The icing on the cake for me was LC changing his picture.
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LInk?
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Melz has the link above:
https://bbs.elsewhere.cafe/t/a-conversation-gone-wrong/663/53?u=patrx2
It’s the thumbnail with the middle fingers.
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The free articles are how they solicit your attention and that comes associated with branding like “happy mutant” which, in turn, invites you to feel that you’re part of something. Mark’s profit motive is fairly obvious, given how many of his posts are extolling the virtues of cellphone batteries, but for the authors in general it’s less direct—they’re building an audience for their books and other projects. The interesting things are there to keep your eyes on the site until such time as they have something to promote. I’m sure there’s fun in it for them as well, but it’s also noteworthy that few of them actually follow their own site closely enough to notice all of the duplicate posts.
Perhaps part of the reason Jason is so difficult is that he (to my knowledge) doesn’t have much to promote, so he’s only concerned with ad revenue, rather than the secondary benefits of being able to advertise a book tour. [quote=“Donald_Petersen, post:83, topic:663”]
Sure, we were “led to expect a platform where [we] can engage in open discussions, build and maintain friendships, and so on.” But that was, apparently, our mistake. Such was not the intended purpose of the BBS. They permitted this little infestation of boisterous, engaged commenters and encouraged it to grow into a community while it was still fun for them. But now that we’ve made friends and set up small subcommunities and played some games and put down roots, and started to tend the gardens…
Well, hell. Nobody ever told us to do that. They turned a vacant lot into a tasteful, well-furnished garden with seats and shade and conversation pits, along with flyers and temporary art installations and performances… and sometimes we felt encouraged to put on little shows and games of our own in this garden. Plus, we were actively encouraged to weed the flowerbeds and salt the slugs!
But then we put down roots. We moved in. We’d get smart-alecky with the landlords. We’d loudly mock the wares at the concession stand. We’d put our feet up on the upholstery like we owned it, we’d publicly deride the tastes and ethics and talents and judgment of the landlords, we’d sigh about how far the joint’s standards have fallen… and when one of our buddies poked too hard on the wrong day and got kicked out a bit too hard, we rose up and demanded satisfaction.
Like we owned the place.
[/quote]
I think that’s an accurate representation of how Jason, at least, currently views the situation, and I like that you’re challenging us to think about it from his position, but I disagree with his assessment.
As @strokeybeard says, “You don’t set up a BBS without the expectation that people are going to engage with each other and build communities.” When you set up a bounce house on your lawn, kids don’t need to be “told” what to do with it. BB could have had a much more limited comment system, like Disqus, if all they wanted was for people to comment on posts by the authors. Either they intended to build a community around their brand, or they really, really ought to have known better.
Having set up a bounce house, Jason has discovered that he doesn’t like the noise, and he’s started shouting at the kids because they’re not bouncing quietly, in the correct fashion, and people are starting to cry. Maybe he has a point about the noise, but he’s not making it in a way that’s consistent with the values that BB extols. When you post about how great online communities are, and why it’s important to treat your users with respect (as Jason himself has tweeted), you’re clearly signaling to people that your online community is going to be managed in a similar fashion. He’s simply not making the effort to do so, and people are rightly feeling betrayed.
And that’s the point for me—it’s not the dispute itself, it’s his reaction. It’s the fact that BoingBoing (of all places) isn’t able to maintain a healthy dialog with its users. If they just want us to sit down and shut up, then they should have signaled that from the beginning. Don’t dress up like a clown and then get angry at kids when they jump onto your lap.
And maybe that’s all this is about—they’re realizing that they shouldn’t have dressed like a clown, and we’re realizing that they’re not actually fun.
Again, that’s his responsibility. BB set up a BBS and signaled that it celebrates online community. If the BBS has turned out to be a drain on resources, and his response is to disrespect its users, then he’s only making it worse by turning it into a factory for resentment.
That having been said, I agree with @strokeybeard that he’s selling it short, and as I alluded to earlier, this may be attributable to a narrow focus on ad revenue. The secondary benefits of having a large and highly skilled community coalesce around your brand are considerable, but he apparently lacks the finesse, interest or charisma to tap them.
