State of the TFP (Long)
 

The following is a chatlog from the TFP IRC channel (which I strongly suggest everyone take the time to check out) in which a few of us discussed the current state of the TFP and what is going on and what needs to change.

The Cliff Notes goes like this: I'm gonna make some changes around here. I'd like input.

The only thing I disagree with is attemting to open up another forum that is waaay too similar to TFP. Stick with one or the other or you'll end up with one being way more active than the other, or even worse, both simply fizzling out.

I don't really get SC's comments about Hal though. This is his site, he created it, there's no reason to act like he doesn't deserve a bit of respect.

BTW: in a nutshell, the reason TFP isn't doing as well as it used to is due to new members being bitch slapped anytime they create a new thread that's not 1,000 characters long or when their thread is closed when they didn't use the search feature to find the other similar thread from 2003 that is dead.

Well, you asked for suggestions Hal so here's my $.02:
I've been absent from the TFP for probably a year and a half, and coming back now with a fresh perspective I'd have to agree that while still great, it's not as great as it used to be. I've noticed the absence of several people whose posts I used to look forward to, but also the presence of some people with real presence who have been around here for a long time. *Edit-ok, now I know what the C?A stuff is about. What harm a little experimentation, sez I.

My suggestion for TFP may or may not be technically feasible for the forums based on the software you're using, but here goes. One of the big issues I picked up from your (REALLY long) chat log is that there's concern that people who post responsibly might be subjected to "douchebaggery". Maybe a system that allowed members to 'rate' other members, and sufficient negative ratings demoted the person being rated to n00b status or something like that...?

Also, maybe send an email to members who've been absent for a lengthy time to tell them about the changes you're making - see if you can't entice a few more of the people back who left...?

I know I kind of sounded like a dick, but it's not that I don't think he deserves ANY respect. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't letting an overwhelming and almost fearful amount of deference keep me from saying what I think needed to be said. I think that that deference aspect (which is unfortunately tied in with the healthy amount of respect) is built into the culture around here. I didn't think it was doing us any good and I feel that we've cleared the air a bit about what role he DOES expect to have around here. I have mucho respect for his creation and his continued efforts (and I know they are great efforts) to keep this place going.

I'd just like to say that any tension or "lines being drawn" between feuding members flies completely over my head and I imagine it's the same for most. We come, we read, we sometimes post, and pursue what interests us.

In other words, a handful of strained relationships isn't going to rot the core of this place. It's a much bigger board than that.

/heads off to the Where Am I In Canada? Thread

Excuse me for butting in when I'm such a newb here, but I've been around forums in general a long long time.

It's when you start taking things TOO seriously that the place goes to shit. Aren't general forums supposed to be a fun place to interact with other people.

It's the internet, it's not rocket science, and it's not life and death. If the owner of the site wants to run the site a certain way, then it seems to me he/she is entirely entitled to do it, and if there's a few casualties along the way... then that's just how it goes.

Thanks for bringing this up. It's one of the things we hate enforcing, but we don't want to let the board turn into something resembling a neglected backroad.

This is a good idea. I think I'll use your suggestion.

Do you notice a difference in the board from how it was a couple years ago? If so, can you put your finger on the reason for the change?

First of all, I gotta say that appealing to new users is what is going to pull us through this. However, one thing about the TFP is we've always tried to be fairly ... special. If you can say that for a general topic message board. That requires a delicate balance of meddling on my part and just letting people do their thing. I'll admit that it has limited our membership numbers, but that said nothing for the quality of experience.

In any case, I'm still dedicated to making this site the best it can be.

You didn't sound like a dick at all. You sounded like someone who gives a shit about TFP. In fact, I was reading the chat over shesus' shoulder and when I saw what you were saying, it compelled me to come in because I thought you were being courageous and I wanted to be part of what you were doing.

A couple of years ago the board was new to me. Every time I logged on I discovered a different aspect or found a new interesting member. I was much more open to what this place was. Like any environment, the fire of novelty is bound to wane a bit over time. My own role changed from gob smacked newbie to... well... a comfortable participant I guess.

Surely I'm not alone in that, but I hope that we don't all confuse our own individual and internal complacencies for an objective board decline. I believe this sort of egocentric confusion accounts for some of the outspoken malaise this past year.

There a number of disappeared members that I miss too, but what's to be done? Life marches on.

One of the downsides of a 'successful' forum (and I've been seeing this elsewhere, not just here), is, in the length of time the forums around, added to the amount(in sheer numbers) of users, personalities, coupled with perceived predictability start to come into play. TFP is in middle age in internet years, far outlasting many other forums. One person always responds to that person out of old-time habits and the perceived predictability, leading to a why bother, leading to less posting until something new comes up....and the older it gets, the less something new comes up....a common phrase used here lately is 'I haven't been posting here for a while....'
People get a comfort zone as well and 'personalities' and quirks show through-now you have likes and dislikes based on what you see on your screen.
Put in real-life relationships (TFP has many married, dating, related members as well as friendships in real life and yes, animosity) and it affects how one 'behaves', albeit text-based.
The mod/owner thing mentioned is brought up on occasion. While this is a forum and not a 'business', anything with people trying to run/control/moderate needs a chain of command. If it doesn't why are there admins/super mods/ mods? I will say, TFP runs quite well with very little mod interference-they've been used more as Dear Abby at some points or go-betweens for one-on-one conflicts-not sure that's a good idea, using anyone as a mediator. A mediator down the line, though, might not be a bad idea.
(hmm...there's an untapped business:forum-participant conflict mediator)
Everyone's going to offer up ideas, suggestions on how to make it 'better' but it won't get better if no one wants to work at what's wrong first.
Then when it gets better, it will be a place that people want to go to, not run like hell from. All the advertising in the world isn't gonna do squat if you don't live up to it.

I'm not a big contributor here but I do check in almost daily. I come to TF as a diversion from life. When TF begins to reflect the same things I deal with on an everyday basis is when TF begins to lose my attention. I don't get to contribute as much as I would like, I just don't have the time to build relationships here. So maybe that's why much of the complaints are foreign to me. I think its a bit much to expect a forum with as many members as this to be a complete nirvana however as with any forum, problems do arise. I hope whatever steps are taken, keep the spirit of TF alive. Because this really is a special place on the internet. I'm not sure if I added anything to this conversation but felt I needed to put my own $.02 in. Hal, thanks for what you do and have done. I hope it can continue.

Combining this with a politics board is just asking for trouble. A user-rating system is just too damn easy to abuse - look at Ebay's feedback mechanism if you want examples. I'd bet more than half of the negative feedback on there is from people seeking petty revenge rather than reporting the true facts about a transaction.

Halx, the trouble with the TFP is partly that it's on the internet. Internet hangouts come and go faster than any pre-net fad you've ever heard of. I bet few people here have thought of Geocities or telnet talkers in quite awhile, but not so very long ago they were THE place to be on the net. Geocities killed itself by being stupid, true enough, but the talkers were going strong until ICQ came along - - - now we have cute sound effects to go along with the chatting, and no more wizards to stop us from being assholes, so everyone migrated. Then ICQ got uncool because AIM came out (though why anything from AOL was ever accepted is still beyond me) even though they were essentially the same damn thing. But it's pretty hard to find someone with a UIN anymore. I'm amazed I still remember mine.

Myspace was booming, now everyone's off making the same damn pages on a different service. Why? It's the faddish nature of the net.

Frankly the only reason the TFP is visited anymore at all is because it's managed to attract people with higher intelligence than the average net.nimrod. We have longer attention spans, so we stick around.


I think this new forum of yours has interesting possibilities if you use it correctly. Frankly I think you should migrate all the porn over there and make TFP a pure discussion community. I'll tell you why.

Many of us here on TFP would love to invite our friends to join up, but we certainly can't be telling our coworkers and friends-who-might-not-understand to come to a site that has porn on it. It's a real good way to get fired or sued in today's puritanical world.

The way you used to attract people was by dangling the porno carrot in front of them. Hey come look at all the naked women. Oh and by the way now that you've looked at them for awhile if you want to KEEP looking at them, start talking or get deleted. You attracted a lot of people that way, many of whom became contributing members.

But now you have the porn locked off to new users - so you've cut out the, for want of a better phrase, marketing value of the porn. The porn hunters are going to go somewhere that they can get porn NOW, not in 2 weeks. And the people who are looking for a discussion community instead of the porn aren't going to come here because, hell, it's a bunch of damn porno freaks. The simple fact is, TFP's porn has become a liability if your goal is to attract new members.

Meanwhile you have the only forum on the net where real discussions can and do happen. Sure, people talk on other forums, but they rarely discuss. Either things move too freakin' fast (go visit the hard forum. If your post isn't replied to within about 2 minutes, it's already scrolled off the new post list and no one will see it), or they're overmoderated and therefore a ghost town, or they're undermoderated and therefore a haven for morons. TFP has largely managed to avoid all of this and in the process attract a core group of posters who are, in defiance of most internet trends, capable of having intelligent discussions. But it's difficult for that core group to grow if new blood isn't constantly coming in - - - hence the problem of the porn.

Now, if you moved the porn over to this new forum, I think you'd get a lot of people to be comfortable coming to TFP to check it out. It's no longer a porn forum, it's one of the oldest discussion communities on the internet and hey! It actually has smart people posting on it. That's a pretty attractive formula if you ask me.

shakran, that was awesome. I'm definitely looking into your points. One thing I have to say is that to a new visitor, there is only one place on the site that even mentions the porn, which is the rules and guidelines. Do you really think new users know there is porn to be had?

I really don't think this is the cause of the lack of traffic on the TFP. I've been here for a while now, I haven't left or taken a break of any kind and I've hardly seen any of these closed "newbie" threads of which you speak.

