I’ve been reading BB since… I dunno. A long time. Years, really. Post zine era, though, for those keeping score.
Anyway.
Got into the BBS because I wanted to comment and who boy howdy I enjoyed the community that was there. Accidentally got Reg status and life was good.
Things there (for me, anyway) started to get funky (I think) around the time of the Like-strike. Hell, it might have been a mess well before that, but I either wasn’t a Reg or hadn’t noticed. Either is possible. I thought the handling of that was… weird, and It put my teeth on edge.
Many thing have happened since then, and it’s just seemed that the BBS, while important to us, was at least unimportant to most of the Authors and was abhorrent to the Publisher. Seeing people I respected booted like they were was- painful.
The lounge thing was the last straw for me. It was a handful of sand in the face of the most serious users for no reason other than they could. Don’t like it? Leave.
So I did.
And I’m here and happy and there’s so much work to do but it’s all so exciting!
Why are any of us here, indeed?
I don’t have a social life IRL. But I like to share ideas and concepts and all that crap that goes on in my head with others who are possibly similar to me in some ways.
Needlessly hostile too.
Other blogs I have read regularly that actually cared about their audience (e.g. the-toast.net, RIP you wonderful crazy posts and comments section), don’t consult the users before changing things, but usually post that changes are coming, or at the very least, post about the change and what it’s all about. They don’t spring it on users with no explanation then get mad when users ask what it is. They just point to the existing post that clearly explains it. Near as I can tell, there was no post about secret rune until the BBS went WTF, then it was too late. They could have had oren pin it to the top of the BBS and cut off a lot of problems.
Like many professionals in communication, j isn’t as good of a communicator as he thinks he is. Then when he runs into the results of that, he gets angry and makes it worse. I deal with enough people like that IRL. I don’t like wondering if my online communities are going to be scattered when someone flips the table because once again they were called out for not understanding one of the basic rules of the game.
I used to find something like 25% or more of the articles of interest, but ever since that trumpfuck ascended, it hasn’t been worth scrolling through the crap for the odd gem.
It was long before that I’d given up looking at the blog; I browsed the BBS instead, and when the Discourse platform came along, I set my preferences to notify me of any non-boing post, since by then it was obvious that the community was more consistently interesting than the staff.
BBS somehow established itself in my “ludic loop,” and once there, it’s hard to dislodge. (I was still untraining myself from typing “slashdot” embarrassingly recently.) I think this latest drama made me realize how long it’s been since BB blog content itself seemed worth regularly checking.
On the other hand, jlw does actually interact with the BBS more than any other BB author, excepting Rob.
Yeah. That’s the problem. 
when I started browsing BB, the comments were on the same page as the posts and you could post anonymously! Antinous kept everyone in line. I was in my early 30s but hadn’t had opportunity to use computers and internet for personal use very much at that point, so BB was one of the first places i ever posted (as anon), posted regularly, made an account, got modded, was Displeased With BoingBoing, all that. The connection to the zine culture resonated with me.
By the time of Disqus, I started to get a feel for some of the regular personalities, I think that’s when I met @Mindysan, but Discourse really enabled us to finally communicate easily and effectively.
I’ve seriously been going to BB every day since
[Jun 24, 2007] got posted on my MySpace feed, but when Discourse was implemented, it was like whoaaaa baby! and that’s when I started being most involved and really knowing the community.
So, now all the active community members are here (or will be shortly) and we use Discourse–I’m totally good.
I’ll still browse the headlines on BB (blog view, thank you) and participate in the threads that interest me since I don’t do social media, TV news, or very many other sites with regularity–it’s still a good link-aggregator and let’s me know what’s happening on the internet/world at a glance plus still some interesting stuff now and then. I liked interacting with y’all through that lens and ended up seldom using the lounge, but it seems like here is where all my buddies are going to be and it’s pretty neat 从x˵╹ ◡ ╹˶x从
speaking of Antinous, I pm’d him goodbye when he resigned and he gave me an email, I should see if I can find it and shoot him a link. he was a fun mod.
can we get SmashMartian on here? Did he leave because he didn’t want to be on BB specifically or he had other reasons? I think he got weirded out because his anonymity got compromised ? But I miss him.
Yeah, I liked that guy (I thought?) I had good experiences with him personally, but I read the comment of ModusOperendi’s and I couldn’t figure out what JLWs response even meant. It was very random and capricious. And yes, he’d done it in the past but I wasn’t in those threads. whelp ¯\ __(ツ) _ /¯
[quote=“noahdjango, post:28, topic:93”]
I’ll still browse the headlines on BB (blog view, thank you) and participate in the threads that interest me since I don’t do social media, TV news, or very many other sites with regularity–it’s still a good link-aggregator and let’s me know what’s happening on the internet/world at a glance plus still some interesting stuff now and then.[/quote]
Yep, that’s how I use it too.
