Bye Pointless Ann...

Uhhh...I'm not a deep person.

PA is fine if I just have one little thing to say where the topic is not thread forming or blog worthy...so I slip it in there and have fun with my friends bantering back and forth. It's called Pointless Announcements for a reason. Maybe it should just hang out in posting games.

I'm just here to be a smart ass. I don't really have the time or patience to dig too much into the site. (I'm not an "internet person" as I can't stay in front of a computer for hours aside from work. If you notice, I don't post much after 5pm PST or on the weekends. It just entertains me when I have a lull at work.) I probably won't be on here as much without a little place to hear a funny one liner from someone or to take a jab at Borla. I have been known to post legitimate threads and respond to some...but, I don't spend that much time on the site aside from PA, blogs and an occasional thread that pops up on the main page that may be interesting. I don't actively look for interesting threads though.

That being said, I'm probably not the type of person you want for this site, so my opinion may not matter.
--- merged: Oct 17, 2013 at 12:51 PM ---
ALSO....some of MeltedMetalGlob 's best work has come from a response to a Pointless Announcement.

 

Sometimes I need a mindless diversion. It's interaction that helps connect us without any heavy lifting.

 

It serves a purpose, allowing people to be social smartasses without trashing meaningful topics.

Perhaps move it to members only, if someone feels it is bad PR.

 

Some of the pointless announcements really have a point.

 

While I don't have a measurably significant aversion to PA, I think it does (has done) a couple of significant things to this community:

1. it has replaced discussion (Which may mean that PA is symptomatic of change rather than causative, I don't know. One thing is for sure - the dynamics of interaction in this community have changed a great deal.)

2. it has cultivated cliquish aspects of our community that did not predominate before.

I am certain that some folks will disagree with me, particularly on #2, but that's what I see.

 

Who here remembers the Shout Box?

Pointless Announcements replaced that. Then it took steroids and turned into something even worse.

I agree with mixedmedia, only I think that it has actively suppressed other discussions. When that is where 15% of all posts in a day are going, we're failing in our charter to be a bastion of intelligent discussion and respectful disagreement.

I like the back-and-forth banter that sometimes happens there, but PA is certainly not holding a monopoly on that. Most of the posts there could be either a status update on a profile or fit better into another thread.

What I haven't heard here is what's GOOD about it besides not being a serious place - which means that it belongs in Posting Games.

 

Well now I'm curious... What was Shout Box, and why did PA replace it?

/threadjack

 

I cringe at the word "popular". I'll be honest - I don't care about how popular it is. Apparently whatever a Justin Beiber is is popular with a lot of people. I couldn't care less.

Yes, I am saying that Pointless Announcements is the Justin Beiber of TFP.

The stats that Baraka_Guru found were basically what I expected. My numbers were drawn from a couple of weeks of watching, not much more. That does not mean that those numbers are good for TFP. People post in PA because it's comfortable and friendly. That's fine, but when that is the ONLY place that people post, there is a problem.

There are a lot of options open to us, including my favorite - "kill it with fire!"

If the numbers tell us that this is by far our most popular thread, should we just ignore the rest of the board? Isn't the rest of the board where the good stuff really happens anyway? There are a lot of PA posts that could just as easily be blog posts or status updates or posts in other threads or NEW THREADS.

Finally, I want everyone to realize that I'm talking to YOU. Not the staff. Not myself. To you, the members. Justify to me why it should stay open when everything that I see about TFP in general screams "no one lets go of their security blanket any more!"

 

I don't think you can use the post count as a good measurable for a thread. What threads have more quality posts than one-word responses like "gross" or ?

 

lol, wut??

No.

TFP has been cliquish for a VERY long time. PA did not cause that, PA provided a medium for it.

PA is not the problem, however, I did vote Yes to ending it. If you have a pointless announcement you can twitter style slot it into the little status update announcement thingy on the side.

You want discussion, create threads and/or participate in them. So far there have been threads that cater to afterthought posts like "complaining and bitching thread".

We've become like an old couple bored with each other left with nothing to talk about cause every new thread's first response is "Well, this subject has been beaten to glue but the main consensus around here is ... " ...

You want new things? Ease up on the insularity. Bring back porn. Let new people talk about old things that are new to them.

But that's just my opinion.

 

I wouldn't throw a hissy fit if we got rid of PA. I'm just saying that I probably won't post as much if I have no where to drop a random line of my sarcasm and wit. It'll just happen organically. I lost a lot of anonymity on this site over the years. Things I would have started a thread about don't get created because things I have said in the past have leaked out into my real life.

PA for me is silly and I post silly things.

 

What you will see in a typical day at TFP is a spate or two of banter between a handful of people on PA (or, alternatively, a handful of other throw-off threads) and then the place is like a ghost town content-wise except for those diehard politics guys, people saying what they're eating or drinking and people posting images of various sorts. There's nothing wrong with that if that's the nature of the medium - reddit or twitter or even facebook, etc., but I think what they're saying here is that this is not what they want the tfp to be. And although I freely admit I am just as guilty as anyone of making a day's contribution to the forum in the form of a one-liner on PA, I do sort of miss when there were more talkative people about. Part of me thinks that time is just passed, though, and there's no making it come back.