I understand your attitude with old threads. What I don't understand is people's fear of bumping up old threads. The official policy here is that if a thread topic has alredy been discuss, you add to that pre-existing thread rather than make a new one. Yet, whenever I do that, people get all weird on me, saying "why'd you bring this up after all these years?" It's forum policy that I do! Where's this confusion come from?


Finally, here is my personal opinion on the current state of the TFP.

It's really the same old site it has always been except with a lot less traffic. I appreciate that the site isn't filled with fuck-wits but it would be nice if it were a little more lively. I don't know what we can do about this. I'm sure it's advertised as much as it can be and that we recommend it to all who would be even remotely interested. Two colleagues of mine, Yakk and PsychoMan are on this site from my recommendation (it was all I could talk about for a while). Yakk is still here (and might even post more often than I do) but PsychoMan hasn't posted since 2004. Why didn't he stick around? No reason in particular. Too busy with life and not enough interest in this forum. No big deal except that more and more people are feeling this way about the TFP, it seems. Who can say why?

I noticed that Tilted Knowledge was merged with some other forum 'cause it was so dead. Considering how this forum has some of my very best posts, you can see why my presence isn't nearly as known as it once was.

I don't see anything wrong with Concept: Anarchy. The idea is worth an experiment. I think Supple Cow is insane and her attitude is inscrutable.

I'd like to hear more opinions on the state of the TFP. The last time I brought up the lack of traffic here all I got was an unhealthy amount of "it's summer, they'll be back in the fall" denial. Honestly, you don't solve problems by denying they exist and being defensive will never help you...

Can I suggest some things I've noticed as a newb:

a) Work on the newb's forum then. If you look at that forum, and the average number of welcomes or greetings people receive in there... well it's pretty shoddy. If you're not a strong character you're going to feel very intimidated by that, and... I'm not sure how many mods you have here, but every single active one of them should be in there welcoming new people.

b) the sheer amount of different rules and warnings all over the place. For example, I wanted to post 3 different threads, but have now convinced myself not to because all the rules all over the place have confused me to where they should go, AND how they'd be received.

Just some observations. :dunno:

Wow, this is so true... I can't remember the last time I went there to greet newbies.

Welcome! :thumbsup:


As for the forum Halx:

I'll be rockin the TFP as long as it's around. Even if I've been lurking lately, I do stop by now and then. School commands most of my attention.

I ceased being active on this board some time ago. Mind you, I was never "important" (I quote this to draw attention to it, because it's important). Myself and my girlfriend frequented the site because it was active, exciting, and interesting. It was edgy. It was fun. I would like to direct you to something:

http://www.embarcgroup.com/content/e.../detail/q/id/2

The 1% rule. This should not be unknown to anyone who is serious about online communties. It's nothing new, but I think its impact is being ignored here. I was not in the 1%, I was more in the 10%. I wasn't important, but I contributed. The 1% drove me out. This is what happened to this community.

I think this was the ultimate failing of the TFP. In my case, it was over politics. Having liberal views *IS NOT ACCEPTABLE* on this board. Oh, you can argue with me, and I'm sure you will. But it is simply the case that the people with very conservative views (including many moderators) pushed us out. We were scum, and that was made very very very VERY clear. It was made very clear to me that I was not welcome here. This isn't up for debate. I had everyone against me, moderators, frequent posters, you name it. My views were not acceptable, period.

The problem? Not politics. It was giving too much power to people with chips on their shoulder and bones to pick. Giving too much power to those who used the active community to bolster their own point of view. I saw how that played out in a politics forum, but I believe the root cause probably manifested itself in many other ways. The simple fact was, if you weren't the 1%, you were not welcome. That drives your (more important) 10% out, and the 89% left drift away once the trainwreck plays itself out.

The bottom line is, when you are dealing with an online community, you are dealing with the 1% rule. The 1% who make the community, the 10% who tenously contribute, and the 89% who lurk. Don't give the 1% too much control or you will lose your (more valuable) 10%, and the 89% will leave on their own.

I don't know of any practical solutions. In fact, at this point I don't care. I load this forum once every 2-3 months out of boredom. At one time I did care and felt this was my online home, but I was alienated to maximum potential, so don't expect much from me but my opinion, be it unpopular or not.

Essentially? Just be aware that the most vocal will seem the majority, and it is safe and natural to give way to these people. If you pay enough attention to your community you will know who your 1% and your 10% are and know not to let the 1% dominate. If you fail to pay attention to this, you are in trouble. If you promote them all to high-level moderators, you are DOOMED.

I figured i would post my piece here.

When i joined early in 2003 (has it been that long?) I was hooked by the well thought out posts and welcoming attitude towards any contribution. New members were given acknowledgment and if they deserved it, praise. There was a large emphasis on evolution, and progression in the forums.

As a result I learned a great deal. More than that, with the help of the community I came to a better understanding of myself and the world around me. It seemed that a majority of posts were about challenging one's percieved notions, reaching beyond a certain comfort level, or attempting to see another's viewpoint.

It is my belief that the emphasis on evolution and the progression that it implied lent a hostile view on issues presented by new members that had already been discussed and set aside by older members. It was on the newbies to "catch up" to the level of discussion currently at hand. I think this was the beginning of the decline of TFP. Many of the progressed threads fell apart due to the input by newer members that had missed an earlier discussion. The few threads that did not fall prey to this dumbing down were either too hostile or obscure for new members to find a common frame of reference. (i can think a few of ArTelevision threads...)

But basically, as the board matured, there arose an increased hostility towards immaturity. Rather than a pat on the head and a guiding word or two, it was a slap on the bum and a stern point to the search button. As membership slowed and some older members dropped out, the TFP momentum slowed and eventually stalled. I think the creation of tilted trampoline, a forum for just screwing around, was a major indication of that. A playground for veterans with nothing better to do.

as for advice on what to do next?

1. Increased tolerance for rehashing old issues. Acknowledge a new member's contribution or thread (if there is actually a contribution), and allow discussion of that issue. The issue will either be rapidly resolved (as there will be widespread agreement on the correct solution) or it will cause heated discussion in which case it is an interesting enough topic to get people excited about it.

2. Re-evaluate the evolution philosophy. To me, it seems like pure evolution on this board has created elitism and self-imposed stagnation. Reform the system to constantly welcome fresh faces; even if they may not be as far along the track of older members.

3. Create a venue for older members to discuss finer/deeper points of broader viewpoints brought up in threads. I'm not sure about this because it seems as though this would reinforce the elitist perception, and would have to be controlled strictly.

There is a lot to absorb here.

One of the interesting aspects of C:A is that a lot of it feels like the Nonsense part of TFP used to feel like. This is not a bad thing.

Nonsense, to me and many others, was the place where were most creative. Yes, some of the threads were juvenile, puerile and lot's of other "iles" but I made more connection there than I ever did in Politics.

Taking Nonsense out of the "new posts" was a mistake. It relegated a vibrant and creative part of the board into a backwater. The demand for this sort of activity is clear.

With regards to C:A and the attacks that were happening there (no fingers are being pointed), much of it has been brewing here for some time (I don't think many are aware of this). It was a boil that needed to be lanced (sadly there is no anesthetic for this sort of procedure). The thing for me is that it didn't take opening a new Forum to achieve this result.

All of the complaints and issues could have been solved here. I agree with the earlier comments made that an adjustment of the rules could have perhaps had better results.

I would also like to back up Supple Cow to an extent. Yes, Hal owns the place. He set this beast in motion. But it isn't just his place. Over the last five years WE have made this place, and that I mean all of the users and mods and admin. There is no one person responsible for all of this. Evolution isn't just one guy.

Recognizing this, it is important to remember that as a member you have a responsibility to work towards making the place the ideal place. If you were to just flame and shout garbage all over the place, it loses the element that allows discussion and the things Shakran mentioned above. However, as a member you shouldn't feel that you cannot call a spade a spade. Calling someone on their bullshit should never be an issue.

I think it was stated very clearly above: "Whatever you have to say, say it with maturity." There are ways to tell someone they are being an asshole without necessarily calling them an asshole. Of course, sometimes Asshole is the only appropriate word and it is worth the warning.

I have no conclusion to this... only that we should be more open when there are big 400 pound issues that are killing the board.

"<ngdawg> do what most other forums do and put mods for specific forums, not all over...
<shesus> I have kids that tattle to me all day...I say what goes. I think the same would go here
<JumpinJesus> that could be a good idea.
<Supple_Cow> Hal, as person in charge of TFP (and I don't say it facetiously), don't you think you have that capacity for judgment?
<ngdawg> where they 'police', they have to be objective in order to post
<Hal> i cant make every decision, SC
<shesus> hehe..who would take politics then? lol"


tecoyah....would come back for this job....happily


To me the issue here is participation and commitment. Likely we are dealing with a catch 22, as interest wanes in the community people walk away for whatever reason and that small part of what is TFP goes with them. The cumulative effect is now bieng felt on the pages of this forum, if only because so many are no longer contributing to the place, out of frustration.
I am as guilty (or moreso) as anyone of neglect, but have found a marked negativity from a certain member (who I cannot put on ignore due to settings), has made me less than enthusiastic about continuing to try, in fact he is the reason I turned in the suit in the first place. It may seem petty, but its simple reality, If the frustration outwieghs the satisfaction, its just not worth the effort.
Thus we come to the primary issue I see in this whole conversation:

Calling out a detriment to this Satisfaction level, without becoming the very thing you are calling out in the first place.

This is not an easy thing to do....obviously. But, if it can be figured out (and yes, I have a few Ideas), it would go a long way toward removing the frustration that drives many away.