[quote=“noahdjango, post:28, topic:93”]
Yeah, I liked that guy (I thought?)[/quote]
Me too. For sure he and I have many interests in common. When he banned @nemomen some time back I thought he was just having an off day (as we all do). This latest thing, though, combined with the tweets, is…disappointing?
jlw was in a douche spiral for a while. A few years ago he was wishing OtherMichael a happy birthday on the front page. When this happened was when I decided he was a flaming dick:
After that it was all downhill. He banned me a few months later for a similarly trivial thing and the abusive bans kept going from there.
Well, glad you are here. Welcome aboard.
Not to jump on the dogpile, but my first ban was because Indub started doing his weird brand of “flirting” with me and I gave him a very minor rebuff… which caused Indub to flip out and try to escalate the conflict, by making a post whining about it. I didn’t even get to see it, let alone comment, because the next thing I knew, I was locked out.
That’s what the orange angry thing calls “scorching the earth” whenever there’s a problem that needs moderating; he bans everyone involved.
What really sucked was I had some people doubting my integrity, as if I was being dishonest about why I’d been kicked; like surely I’d done something to deserve it, right?
0_o
But on the other hand, what rocked was seeing how much of the community stood in solidarity with the ‘new kid on the banana’; so many fangs or vamp avatars popped up, it truly warmed my cold black heart.
#^_^
Yes, yours was one of the abusive bans I was thinking of. Glad I’ve left his house - I’m not going back.
I’m still going to read the BBS for what’s trending, because I’m just used to that particular delivery system for what news I should be googling.
But I’m probably going to be commenting less and less, as more of the community joins this site, and of course never in any jlw post.
I won’t even click on those.
What I do want to know is how I can help contribute to the financial upkeep on this forum; I’m broke, but willing to chip in a couple bucks a month to help.
I’ve already found myself sliding quickly down that particular slope. Sure, I’ve never been a prolific commenter to start with, but lately I find myself self-censoring just out of worry of what might spark off something new… and I just don’t have time for that kind of mental static.
I logged out but still lurk every once in a while - less and less as I break the habit. Trying to shift to just reading the blog view and skipping comments. Needed more time for projects anyway.
There’s a thread on how we are going to make this sustainable; Get Your Vapes and Headphones Here
As for other comments about mod abuse, I’m thinking part of what we develop as a mod policy is a transparent internal policy about what and how to enforce. A sort of quis custodiet ipsos custodes doctrine.
I’m with @Melizmatic; although I have a bit more dollars than time. So is there any way some of us can help financially?
so, I did it yesterday. made it short, “no-pressure-y,” and clear I was asking him to join us, not be our mod. no reply as of yet.
anyone?
I hope this is the right place to post this.
It is great to have this forum right now as a way for the former BB regulars to transition out of that status, as a replacement for what should have been a graaaaaadual phasing out of the category. That’s why I joined. However…
As I read the various threads here I am not sure I am clear on what will be the mission going forward. Is it just a refuge for BB exiles? Apparently not. How will membership be determined? Since many here came because of overmoderation over there, how will that be avoided? Revenue stream? Some like affiliate links, others don’t. How will we contribute to/deal with blog-like content? All of this is still TBD.
Already there are numerous discussion threads being started here that duplicate threads on BB, except here the number of participants will necessarily be much less. Restricted membership was nice for the lounge, but does it make sense for other discussions?
I started reading BB years ago because I liked the authors’ taste in stories. I still do, for the most part, and will likely still go there for such content. Likewise I think most of the discussions over there were generally pretty good, and while the regulars were pretty visible in most threads any given thread also had many excellent contributions from people who were not regulars. If someone is just interested in cars or copyright or citchen crapware then they will probably participate in relevant threads and not others, and not have become regulars.
It is unlikely that I will participate in a given thread over there and the same thread over here.
Before we commit more time, energy, and @LockeCJ’s hard-earned money, maybe some of these existential questions should be explored more conclusively?
In Max Shulman’s hilarious The Zebra Derby, the main character visits a town which was a one-factory town (quartz processing) during the war, but is faced with closure as the war draws to a close. The discussion by the townspeople of what to do next reminds me a bit of the situation here. (I can’t find it online, so here are images of the relevant pages - sorry for the graphics bandwidth.)
Apologies for being a bit of a wet blanket.