Leaving there for here is how we enforced it.
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Thank you for articulating so well what I was trying to express above. 
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This.
I mean, what if they ran little sales related to status/happenings/accomplishments on the bbs? Stickers or patches or whatever? Hell, what about selling some t-shirts or whatever- related/aimed at the bbs? I’d have gone in for some of that.
As a small example: there was a bike thread over there- it had been around a good long time. I’d have likely kicked in for a BBS team jersey- and happily paid them a cut.
Or: Rob liked mechanical keyboard. Lots of other people on the BBS did too. What about a custom cap set?
Maybe instead of me talking about what they didn’t do there, we should talk about what we want to do here?
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This seems more fruitful, in the long run.
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At this point, I’m not quite sure if we should build a business around out community. It might detract from the community itself to have a sanctioned blog.
What I have been doing is long-form articles and columns that I just throw up here. They tend to be weird, somewhat informative, and possibly useful for people in the scene.
Edit:
I’m speaking on my own behalf. I don’t speak for everyone, just myself.
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Which, ironically, was another literal way of saying “fucksocks.”
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Heck, I bought a copy of Hedgehog Art Through The Ages for my friends girls.
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If we could manage something as high quality as “FirstDraft” which is a blog that evolved sort of out of the commetns sections of a few early blogs in a totally not comparable way to this. But they deserve a plug. I think a front page is a good idea, but like this -
and then with comments.
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I’m less interested is “building a business” out of this place, and more interested in "making things we want."
As in: in don’t want to be in the t-shirt business, but I might eventually want a shirt with a graphic about this place.
In the unlikely event of any “profit” I’d assume kick that towards @LockeCJ to offset running costs.
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Myself as well. I simply can’t complete anything that seems tedious to me, unless I have to…and my life is structured in such a way now so I don’t have to.
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I persuade myself nowadays that if someone else does the boring jobs I’m either creating employment or teaching valuable life lessons.
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I’m with you
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Boing Boing (originally bOING bOING) started as a zine in 1988 by married duo Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair.[3] Issues were subtitled “The World’s Greatest Neurozine”. Associate editors included Gareth Branwyn, Jon Lebkowsky, and Paco Nathan. Along with Mondo 2000, Boing Boing was an influence in the development of the cyberpunk subculture. It reached a maximum circulation of 17,500 copies.[3] The last issue of the zine was #15.
Fwiw, Jason only has one reference in the whole wikipedia article.
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I changed my avatar from the CEO of Pepsi to a stock photo of a young black girl.
It was an interesting thought experiment: what if people actually think I’m my avatar?
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I share your concerns and, as you know, have always been opposed to running this in the fashion of a commercial zine. I mostly view the (hypothetical) blog as a fun thing for us to do together, and worry that too high a profile will place us in the position of managing a community rather than enjoying one.
The problem is that the BBS ranks threads according to activity, which means that the stuff at the top will always be 1.) discussion topics and 2.) things people are really opinionated about, like politics. These will tend to bury articles about science, history, art, etc., which people might find interesting, but don’t necessarily feel the need to weigh in upon. So, I like the idea of a blog as way to introduce things like that.
One reason I’m a fan of the (micro) subscription model is that it would limit our growth by only admitting new members who are serious enough to chip in $1/mo.*
*And one further thought I had about that was that if we actually had hundreds of members paying $1/mo to maintain a small site with very few operating costs, we could actually use some of that to commission stories and articles from professional writers on whatever topics we choose. I have no idea if that would interest anyone else, but I would personally find it exciting to be part of a project which actually funds the arts, rather than insisting upon them for free. There’s a lot you can do if people are willing to pay just a little bit.
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The bits need to be paid for somehow. That could be a business enterprise, someone generously footing the bill, or the community contributing the dollars.
Personally, I’d be happy to contribute, but the decision is probably best made by the people who are putting in the actual work. I’m just over here in the peanut gallery, wasting a little time between work tasks. My opinion is worth the number of dollars I’ve contributed so far, which is zero.
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He’s an intellectual rentier, not a maker.
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