Ok...I read the chat....havent read the responses yet because I wanted to say the one thing that came to mind immediately.

Halx, I say this with respect so please bear that in mind, and I say this as a person that has run forums for however long invision software has been around.

You left....Im not saying you didnt have life needs that made that necessary...but you created a place that was a haven for those of us that were tired of the C:A type boards. You made a place where a person could have an opinion and the "you suck, go away fat ass" type comments were simply not allowed. You made a place that actually made a person present a well thought out argument for "why I suck" and being a fat ass couldnt be a reason.

Then you did what I compare to "giving your child up to the foster care system"

While I wont pretend that you and I have ever gotten along and I have thought to myself many times "I need to remember what I was like when I was a kid read:someone in their 20's" I respected you "yeah there is that dreaded word" because it was YOUR board, YOUR rules because I knew from YOUR side what it takes to run a forum, and it was nice to be a guest for once. I also wont pretend that I was miffed the several times you asked for mod applications and I applied and was never even acknowledged....keep in mind I'm not saying I was miffed because I wasnt "chosen" I was miffed because no one took the time to even say "Hey Shannon, got your app but we've decided that because of <insert reason> you dont have anything to offer in the place of "authority". Its kinda like putting in a job application and never hearing back from the person.

Back to the foster care thing....Yeah you "left", but when you decided to come back you expected everyone one to hoot and holler and bow down....it doesnt work that way. You cant leave an infant to be raised by others and expect to come back to find things the same.

I made no secret about my opinions in the what happened to tfp thread....you've got mods that are not showing by example. You've got mods (not all mind you) that have the "do as I say not as I do" attitude. If I want that, I'll go to church thank you very much.

You say its to "high brow " here now.....maybe you're just not recognizing that those of us that call tfp home are doing it for very specific reasons....because its not another C:A type board.

I have long said there are two ways to disagree. One is childish and immature and one is the adult way. I can take disagreement just fine when its done the 2nd way. Here at tfp even if people disagree I KNOW WHY and I learn from other peoples thought out opinions.

Of course anyone that runs a forum has a "god" complex, and yes we like to hear the kudos and praise, because WE are the one that pay for it, not only monetarily, but in the 2 am "oh I have an idea that I cant wait to implement" way as well.

"We" are the ones that have to worry up if the upgrade will go right, or if the new skin we came across will be liked or if the new policy decision we've made will make or break the board....but at the same time we have to remember without the members "We" have no forum. "We" have to remember we cant just poo poo something because its not something "We" are interested in. Case in point the Pet Forum (I use this because I was reprimanded). MANY of us were asking for one and we were told....show us a need for it, start threads and see what happens. Well I did that and got told to stop and that I was being a smart ass about it, when in reality if that person had asked me what my intention was instead of treating me like a 2 year old, they would have seen that in all honesty I thought I was doing what we were asked to do and that just completely rubbed me the wrong way.

Like I stated in the other thread....I was all for supporting you and your new forum, I signed up the minute you posted about it and set about for a "light hearted" evening of fun only to watch it turn into a new version of TRG (which will mean nothing to you but its what I wanted my boards NOT to be and its an abomination that I want no part of).

There ARE people that dont find that crap amusing or fun in any capacity and as a donor to TFP, who had put you on my bill list every month starting in 2007 for a paltry 20 bucks a month, Im still trying to figure out how you can say that donor funds dont in anyway relate to C:A when if you do a whois it shows they are using the same name server and to be quite honest....I dont want to pay for C:A, that would be like someone who boycotts Wal Mart shopping at Sams Club.

I've rambled long enuff without the aid of coffee....I hope at least one thing I've said makes sense, if not...ask and I will try to clarify.

I think if you want the genuine kudos and praise and credit, you need act like you give a damn about what we have to say instead of trying to play "god"

Could you provide some links to the threads where this happened, please? I've taken a look at your post history and I couldn't find what you described. Are you referring to your two closed threads?

I disagree. I've never personally seen the point in drilling down specific mods to specific areas of a forum, unless those mods had specific relevant insight/knowledge that lent itself to the area. The main point of which being that if the one or two people "assigned" to this or that area become busy in their personal lives, that area goes ignored because the other mods are "assigned" to their separate little corners.

I don't think that is a good idea, and I don't think it has any place here. Other boards are other boards- they are not the TFP.

The mod staff controlling the whole of the board was the norm for a long time (if not since the beginning) and that's remained constant, despite the "changes" that have gone on. I think even one of shesus' school children can tell you that since things were fine at one point, and the mod arrangement (i.e. not having specific forums) hasn't changed, then the mod arrangement has nothing to do with the issues we're facing- there are some other catalysts at work here.

Also: I'm not really sure why the rules seem tough, I'd like to have a good dialog with someone about that. It seems like they're pretty straight-forward... be respectful, post quality, and participation advances you in the boards. I think those 3 things sum it all up nicely- do those things and I can't see where you could really stray.

Everything else is common sense... don't know where a potential thread should go? Take a moment and think. Is this a discussion? Put it in general discussion. Is this about your car? Tilted Motors. Are you female and you want to talk to other females about your female down-there-parts? Ladies Lounge. Talking about sex and relationships? Sexuality. Life? Tilted living. It's really not difficult if you consider that they're all labeled for what they contain. Discussions, sexuality, living, parenting, pets... whatever you want to start a discussion about, there is a forum you can put it in.

I also want to stress that you all can PM us to ask us questions. It seems like sometimes things are complained about that could have been resolved if someone had used the "report this post to a moderator" button or just PM'ed one of us for help. We want to help you out if you're having an issue. I know for myself, I am available constantly (especially at night time into morning) and I'm happy to help you out with anything I can. We can be a great resource if you're feeling confused about a rule or something... use that resource before you become disenchanted. :)

I joined the TFP in version2.0, and honestly the thing that brought me here was a link from fark to the porn. However, I found an engaging range of individuals, young and old, that could actually discuss issues, give advice, comfort console and congratulate each other as the situation merited. There were only 5? or 6? different forums. There were a few IT geeks , but most of us answered computer questions based on personal experience or trial and error. I learned a lot in those days about many things, including the value of human compassion from strangers.

I am not a regular contributor now for several reasons. First, there are too many boards. I regularly visit 7 or 8. That limits the sense of community of the TFP as a whole. I don't know a lot of the people here, because I have no interest in gaming, and never go there. Not even once. In real life, your friends have a variety of interests, and you accept them as such- multi-faceted - even if you don't share all of thier interests. As it is I have no idea if Bill-O-Rights has any interest in gaming, because I have never read those threads, and they don't crossover.

Second, I have no interest in trying to communicate with people who feel they have nothing to learn. Every forum is populated by the experts that express thier opinions so strongly, have so much to personally lose by giving an inch in any discussion, that it becomes a flame war in all but the profanity. Nobody grows or changes their view. Members with valuable experience are shouted down by these people, regardless of the topic, and it becomes intimidating to post. If you know you are going to be persecuted for saying "I like Brittney Spears. She makes my butt move." on the music forum, you probably won't say anything.

Third, many of the "old regulars" have either given up or gone to TFP chat. I am not chat saavy, and have no desire to become so. My time is limited and valuable, and if I can't get the gist of a thread, and reply quickly if I want to, I'm not interested. I am surprised when I see Halx and some of the other Mods contributing to threads other than to warn or close them. Chat has become the TFP of old for those who have the desire and skill to go there. I know there are several of the people that I respected on TFP 2.0 that now only show up in chat.

I know that things change and evolve. I wouldn't have it any other way. I don't think it need be Darwinian, or limited to those that can take a punch. Discussion on the internet is fine, arguing on the net is a waste of my time. When arguments further devolve into attacks on semantics and grammer and spelling, it is truly ridiculous. I still come here, I still contribute. Sometimes it is really interesting, sometimes I'm gone in five minutes. I wouldn't be posting this if I didn't think it could be improved more, especially with guidance. I would suggest that the powers that be get off the chat channel and into the threads as contributors more often. Become one of "us" again. Then you will truly know the state of the TFP.

Respectfully,

Ratman

Good point, Shakran. I tend to assume altruism in others, much to my regular disappointment. Maybe something like the Slashdot Karma score then, where as your kharma score rises you gain moderator points which you can use to 'mod up' or 'mod down' other people's comments, and the moderators get 'meta-moderated' by other people for fairness in their original decisions. It's a system that works reasonably well in a much larger group of people.

Good point and this is exactly my feeling. A certain few (not moderators) have been allowed (not through approval, but through indifference perhaps) to devolve the boards into a happy love-fest of domestication. This is an 18+ forum and we're at the point where people are actually concerned that an avatar with nudity is offensive. While not everyone feels this way, the fact that there are members who have to question the offensiveness of nudity on an adult-oriented board sums up exactly what has happened here. And then, if there is a disagreement, they are shouted down by those select few who have used admins and moderators to settle their disputes instead of directly addressing the ones with whom they take offense. I have watched threads where moderators have come in and expressed their views only to be shouted down by those few members who insist that moderators keep their opinions to themselves. It's become a henhouse where once one of the hens feels picked on, the others swoop in. This is how TFP was supposed to evolve? I hardly think so.

After the debacle in C:A which inevitably spilled over into here, my initial reaction was to leave this place altogether and let the hens have it. The Pet Forum was a good example. Yes, a lot of people wanted to talk about their pets, but this isn't what TFP was. Instead of adapting to TFP, they forced TFP to adapt to them by flooding General Discussion with pet topics and harrassing admins until the admins finally caved.

