Deleting this one.
6 Likes
I’m not sure who to thank for managing this place other than @LockeCJ investing the time and money, i don’t think many would object if you put up a tip jar since the traffic to this place is increasing. I did accept the free SuS subscription but i honestly could not have seen myself giving money to such a problematic platform, not to mention the extremely limited features it has at the moment. The messaging style chat thing is just awful for anything but brief interactions. Finding out this place existed has been like finding a fucking oasis in the desert.
33 Likes
The SuS editbox is adequate for pecking in short responses on a phone. No preview, quotes, oneboxing, markup, lists, tables, etc.
Substack must have decided on that years ago, and I have my doubts that they’re going to invest in changing that. 
18 Likes
It is. I’ve shared my origin story before, but I actually joined BB because of Discourse back when they, DailyWTF, and How To Geek were among the early adopters. It’s interesting, if not necessarily notable, that none of those original sites are using it any more. I find it generally infuriating to use almost any other forum software, and am pleasantly surprised when I find projects/sites that do use it, like Home Assistant, for example. Don’t even get me started on Discord…
Fun (maybe) fact: I originally didn’t like the name. I was rooting for another one to win the vote after we decided to change it ~7 years ago. It turns out to be far more versatile than I think anyone anticipated. When I go on vacation, I even put “Elsewhere” on the location for my time off on my work calendar.
36 Likes
Ye gods, same.
Strong agree.
I will now observe a moment of silence for Eudora (email client), which worked really well, was very versatile, and never crashed. Until MacOS High Sierra.
19 Likes
Hey hey, thanks for letting me know this mountain top retreat exists.
I know that this community is its own thing, despite the huge overlap and shared origin with the BBS, and I can imagine that there are anxieties about a huge influx of “new” people, so I will sit back a bit and learn the vibe of the place before contributing a lot.
But can I say that I am immensely relieved to see so many familiar names in one place. The SuS thing is doomed to die a death of non-engagement from the interface problems alone, not to mention the problematic Nazi stuff, so I had resigned myself to the community quietly fading away.
ETA: And I guess I have already committed a faux-pas. This should probably be in the Arrivals Lounge…
32 Likes
I find Discord useful for gaming, when you’re in an alliance/guild for some MMP game, which is what I use it for. I find it not so useful for much of anything else.
9 Likes
I’m in several pretty decent Discord communities, mostly trans related and mostly local (one for Saskatoon, where I am now, and one for Vancouver, where most of my friends from my time there hang out) and the Witches vs Patriarchy discord. But they’re not anything like this. It’s more like being on IRC back in the old days. Real time chats, not good for long-term recall of discussion, so I don’t usually bother to go back and see what I’ve missed when things get busy, with the exception of the one I’m a mod on.
I definitely see the utility of both formats, but moving something like this community to Discord, it wouldn’t translate well at all.
14 Likes
Oy, where is my 
?
The idea of our community becoming a model for an AI is a little scary.
19 Likes
I’m a member of a few Discord communities, mostly related to Twitch streamers. The platform has its uses; it’s really good for watching movies together, but if you’re in multiple communities the volume of messages gets dizzying fast. Voice chat’s interesting too, but I haven’t figured out how to make that work on my tablet yet.
It’s a nice place, but I like the Discourse platform better.
18 Likes
I used to watch movies with my friend in Seattle. It was great for one-to-one voice chats, too. Otherwise, no, thank you.
13 Likes
This showed up in my RSS feed today, and hit the nail on the head:
Specifically:
The term “enshittification” was coined in 2023 by Cory Doctorow to describe the ways in which digital platforms that had once been invaluable to us slowly became worse and worse. The American Dialect Society chose enshittification as its word of the year in the year of its invention. As Doctorow put it: “Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
35 Likes
Oh the irony. 
22 Likes
Makes me glad I asked to anonymize. Even if I cannot delete everything
I’m glad Slate is giving Cory credit! But I believe he coined the term several years before 2023
Edit: damned autoincorrect and distracting cat
20 Likes
After popping over at bb and sniffing around a bit, it seems that Elsewhere is now far, FAR more active. Very nice!!
23 Likes
I’ve always assumed, without proof, that he was a nom de plume for Mark’s more whimsical side.
15 Likes
Exactly, me too. I thought the same of EllsworthToohey, whatever side that would be. A trollish one, I suppose.
15 Likes
Sekhmet just commented over there that they don’t know if anonymization will be possible after the BBS is locked. Hopefully that’s clarified before the option expires.
17 Likes
I messaged Orenwolf on Monday and asked to be anonymized prior to the shutdown. He replied he will get it done.
15 Likes
This very conversation prompted me to do the same. Thanks!
12 Likes