Afternoon, y’all.
I saw that post as it was happening and just noped the fuck back because I knew it wouldnt end well.
I’m glad you preserved it here, @Nightflyer.
I’m also pretty disappointed.
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Heck, maybe even just do it something like a Patreon… time-gate access to some of the articles on a separate subdomain for a small subscription fee or something.
You’d probably have to do some *gasp* community-building and listening to constructive comments for something like that to work, though. And getting too greedy with the number of gated articles would probably kill it.
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I would pay for BB – provided I didn’t have to put up with all the advercrapping on my iPad. I don’t see much on my PC due to uBlock, privacyBadger, and noscript.
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Maybe this was just his no-good-very-bad-day posting moment… I’ve been there, we’ve all been there, and while I still don’t agree, I can empathize. It is his job on the line if the site fails, so there’s gotta be some strong emotion there. And he deals with a metric fuckton of bullshit on a daily basis-- he has to deal with every trollpost, every questionable comment, every day. That’s gotta be a wearisome burden, and I’ve wished TPTB would find him some help with that, instead of putting the whole responsibility on one person’s shoulders.
I can’t be unsympathetic… but I still don’t feel we deserved that. I’m glad Jason took it down and locked the thread.
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It’s like they don’t realize that we are (an unpaid) part of the product they’re selling to the advertisers.
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Worth noting that ads can’t just waste bandwidth and hurt computers, they can hurt brains.
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He always seems to take things to defcon 1 at the drop of a hat. And I’m occasionally flabbergasted that he gets ‘likes’ from a lot of people. I don’t get if it’s sycophancy or just people trying to appease a ticking time bomb.
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Nothing to apologise for! I wasn’t having a go at you: was just stating my honest reaction upon realising exactly who wrote it. 
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Ken/orenwolf takes things to defcon1 at the drop of a hat? I don’t see that. He pretty much always seemed calm, reasoned and measured in his public responses on many topics, in my view. I don’t think that’s sycophantic - I like his posts only when I, you know, like and agree with them - but maybe I’m wrong.
That this response from him seems so out of character just shows what a sensitive and ‘hot button’ topic this is to him, I think.
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“If you don’t like the free ice cream you can GTFO” seems like the company line over there
A tiny fraction of site visitors look at the comments, much less post there, and a tiny fraction of them would ever “subscribe” to anything, even for a few dollars. The article pages are where the eyeballs are and that’s what they have to work with in monetizing anything.
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That has not been my experience. When he has his sysop hat on, at least.
Example… There’s a recent comment by him that someone asked to be anonymized. Why would anyone ‘like’ a comment like that? Unless you had something against the person who anonymized, or you’re happy that people are leaving the message board.
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For some reason the BBBBS ended up a target for fuckery. Probably due to anti-Doctorow anti-Xeni sorts of brigading against the Internet that was organized on Reddit starting a decade ago. Because the “site owners” were too close to the perpetrators in the Bay Area sense, they don’t know how to defend the comment part of the site.
And because the bad actors are their friends they can’t see it and don’t understand that their Bay Area Affluenza is just very obviously blinkered bullshit.
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I agree. I’m usually in board with what he says but his false equivalency of ad blocking to piracy is bullshit. I do about 90% of my TOP reading on the forum which doesn’t have any ads anyway (other than adverposts obviously). Before I joined the forums about 90% of my TOP reading was through an RSS reader. Am I pirating content because I’m going through avenues that don’t rely on hosted ads? I guess so…
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Just be glad you have seen what Jeff has been doing to TOP.
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I appreciate Discourse so much. Jeff is a typical software dev who thinks tech solves all human problems because they don’t have emotional skills. I think it’s whats made Discourse so good because he’s put so much effort into trying to solve human communication through code. And it’s what makes him an ass about actual communication like where you just talk to people.
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Lately he’s gone well beyond “curmudgeon software developer with poor people skills” (which I can empathize with) and has become much more of an agitator and borderline troll.
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news article: man shoots many people
jeff: this is terrible, ban all video games
news article: man harasses people
jeff: ban all video games
jeff: no forum needs an ignore function, ever
Also jeff: fine, I’ll include one, but you can’t ignore me
also jeff: mental illness, not white supremacy is the reason behind white supremacists doing killings
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Every damn day.
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That’s the idea, though. Those who actually care to subscribe, get early access to some of the content. Like many Patreons, which does work for at least some creators.
It doesn’t need to be instead of advertising on the normal article page, it could be in addition to. And under the right circumstances might have a decent return.
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Oh fuck. He’s going down the Alt-right rabbit hole. There is no return from that hell. Glad I’m not participating there any longer.
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