A lot of the members at C:A felt the same way, which is why the events that transpired came to pass. We were not going to allow the same thing to happen. But I think the feeling is starting to shift towards TFP. I think what's happening is we're deciding to take a stand and refusing to let them manipulate this board anymore. I think the members who have been here for awhile and remember what TFP used to be are going to start speaking up for a return to its roots and a reversal of the PTA sewing circle this place has become over the last year or so. Naturally not everyone feels this way, but I think the chat log from last night is the beginning of a healthy change and one that a lot of members who have been watching the devolution and are finally tired of it will embrace.

It had to start somewhere.

interesting thread....i have a couple of questions first

1. this term "highbrow" keeps coming up.
it is apparently a bad thing.
but i dont know what it means for anyone...there seems to be some kind of consensus about it, but the content of this consensus is a complete mystery to me.
could someone explain?

i derived a meaning from exploring c:a--but it was not a flattering. i would prefer to think i am wrong.....(but see what being coy does?)

2. i really dont get the status that politics seems to have in any discussion of the state of things here. there seems to be a history of some kind of problem that predates me (i havent looked at when i started playing here...it doesnt seem important): what is the deal?

there are two main thing that drew me here iand that keeps me hanging around: (1) i have found the journal space to be interesting and productive (this is an entirely personal matter) and (2) the potential for interesting types of conversation about often contentious issues in politics. i'll leave the first aside for now as it doesnt seem to be on the table. on the second: things can get heated in politics--and if things get heated, i usually figure "so what?"--but this seems a minority view, as it has (in the past, more than once) appeared that there a perception that heated discussions=some kind of Problem brewing--but the source of that Problem has always appeared (to me at least) to come from this mythical history of the forum rather than from what anyone is doing or saying in real time. a couple times i remember mod clampdowns of one type or another on the forum that seemed to me to be entirely about fear of Something That Happened Once Happening Again--not only did the motivation behind these periods seem to me obscure, but the clampdowns were not done well. politics has been referred to as a blight in the past, a space that brings some bizarre negativity to other spaces....so repeating repeating, i dont understand the status of politics in either the historical world of tfp, the imaginary world of tfp or frankly the realtime world of tfp.
i dont see it as a problematic space.
i do see it as one that has been damaged at times by its own history and the perceptions of it that seem attached to its history for (some of) the mods.
i see it as one in which you can actually have complex discussions.
for that reason, it seems like a space that should be valued rather than one that is framed as somehow Problematic.

on the convo: (1) i really do not understand the treatment of daoust.

(2) i'd like to applaud supple cow and hal both up there for navigating a potentially very awkward conversation. i think there is interesting material for thinking about this space there. also i understand more about where jj at least is coming from there (i didnt really get the c:a post) and in some ways agree with him.

but i would really like answers to the questions before i say more.

reading jj's post above, i have another question: there is obvious some kind of backstory to the charges of mod-manipulation to resolve disputes. what is that story? as it stands, i do not understand what is being discussed across this terminology. there are obvious concrete instances at play in the background. generally, this sort of thing is of no interest to me, but in this case it seems germaine.

thinking about the questions, what seems maybe problematic and what links them is a lack of transparency....but i havent formulated this as an objection in principle--i just want to know what is motivating at least some of the problems that folk are raising. because i have been here for quite a while now and i have no idea what is really going on (or what appears to be really going on)...

Well, we could open the TB again to bring in the traffic. As before some percentage of the plebs see the other areas too and become more permanent members.

We could also enable Karma for some time, just for the fun. Think about social experiment. Let's just not make any announcement of it and see what happens.

Yeah Daoust was just trying to get into the conversation and he was kicked for no apparent reason.

If they read the user guidelines they do, no?
And if it's by word of mouth that they come by, they would probably know as well.
When I first ventured over, I didn't know about the porn or EX, etc. I was told one thing: "As you contribute, more things will open up to you". If the guidelines said that alone, it 'might' keep those that came, interested. If you see, say, 20 forums and don't know that 10 more will open with your particpation, your first impressions are not going to change.
If you have those same 20 and someone knows that there's porn to be had if they stick around, will they stay after once they get the 'good stuff'? There's a lot of posters in those forums that rarely, if ever, post elsewhere.
But if you take things like post counts, contributions, etc., they're on par with the folks that put in thought-provoking, intelligent content. Maybe it's time to take the porn stuff(outside of EX, of course) and make it a seperate entity altogether....*shrug*

I'm with roachboy here. I find the charges of Mod manipulation and abitrary action a bit bewildering. Aside from heated Political threads or stillborn thread starts, I barely see their presence; especially since the last bout of TFP hand wringing this past summer. Am I simply reading the wrong threads?

I'd like to second Charlatan's suggestion of including Nonsense threads in "New Thread" searches. That's a valuable arena for blowing off some steam and doing so would facilitate its growth. I never received a clear answer as to why it was removed when I first asked for this back in Suggestion thread.

BTW what's the Mod Manipulation you're talking here? I honestly don't know what you mean.

roachboy,

unfortunately, transparency is not a valued commodity in some aspects of what is going on.

With regards to the mods and admins being manipulated, they'll have to speak for themselves on this one.

Concerning Daoust: he seemingly has a habit of action/retraction. That is, he overreacts, becomes screechingly hostile, then apologizes. If you noticed, he began injecting himself into the conversation at a bad time, and was told to shush by Halx. You saw his response. Left to his own devices, he would have derailed the conversation in an attempt to get someone to pay attention to him. I think Halx did the appropriate thing by kicking him. By the way, this also illustrates a parallel to what happened in C:A and how it became so volatile so quickly.

What is missing from the chat log (and not deliberately I need to add) was what happened after Halx clipped it and posted it. The conversation started going in the direction of blaming the mods and we tried redirecting it. Ngdawg started making jokes and Halx threatened to kick her if she didn't get back on topic. Halx then brought up that we were discussing the tension in TFP between members and ngdawg made a mention of us meaning the war of words between willravel and dksuddeth. I told her to quit being coy because she knew exactly what we were talking about and she told me to stop already. Others started calling her out on her behavior and she quit. You can't say you want a problem to end by ignoring it or walking out of a conversation.

What this is getting at is there is a need for some apparently to not be transparent, to play coy. If I am not as transparent as I'd like, it's because transparency only works if everyone is willing to be forthcoming. Some still are not and hide behind jokes and passive aggressive behavior rather than confront the issue. The issue will never resolve itself as long as we stick to euphamisms and opaque references to each other.

Granted, there is a backstory, but I don't think delving into it is what we're looking for now. I think what we're looking for now is a way forward. Some of us truly want to move forward, but some are content to keep spinning the wheels of confrontation due to hurt pride or ego.

jj: thanks.

my objection to what you write:

this backstory, whatever it is, figures in pretty significant ways within whatever this discussion is that we are having. the concern that has been spun out of that backstory is not even accessible to many of us--for whatever reason.... (it sounds from your post like the origin of some of it is a personal falling-out between you/shesus and ng--but even that i can't be sure of because you frame your post across the question of transparency in a way that repeats the problem i am trying to raise, except now the word transparency gets to be part of it--and if it is a purely personal matter between a small cluster of members, how did it, whatever it is, get raised to the level of a general problem with tfp?)

so it seems that either (a) it has to be made public so that all have equal access to it or (b) it has to drop out of both the conversations that lead up to any decisions and the decisions themselves.

in other words, this either is or is not a matter relevant for the community as a whole. as it stands, it floats about, raised in a half-assed way (this is difficult--i am not really referencing your post here, jj, more addressing the issue that you tried to clarify in general---sorry for such confusion as this may create)---it is never really explained, but is nontheless accepted/treated as though it characterizes something significant, that is as something that accurately characterizes a structural problem.

but a personal falling-out is NOT a structural problem.

the problem now is that, given the information presented, i (for one) cant even figure out what this problem actually is.

==================================
(the following more general, no longer directed at jj):

the same applies to this "highbrow" term that keeps getting thrown around as a critique of the tfp: either explain what is meant by it or stop referencing it.

and with the framing of politics as if it constituted some kind of problem for the board (rather than being seen as an asset, which may not be to everyone's taste, but who really cares? not every forum is to my taste and i cannot imagine a situation in which i would try to argue that forums which do not conform to my personal tastes are a Problem for the board as a whole).

Thank you for mentioning this, Lasereth. I wasn't going to, because in all honesty, I thought I was going to get booted out of TFP if I did. (In a nutshell, that's what I think is wrong with this place, but anyway...) I knew that Halx and Supple Cow were having a serious conversation, but while they were chatting (in an open public chat, mind you) I was just looking for some clarification on some of the points they were making... I wasn't rude, I was just looking to contribute to the conversation, and then Halx actually told me to "SHUSH" If someone has an excerpt of that point in the conversation, and can prove that the comments I made before Halx attempted to silence me were out of line or overly rude or disrespectful to anyone, I'll pack my bags and leave this place for good. They weren't. I wasn't rude.

The excerpt that Halx cut for this thread shows him and SC openly inviting Ng, and JumpinJesus, and UncePhil and Shesus to discuss the issue. They were invited, but I was told to shush? Explanation? The very thing SC was arguing with Halx about; that he is god and wants ultimate control over everything.

I'll go back to what I said earlier. I didn't do anything wrong. I politely tried to enter the conversation and got reprimanded by the boss for it. For no apparent reason other than something that reeks of me being on the wrong end of favoratism.

Look at my posts in TFP for the last couple of months if you want any proof that I'm not a shit disturber. In the past I have got my dander up at a few people, got reprimanded and I shut the hell up. I'm here at TFP, and have been for over 2 years, because I like this place. I like the people here. I'm not a major contributor, but I post when I feel like it, and haven't in my opinion been a detriment to this place.

