âwretched hive of scum and villainy.â
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Insert âthis will not end wellâ gif here.
#>_<
SMFH.
I wish I had some useful suggestions to make, but unfortunately, this is like that whole barn door analogy; after the fact is simply too late.
People are innately creatures of habit, and once we get used to something, any change to the status quo is going to be met with some resistance.
The problem here is exacerbated by the apparent contempt for the entire community that certain PTB exhibit regularly, (no pun intended.)
Given that fact, itâs hard not to view this change as a proverbial punch to the nose, along with a tidy âfuck you if you donât like it.â
And while itâs true thatâs the authorsâ prerogative, it doesnât bode well for the future of this site, not IMO.
Like I said in the now shuttered lounge; without the tight-knit community and sense of camaraderie thatâs been fostered, we might as well be just another Reddit.
And I say this as someone who came in as a completely unknown variable, a little more than a year ago -
I started as an âoutsider,â a âfilthy noob to be wary of,â as one well liked Regular once put it; and gradually I moved from being accepted as a bonafide member of this community to being one of its so called âdarlings.â
That âevolutionâ wasnât meaningless to me.
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On the positive side: there is a certain freedom to reading three threads I care about and hitting the âDismissâ button for a hundred others now that I donât have to maintain Regular status.
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