My suggestion for improvement? I shouldn't have been afraid to make this post. That's what's wrong with TFP.

What do you mean " a bad time "? The times you jumped in were 'good times' ?

Explain that.

Personally, my belief is that if you really want to get to the heart of the matter ask the people who have only been here for 6 months maybe as much as a year.

Find out what drew them, what kept them here. Then build off that.

I think asking everyone is a good idea and that while they may have some good ideas, they are also not going to be so quick to mention changing what they like but may be driving newbies off.

But I feel the truest answer is that this is the nature of the internet, the people who've stayed found themselves comfortable and at home..... if we change too much to bring in new blood, we may find we lose more than we gain.

Well, Daoust (obviously forgetting that I am batshit crazy) tried to talk while I was talking. :rolleyes:

I signed in last night to chat because I was kind of bored, and Halx asked that I discuss C:A with him because I had expressed opposition to it in the other thread and directed it right at him. Honestly, I hardly saw any need to the conversation once I realized Hal's stand on his relationship to the board and we established that we simply disagree as to the method of running it. But then as it spilled into topics I was largely unprepared to discuss, other people I respect brought up something that I noticed independently of my interactions with them and I was compelled to stick around and support what they were saying. I think if you are one of those people who doesn't know why this bad blood exists, it's because you're not a regular of BOTH the Exhibition forum and the Journals - the drama started there and only grew.

I am so utterly tired of being polite to (or ignoring) people who I don't think deserve the attention. My own response already has been to leave the TFP to the hens, but it is disheartening and a little frustrating to abandon discussions I have an interest in because a couple of hens feel the need to come in and peck at all the people who don't want to pretend it's a henhouse.

As for my share of the kicking of Daoust from chat, that stemmed mostly from watching his interactions over at C:A - I simply don't have much respect for someone who just wants to be included for the sake of being included. This 'include-me-no-matter-what' garbage is same attitude that I have noticed among the suburban PTA clan that is trying to keep this place too 'clean', as JJ has mentioned. What I said about respect being earned instead of expected no matter what your actions - this is where it applies. I don't think I was wrong in telling Daoust to butt out. I also think Hal could have shown a little more tact about shushing (or kicking) him, but that probably has more to do with Hal's attention being focused on trying to comprehend my point (which I know was a rather difficult given our viewpoints) more than Hal going out of his way to be mean or excessively exclusive. Either way, that is Hal's issue and not mine. I didn't kick the guy; I just told him to butt out.

I do think it's unfortunate that Hal wanted to post the conversation as it was since any playfulness and other aspects of our tone borne out of the real-life relationships between many of the people in the chat that night are obviously doing more to feed the potshot fire than they are encouraging more useful input (thanks for illustrating, KnifeMissile). However, I recognized that it would be a big, slow job to take all of that and turn it into something that other people wouldn't misinterpret, so I agreed to Hal's idea of just posting the whole conversation.

On a separate note, I don't like the idea of putting the porn over at C:A. That would just link the two boards even more than they are currently linked and neither of them can benefit much from more of that.

roach,

i'll handle the "highbrow" comment, or at least part of it - as i think i was the person who originally threw it out in the C:A thread. what i meant by it, at least - and it may not be the most accurate use of the word - is in some ways tied up in notion of transparency. the way the tfp has been pragmatically evolving/devolving has led to a situation where any disagreement of a personal nature between members is frequently handled with slight innuendo, subtle digs. its more like my notion of a country club. i don't think there's anything wrong with that type of discussion, in and of itself (personally) - but the problem is that we've become somewhat limited to it as a mode of expressing personal confrontation. i think that some members of the tfp would like more breadth in the ability to directly handle such situations, using foul language and coarse phraseology. that's part of it. there is also the fact that people seem to have very thin skin around here a lot. i referenced an example of a comment made by king in the original C:A thread. i think the feeling is that we've limited our available modes of conversation, in the interest of promoting mature and intelligent discussion - to a form of surbanized anticeptic conversation that is only one form of mature conversation - and have cut a lot of others out entirely. i think that shanni has a valid point that we (or at least I, and I think many others) don't want this place to turn into a flamefest - but that fear can be taken too far, and i think many would say that it has.

halx, thanks for the chat log. the recent week's events are spurring me to do some thinking about this situation, in general. i have to admit that i rather like the idea of foisting the tb off to C:A, and then having some very obvious links between the two. another thought that occurs to me is a little more subtle, and of very little importance - but in line with the Tilted Nonsense discussion, not only would i include it in the 'new posts' link, i would rename it to something like Tilted Freeform or something. Nonsense sounds like a place to go read all the email forwards I delete every day, whereas a lot of the stuff I've seen over there is highly creative and really good for building community. I know it was the first place I felt comfortable when I started playing at tfp. I think Nonsense may not be the best semantic choice for the section.

I also think you're onto a valid point (I think it was in the other thread) that tfp needs more interesting content - from all of us. I hesitated to bring it up, because it feels too close to a self indictment - but if the tfp is just a place where we cut a link from cnn and this discuss it, that's probably not going to really drive the numbers up or raise interest. I think that gets boring really quickly - there's only so many positions that can be articulated there. I just haven't seen a clear stategic manner in which to make a coherent suggestion as to how to proceed yet.

Ok, damn. I just read all of that. I'm still listening and I've gotten some ideas from the people. Keep posting, I'm going to read everything.

I think one example of the problem is the ongoing Daoust argument in a thread meant specifically to build TFP.

Not saying that Daoust and all shouldn't be having it, I just think on a thread that should be constructive and focused that is very defocusing.... but just my opinion.

daoust, from my impression of the chat log The reason you were "shushed" was because you did not contribute to the discussion but rather demanded clarification for the topics being discussed. While it was in a public chatroom, neither halx or supplecow felt you were contributing and both first ignored you and then eventually told you to shut up (done fairly politely, i think). When you became irate because of it you were kicked.

While I have no idea what TRG means, I think that your goals of what the TFP should be are vastly different than what the forum goals were intended to be. When i first signed up the emphasis on the board was provoking thought and learning new things. While this was fun and entertaining at times at others it became heated or 'prickly' and some topics were difficult to discuss reasonably. When i first browsed the forums i wasn't just looking for a "lighthearted evening of fun". I have that at home, with my friends, or on other bulletin boards. What made TFP special to me was the ability to talk about touchy subjects with a modicum of reason and dignity. I think we've lost that ability, and that we've been losing it slowly for a long time.

I'll state the Daoust situation right now, but if it must be continued, lets do so in another form.

We had a conversation going and Daoust was resorting to his usual device of interjection for the sake of interjection. There was no need for him to ask for clarification because I was driving the conversation... which was just that - a conversation. Not a grilling. I told him to shush (mind you, not in capital letters) and he was quite indignant with his response. Rather than let it derail the conversation, I removed him from the situation so it could continue.

Understood. I appreciate this response. Halx you can delete my posts from this thread.

How have we come about this?

BTW if you want to get TFP more lively I suggest linking the hell out of it and opening up all the porn to everyone. Porn is what brought many members to TFP. Just because they came for porn doesn't mean they don't end up being contributing, polite members. Break TFP wide open for new people while keeping threads flame-free at the same time.

I think the main problem is that I'm not on here as much.


You people always forget that I'm the King.

I understand exactly what you're saying. I think the issue seems to involve shesus, myself, daoust, and ngdawg because we posted at C:A under our TFP names. This makes it easy to place us at the center of it because our names are recognizable.

I can't speak to why some members used different names at C:A. They may have been looking for anonymity there and for me to call them out would be unfair, which is why I refrain from using their names. It's not my place to reveal those identities. This could make the discussion a bit more difficult and lends to the perception that it's sour grapes on my part. Hell, maybe it is, and if it is, then I'll concede that and let it drop. But I think that what transpired over there is going to be the catalyst for change here and I don't think that would have happened if everyone involved had been using aliases. Oddly enough, in that regard, I have to admire ngdawg and daoust, despite what my words may suggest.

As SuppleCow stated, this problem has been brewing for a long time. To me, a large part of what makes TFP stand out from any other forum out there are the Creativity forums, including exhibition. You can have politics discussions, general discussions, gaming, computer, music, movie, automobile, etc. discussions on any generic forum on the internet. TFP stands out for me because of its Creativity forums. But the Creativity forums are dying a slow death and I believe the reasons for it have to do, in part, to what SuppleCow was mentioning.

I believe that if Creativity dies, then the essence of what TFP was and is dies. I don't want that to happen. If TFP is going to return to what it was, we need direction from its leader and we need to resolve these problems.

Okay, so I've been here less than a year. When I first joined I felt completely invisible. If I posted on a thread, people would talk around my post and to one another but never respond to what I said. Being ever tenacious, I stuck it out.
It has only been in the last 2 months or so, and after starting what I consider some pretty lively thread discussions, that I've seen a thaw in the initial chill. I am not part of the "gang" here, but I like this place, its interesting. I don't know what the "old days" were like, but it really reminds me of middle age people going on about how great the 60's were. Can we live in the now?

For what its worth, that is my 2 cents.

I think it was a shift in the values of this board away from a freedom of expression and towards increased safety.


To me, the clearest moment of that change was when I created a thread about the attractiveness of obesity. I had recognized it was a touchy subject for some people so I toned down my first post to what i thought would avoid offending some people who were sensitive about the topic. From that altered position i found i had to frantically backpedal due to accusations of being shallow, narcissistic, cruel, and just uncaring in general.

From that point, i felt that my freedom to express an opinion was stifled and I lost the expectation that i would receive a logical rebuttal to my arguments. I believe Supplecow was very correct that members here no longer wish to "rock the boat" in order to avoid being ostracized by the group.

Yeah. Exactly. Like how some people freak out when others post comments about their exhibition pics. We've all become a bit wound up on these boards.

This is very true. There is definitely some cliquism going on these boards here. It turns off newbs.

Thanks skier

Yup, that's a big part of it. Politics is a joke at the moment; generally just two extremes yelling at each other and not listening.

I agree with others that new members are either A) ignored, or B) told in no uncertain terms that they aren't contributing enough/breaking the rules/being too simplistic/all of the above.

Personally, I concur that forum specific moderation is a good way to go, with moderators that are concerned about their specific forms and who will work to drive traffic up rather than down. Some of the current mods would do well in such a role; others will fail because they are, sorry to say, part of the problem.

If you want the board to be a place for provocative, reasoned, and well behaved discussion, then those are the kinds of people who should moderate.

Bigger, friendlier welcomes for new people are de rigeur - more emphasis on really welcoming new players and getting them involved.

We've become bored housewives. And some of us already were.



TFP has been changing along with the rest of the internet. Fast cheap internet has given way to people like my grandmother having an email address. She still listens to tapes.


Sorry y'all but this place will never be like it was. Once everyone knows about something it stops being cool.

The main reason, in my opinion, that TFP has "degenerated" or whatever you'd call it, is because of the moderation. I see countless times, over and over, someone's post being "moderated for great justice" - while other people with 1000+ posts get to say what they want, when they want, and no one mentions that their post is just as offensive as another's. It's hard to point out specific examples, but the recent thread about wedding and engagement rings comes to mind. Man, people slaughtered that fella that made that thread - saying that he should stop concentrating on the "little stuff" and questioning why he "creates threads about hating stuff" and all that. The thread got a little out of control, and some people were called out for being rude - but it didn't work both ways. A lot of people stated their opinion, and got flamed, and others stated their opinion while shitting on other's opinions at the same time, and were set free without punishment.

The TFP just isn't as balanced as it used to be. People didn't flame others for their opinion, no matter how annoying/psycho/strange/politically incorrect it was - the only time you got flamed was when you were RUDE to other people. The mods were swift with justice to the rude folk - but no matter what your opinion or thoughts or "pessemistic state of mind" were, you had a freedom of speech for your thoughts, as long as they weren't rude or offensive.

Now, it's very subjective to who can voice extreme opinions or not without repercussion. I think that's what's made TFP go down in the past years.

You used to be able to admit you enjoyed your wife taking a shit in your mouth without being flamed for it. Now, if you have an opinion that isn't in line with the "big posters," you get flamed for it, and flamed worse if you react to the initial flaming.

That's funny... I enjoy my wife shitting in my mouth too... :D

Hehe. Halx. The TFP has a rep ;) People know what's here. Plus as NG pointed out you kinda mention it in the guidelines.

I don't think you can pull the mention of it either and only reveal the porn once the user gets "promoted" - - then you'll get people coming here for a pure discussion board, and being shocked/pissed when the porn is revealed. I think you have two choices here - -either open the porn up to the newbies again, or kick it over to the new forum.

I'd vote for kicking it. One reason is because of the workload on you and the other mods. You'll have to go back to the old system of badgering all the porn leechers to post again. The other is because I think that, especially now that you have a core userbase of people who like what you've built here and want to see that continue, you can attract more people if the stigma of porn isn't here. As diverse as the forum is, we're much narrower than we could be without the porn - that porn is gonna keep away anyone who doesn't like it, or who believes their religion forbids them to be near it.

While the initial reaction to that from some will no doubt be "fuck 'em, we don't need that close mindedness around here anyway" we have to realize that that's a very good way to form an exclusive and obscure club. One of the underlying themes of this board that, despite indications to the contrary from others in this thread, still exists is it's overall philosophy of acceptance. Gay? So what, doesn't bother us. Transsexual? That's OK too. Hell we even let Republicans on here ;) But if we keep the "acceptance club" open to only those who already accept everything, it's very hard to show the closed minded ones the right path. Appeal to a broader base and not only will you increase your user count, but I think you'll have the opportunity to do some real educating.

Just my thoughts.

A little while back, I can't remember how long, the same poster, JinnKai, had started a thread about depression. And he was attacked on all fronts by many core members. He was attacked, instead of the ideas he presented being attacked. Eventually, some good discussion came out of the thread. However, I think that marked the point where TFP had lost its magic for me. Largely from that thread, I've formed (probably inaccurate) opinions that make me discount the posts made by certain other members.

Another good example. I even disagreed with his points, but the guy was attacked personally - when I joined in 2003 (I think it was), that never happened......

I remember that thread. I'm sure we all felt justified, but what you're saying is, we should have discussed the topic, and not brought it down on JinnKai. This is an interesting viewpoint and something I think I can admire. Judging JinnKai based on this thread is something any other forum would have done, but we could have talked about whether his points, not him in general, were worthwhile.

Thank you for bringing this up.

I agree completely. When I joined a little over two years ago, my first posts and threads were met with enthusiasm, warm welcomes, and genuine interest. When my husband joined about a year later, after seeing me spend most of my internet time here and thinking there must be something special about this TFP place, he asked me what was so great about the community because most of his posts received little response. He quickly abandoned posting and to my knowledge, does not come here anymore.

I am just as guilty as anyone about not welcoming new members; I rarely visit Newbies and don't remember the last time I posted in the Welcome to the Board area. New blood is essential for continued growth, and if new members aren't feeling welcome, why should they stick around?

Halx,

Would it be possible to give the thread starter certain mod privelidges over their own threads, after they were a full member? I'm thinking in terms of setting the tone for the type of language allowed in the thread and so forth. It seems that some of what is being talked about in this thread is that people have different preferred modes of conversation. If the forum is to be truly diverse, perhaps we could have a way to allow certain types in certain threads, while disallowing it in others. For instance, I have a feeling that jj would have a far different preference than would shanni.

in regards to the thread(s) with jinn, i haven't reviewed the threads in a while to get the exact details, but in particular the thread about depression - what i recall is a lot of people telling jinn that he had no fucking idea what he was talking about, and that he might want to do some reading on depression. as i recall, jinn's basic premise was the people who didn't overcome their depression and who allowed it to substantially interfere with their daily lives were losers, and apparently some members felt that was an incredibly stupid thing to say. i agree - that was an incredibly stupid thing to say. i'm not sure i'm really against allowing members to express that viewpoint. jinn has also received his share of love on the boards as well. how do you tell someone they have no idea what they're talking about, without it coming off as being personal - particulary if they make the op of a personal/opinion-based tone?

Re: Newbies thing: I personally don't get it. I don't think I went there once when I joined. I read the rules, and I started posting in Nonsense. I guess I don't understand why people want to "introduce" themselves on an internet forum, and why people would want to go "welcome" them? Is this farily common on forums? It seems to me that all of that will be handled naturally enough in the threads....

/perhaps a minor point, but i never thought any of that was really that big of a deal - yet a lot of people are mentioning the Newbies section it seems.

I think you have too many forums.

TFP is becoming too...compartmented. I am sure it is not the only issue, but I think you are giving people too many choices, and too many opportunities to miss out on a good discussion.

Personally, I notice that I tend to spend a lot of time in my favorite forums and neglect others. I tend to do this even when nothing is happening in my main forums.

The only reason I found this thread was because I noticed it on the main page. I almost never go into general discussions anymore (though I should) because I just click on members playground.

Your forums are so specialized that many of them move very, very slowly.

It is hard to just drift into a discussion about something. In order for me to end up in a debate about politics I have to go to the politics forum...which will probably only happen if I am looking more for an argument than for a spontaneous debate.

I think Shakran is onto something about the porn, though I remember some nonsense a while back with some adult sites that prompted the change.


Rather than two seperate forums, you could perhaps let members choose what content they want to be exposed to when they sign up...Maybe a question in their personal settings: "Do you want access to adult content on this forum?" Something you have to opt into rather than get automatically after a particular post count.

That way the site would by default be SFW while pornhounds would be able to get what they came for also.



Of course, part of the problem is that the topics never change. Sexuality is always going to have some 19 year old guy wondering if he should ask some girl out or how to give oral sex. I think the older members of this board become less likely to take the time they used to to answer such questions.

I used to live on the TFP, but nowadays I am just not as captivated as I once was. Of course, I am now out of college and have drastically altered my lifestyle, but I think I have (mostly) exhausted the few sub-forums I frequent (sexuality, tilted weaponry, etc.).

I would condense the entire tilted creativity into 2 forums: Exhibition and Art. Condense the academy back to Sexuality and Living (for everything else). Condense Tilted Chatter back to two or three forums. I like the idea of a nonsense forum for all the 'what do you think of the previous poster' threads but drop everything else except members and general discussion. Recombine all of Tilted Interests. Definately ditch any forum that has a thread count under a thousand (or isn't new). To mix things up maybe periodically add a forum for a few months, but then before it gets stagnant replace it with something else. Sort of a topic of the week deal.


I know this is an extreme suggestion and I don't expect you to take my extreme stance, but I sincerely think overspecialization is killing this forum since people will get stuck in their one little subgroup and won't contribute to the broader Tilted Forum Project (and I am as guilty as anybody).

Edited to add: I also found this forum off of a FARK link years ago (2000 or 2001). FARK was, I believe, a major membership source for this site but TFP is no longer on FARK.

pigglet, Halx,

I don't propose that that thread should have been better moderated. It is critical that you should be able to call a spade a spade, etc. That said, I think that there is a strong presence of 'Old Guard' that I've never felt comfortable 'calling out'.

I brought it up because at the time I noticed 3 SuperModerators coming down on the poster, not the idea. The entire response was off, and I recall it was a turning point for my opinion of the TFP. I also think it is a highpoint in internet discussion; someone actually changed their opinion- Jinnkai uses (used?) a suitably modified statement of his original thesis in his signature.

There is a quote, paraphrased and non-attributed, that great minds discuss ideas, normal minds discuss events, but small minds talk about people. I probably talk the most about people and events, and only occasionally about ideas. At one point, I think that TFP was a great medium and one of the only places online that you could talk about ideas like an adult. I came to TFP through a Fark porn link, and I quite literally stayed because of mature internet discussion. I'm young enough to have always had a computer, but I'm old enough to hate l33t5p34k. I'm proud that we haven't degenerated to allowing in large scale. I also want to make the distinction between "mature" and "elevated" discussion. I don't claim to be a great thinker or that most my posts are elevated, but I very much appreciate the lack of "STFU Noob"

Also, I think the presence of the nonsense board, the erogenous zone, and creativity are a critical balance to the potentially too 'elevated' discussion.

I've been a regular on several message boards for 5-6 years. I have been on the staff of several of them, and have been Admin on three boards. I'm current an Admin on one of the largest/busiest commercial sites online (top 100 on BigBoards), and I own my own board that I consider extremely successful. I state the above because I doubt I'm very well known here, but wanted to explain that I feel my opinion comes with a background of experience and success with message boards in general.




That being said, I've noticed a gradual downhill trend in posting habits (not just volume, but quality of posts and members) for the last two years or so. I don't think it is just a TFP problem. Just like the networks are losing market share and ratings, message boards are doing the same. Part of it has to do with choices. There are so many boards out there, and so many options, that boards that have been around a long time are seeing less posts and quality threads than was common in years past.

As far as TFP specifically, I think there are a few things that could be tweaked. In general it is a great board. The politeness and respect shown by the members exceed that shown on the vast majority of boards out there.

The fact that threads get locked for previous threads being on the same subject could/should be adjusted IMO. When I first started posting more often here, I had a thread or two locked because there was supposedly conversation on the same subjects previously. The previous conversations were many, many months buried in the forums. I scanned the first couple of pages before posting, but they were located even deeper than that. To me, if conversation has not been continued or active for long enough that it is beyond the first couple of pages, maybe it isn't so bad to get a new one started.

Also, I am a proponent of fewer, but more active, sub-forums. I think the forums here are well organized, but some of them are extremely slow. Maybe some of them were made without the volume of posts to support them? Or maybe the interest was once there, but isn't now?

Neither of those are huge problems really, just minor issues. I think the main "problem" isn't TFP-driven, but internet driven. Message boards everywhere are seeing similiar issues. The best resolution is high activity by staff, a continuation of most of the policies already in place, and a willingness to listen to and pay attention to the members' thoughts and opinions. :)

Though I've probably never been a "regular" here, I've always admired the spirit and attitude of this place. :cool:

Greg, it's funny, I don't notice the size of the board because I browse by way of "new posts". It brings up all of the latest threads from all areas of the board that are linked to it (which is all but Nonsense and the Erogenous Zone).

But it's an interesting point.

Well, we have scaled back the number of forums due to this before. I think that the number of forums has been pretty constant from what we refer to as "before", until now, so I'm not sure if that's something that put us where we are. I think a larger part of it is how we all interact with each other on those forums. It's a good observation, though, and worth looking into even if it's not the reason why we're "here".

I think the main issue we're having is that the porn is there at all, not whether or not some people can access it. Being able to choose to not see it won't change the opinion formed by a person on the whole of the place... the "oh, there's porn here" likely won't go away if we put an option to eliminate that area from your view. For example: you want to introduce a friend or coworker to the TFP... the issue is not that they can see the porn, it's that it's here at all. I think they don't want to link a friend to something that's a discussion board, only to find out later that it also contains porn. Good observation, though.

That's an interesting idea, to make the TFP more "NSFW"-friendly for those who surf at work. You can already do that, though, by "collapsing" the erogenous zone forum in the main forum page... you click the arrow on the right and it only shows "Erogenous Zone", not the names of the forums or the threads within. So that's probably a good enough start for most people. :)


We've actually started work on something to address the fairly recurring themes in the Sexuality forum... not necessarily to cut down on the "same old, same old", but so that other threads can really stand out by not being buried in things we see frequently. In this way, people will know that their questions/issues/etc will be heard loud and clear, and not lost in the shuffle.

I also liked some suggestions on further condensing certain forum groups, though I'm not sure all of them need to be combined. I think a lot of the major ones have lives of their own, and enough posting that it would overcrowd other forums if they were merged. All the interests forums are just so that people have places to go to talk as much as they want about specific things... easier to go to a forum when you want to talk about cars, than have to sift through who knows how many threads in a more generalized forum.

I see a great amount of thinking and ideas in here, and that's great. Keep it up, all. :)

I think that's a great observation, and part of where it seems that it got personal in that thread. If someone says, "that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard", that's not a truly personal comment, and yet it's not totally impersonal, either. If a person feels strongly enough in an opinion, they will feel personally attacked even if you go to extreme length to specify that you're only critiquing the opinion. I think that this is part of this issue- when you bare your heart and soul into a topic, we need to understand that someone disagreeing with our personal viewpoints doesn't mean they're going after you, personally. Once a few people had said how they felt about his opinion, it quickly escalated into him feeling personally attacked because he felt strongly about that opinion.

Part of our growth should be recognizing in ourselves when we're particularly invested in a subject, and making sure we separate out "truly personal" from what we feel is personal just because we're intimately attached to the opinion. Great point, pigglet.

Like a lot of folk, I came here because a buddy said it was a good place to find porn. These days I rarely frequent it. High-speed internet and p2p content has really reduced the impact of the TB, I guess.

I don't see TFP as a porn site. I come here for the discussion - and this thread is a pristine example of why. I don't know of anywhere else where this topic would be discussed with such maturity and insight. However, I'm hesitant to introduce my friends because of the prevailance of the porno. Even if I give them the link to a great topic they have to sign up to read it.

I'm thinking that the TB to draws the masses and we hope some of them stick, while at the same time it acts as a deterrance to many personal invites.

A quick solution? Keep it, link it to the same database as the TFP but have it under a different DNS ;)

The board now feels stagnant, and I feel that I know why

THE PORN IS NOT THERE FOR THE NEWBS

in any net community, people come and go, and some will be complete wankers, some will be worthwhile people- Free porn sucks in the masses- Once this place was filled with funny threads in nonesense, humor, etc, - there were more posts, period, in general- what it comes to is that to find the diamonds, you must deal with the coal, and porn will bring em in like nothing else- YES there will be trouble with idiots, but you will also get great things and better people along with it- I and a lot of others were recommended to this forum for the porn, and without it would not have found the place that I now love- so open the porn floodgates, and prepare to sort through the idiots with a lot of EVENHANDED and dedicated modding, and watch the place flourish again......... (an important footnote is that this cannot work without dedicated mods who are fair- I have no complaints at this time personally, but its gonna be a big task, and stressfull, as I am sure you all know.....)

Wow - this really exploded into something substantial.

1) My observation/guilty admission: I think we're way more alike than we want to admit. I think the board has a culture of tolerance and diversity, but over the years, there is a definite critical mass that drives what is "kinky", what types of posts are appreciated, and the like. Honestly I think it's less about the big posters as individuals than it is about the collective agreement you see here.

I first noticed this among the moderators... I don't know if this is giving away secrets about the back room, but many of the discussions in the staff-only forums are marked by tremendous amounts of agreement. Every once in a while there are outliers and of course there's always one or two people who rub each other the wrong way, but I rarely see people really hashing things out in a deep way anymore. This same thing is mostly true in the rest of the site. In fact, I really think it is the exceptions that prove the rule. Remember the cousins thread in sexuality? Perfect example of the inertia that had to be overcome before the thread took off, and how long did that take?

2) I totally agree that there are just too many forums here. Conversations are fragmented and people don't respond to things that are in scary areas. Like Charlatan, I browse through the new post button, but not everyone does. Ever notice how politically minded threads live much better lives (with more posters) when they're put in GD?

3) C:A - I guess I just don't get what the hullabaloo is on this. I'm confused as to why it is TFP people not at TFP. And why do people think that things that happen over there don't affect relationships here (or at least why was there surprise about this). I can't see how it could really hurt anything, but it is kind of a strange relationship between the two spaces. I say keep the porn here. It's part of the human experience. If there's really an issue with NSFW stuff, can we create a cookied option in the user cp that allows NSFW content to be hidden (sort of like you can do with avatars)?

4) Evolution is a great catchword, but do we really agree on anything about what it means? We throw it around so much, but it only seems to vaguely indicate tolerance (which we're mediocre at past a certain point) and diversity (which we actually don't have a lot of).

Holy crap, it took me forever to read through all this... I have so many things I want to respond to, but I already forget 3/4 of them and I'm not rereading this thread tonight, haha.

Anyway, my background is that I joined back in May '04... directed here by a link on Fark (yes, for the porn). I don't think that I even bothered looking at the porn the first day because I was distracted by everything else that was here. When I started reading through some of the forums, I was blown away at how members were treating each other... always with the utmost respect, and it seemed like no topic was too edgy or taboo. I loved how open everyone was and how tolerant people were of other peoples' openness. There was a great balance and synergy happening.

skier and redjake described exactly why I took a hiatus from TFP. I felt the change as well, although admittedly not as distinctly as skier. It seemed as if my posts/opinions weren't being considered or respected as much simply because I wasn't a more vocal member, so I resorted back to lurking, and eventually just quit visiting the site for a while. I just started lurking/posting again last month, and I will definitely stick around again if things change. I don't expect it to ever be like it was, but at the very least, this flaming/intimidation needs to stop... it's bad enough that it scares away new members, but even worse that it discourages older members into leaving.

This seems like a very interesting concept, but perhaps to idealistic. It would be great in theory because the thread starter obviously cares about the topic and wants to see their thread blossom, so they would be more likely to pay attention to it and put in the time to moderate it... lifting a lot of time demands from the actual moderators. However, it's certain some people would go overboard with this kind of power and not allow for a full spectrum of comments and viewpoints, which obviously hinders the evolution of the thread and therefore the forum.

I think the best way to get involved on an internet forum is to pick a few topics that interest you and just jump in. However, it can be very intimidating for some people to do that because they don't know how their posts will be taken. A person who just joined a well-established forum is much like a freshman on his first day of college... they typically don't know anyone and they feel just like "a number". Some people are outgoing enough that this doesn't bother them, but not all people are like that.

Halx -- as for my suggestions, I think the TFP is still a great place for intelligent discussion, but it's not for everyone. I think the worst thing you could do is try and appeal to the masses to get more members (whether that means booting the TB or opening it to newbies)... message boards by their very nature are niche products, so you need to make the product consistent with its goals. "The Evolution of Humanity, Sexuality, and Philosophy" is a great slogan and concept, but what exactly IS your goal for this place? I think that a lot of the problems we're facing right now are important, but in order to truly cure them, you need to start from the inside and work out. What we need is a mission statement... one that is slapped right on the main page like your search for a new host is, so that people are reminded of what this place is about... its ideals, principles, and values.

Whether you want to come up with this on your own is up to you, but I think it would be more impactful if you had input from others in the community... perhaps create a wiki for it somehow?

I'll let everyone else argue about the forum restructuring... to me that doesn't seem as important as restoring the balance and synergy we once had.

The thing about recruiting new members is that you kind of have to plan on the vast majority not panning out as contributers.

I'm going to have the moderators focus on the points that are being posted and enforcing the open expression. That to me is what the latest posts have been expressing what needs to happen.

:love: :love: ...there are no secrets. All the happily-entwined I know share the same secret!:love:

HOLY FUCKING SHIT, what is UP MY NIZZLE! :D

in any case, I agree with the above...well, all of it really, but this part is particularly poignant.

in addition to Nizzle's points, keep in mind that this site doesn't really revolve around anything...it doesn't appear to have a 'center' to me. perhaps over time politics became a center to me, but that's neither here nor there. I totally disagree that this is the only place where deep/stimulating conversations happen...what a load of bullshit and smugness. I'm a regular member of a shitload of boards...why? because they offer me something I enjoy...whether it be a forum on the types of audio gear I want, how to build my htpc, or rebuild my car. unless you somehow create a sense of distinct community, you'll probably continue to feel this drift...because there is no center you're having trouble pinpointing where the drift is occurring from.

and by community, I don't think amorphous community does it. it does for a small class of people, perhaps the ones nizzle is referring to. you see a center...a point to the forums...that most members do not. that's not to say they don't see value or any point to it, just that there does not seem to be an overarching theme or core value that ALL of your members subscribe to.

he can't because he's been here longer than the current post history shows.

and more importantly, he shouldn't have to. he already expressed his feelings on it, it's not something that needs to be proven.

Smooth - am I right in interpreting this to mean that you think we need a mission statement (or at least a mission)? I think you really might be on to something with that. That's the crux of my queasiness about our constant harping on "evolution".

Sorry, but I think that's ridiculous. Yeah, nizzle doesn't have to prove his feelings, but that's purely subjective. I hear that particular criticism about both sides (and in between) so much that it is hard to make heads or tales out of this anymore. At the very least, being able to cite threads and posts would help others see what happened. This isn't the thread for that conversation, but we wouldn't be taking nizzle's concerns seriously if we didn't try to go and read through/reconstruct the incidents in question.

Apparently I may be a minority of 1 because I don't see any huge problems with this board that don't already exist in spades in the real world. The Politics forum has been dieing a slow death ever since I started regularly reading it, and I expect that it's been dieing that death ever since it started. It's more a commentary of human nature that those who yell the loudest get the most attention than a failing of the mods or that forum in general. At some point new folks will come along that will be willing to take the bait that both dksuddeth and willravel offer up on a daily basis and run with it. In my opinion, all that's needed to inject more "life" (for lack of a better term) in to Politics is a few rookies willing to stand by their points of view - or a few of "those that have gone before", like Ustwo, to come back to at least inject a sense of humor into some of the topics. I told someone the other day that the Politics board has transformed from a circus into gladiator games, and I can only take so much of that. All that said, I think that presently we're in one of those 4-6 week periods where everyone backs off for a bit and then jumps back in. There was a lot of energy expended before and in the few weeks after the mid-terms, and I expect we'll see it start to ramp up again as soon as frontrunners start to emerge nationally.

Personally, I see the C:A board as a neutral, but I think that it should be a completely separate neutral. I really don't want to be a part of it, and I think that it's a waste of my time, but if you all want to have a never-ending beauty contest, have at it. I would just ask that we keep the posts about it here to an absolute minimum. Hal, perhaps a closed sticky thread somewhere to let folks know it's there? Otherwise, I'll just keep not reading threads that mention it, which I know is my responsibility anyway.

Otherwise, TFP isn't broken, with the possible exception of photos being stolen out of Exhibition and posted elsewhere. Exactly what are we trying to fix?

i was thinking about this last night and i think the forum seemed more alive a few years back because it was fresh and new. I was there in the last version and i joined back in this one but the 2 or 3 previous versions didn't last 4years! they were only there 1-2years right? maybe thats why? too many older ppl get bored with the repetitive posts so they leave?
and the C:A does not interest me so plz keep the TFP seperate from it. keep the porn here. that's what brought me here(from fark)... i think removing it would kill what brought everyone here.

A) The moods.
B) The member numbers
C) The restoration of its 'edge'
Not in any particular order, but they're all inter-related.

As far as a mission statement, that's really for singular subject-based forums more. But what TFP could have and, I think, already does is 'thought provoking adult discussion with civillty'-more or less in those words.
How many of us have rolled our eyes at the newbie 'is my gf pregnant' thread starters or, upon seeing another Bush-bash, just leave thinking, "Cripes, here they go again".
Something that might help: Instead of archiving non-thoughtful threads that haven't been touched for, say, 12 months, just do a sweep-kill. Allow 'starting fresh' with subjects; the only thing noteworthy of really old threads is seeing who's been banned. ;) Make things like "is my gf pregnant'(or other oft-repeated threadstarts) a sticky of sorts so that newbies coming in here just for that can see advice and opinions and gather some information before posting their own story. Let's face it, the search function just isn't utilized because everyone thinks what they have to say has never been said before and they're not concerned with bandwidth usage.
So, when we who've seen the same thing 100 times say we have, we're treating the newcomer somewhat shabbily, even if it is unintentional.
Someone mentioned the Welcome Forum and is it something common-every forum I have bookmarked or checked out has one(personally, I don't ever go into a place and 'introduce' myself. I lurk, find things of interest to me and post), but agreed, we should be more welcoming as a community, not leave that job to mods or just ignore the posts.
Getting traffic: Who here does not go to any other forum? If a forum you visit allows siteplugs in your sig, use it. Not many do, but it's a way to get visitors if allowed.
Finally-an email server attachment, ie: ng(at)tfp.org Nothing says 'come on over' like an email addy:) It's getting pretty common with other forums.

That's the one thing I really found ridiculous about all this other forum talk and making the TFP better/different talk. There is no excuse for treating other people like that (telling them to shush in the channel? wtf). If you wanted a public conversation, use a private message. If you want a public discussion, let people contribute what they may. If he had broken a rule, you should have reminded him of the rule or punished him, whatever the guidelines say you should do.

I'm stopping just shy of saying that we need one only because the existence of a mission would funnel our behavior in particular ways--and that may be antithetical to Halx' vision. But you're right in interpreting what I wrote as claiming that the lack of a mission is at least partially responsible for this drift we are noticing. My suspicion is that you and I are on the same page.

Certainly. I'll clarify.
I wouldn't, as a general rule, make the claim that no one has an obligation to point out evidence to substantiate their claims, even in regards to things like feelings...I bet if you reflect on what you've come to "know" about me over the years, ubertuber, you'd agree with that statement.

But in this particular situation we have the dual pronged issue that a) due to past crashes of tfp, much of our collective history has been lost. now, when someone claims they feel a certain way over past behavior, and another person runs a search and only comes up with two instances of the member posting, it falls on the curious to either believe or disbelieve that the hurt member is actually telling the truth and that the reason no evidence is floating around is due to a malfunction of the board.

and b) while I would agree that it's important for people in a relationship to understand how things came to be how they are, for addressing a fixable problem or even for closure, in this particular case, nizzle has already decided not to be in a relationship with the board or its members. he essentially said, hey look, I feel like I was treated in a way that resulted in me not wanting much to do with the board. asking for a response that really only serves for the benefit of a community that he doesn't want any part of anymore isn't likely to elicit anything more from him.

I wasn't stating as a general rule that people shouldn't let others know where they went wrong, but rather if they decide not to do so that shouldn't result in writing off the concern.

I'm sure you're old enough to have experienced, or know someone who has, another person say there just anything more for us. and the response might be, but what did I do wrong? I can change...I'm willing to change...
the response might be, but these are problems I've been feeling for years. even if you changed, there's just too much for me to move past it.
and a legitimate response would be, why did you not bring this to me when it happened instead of letting it pile up to the point of no return?
but at that point, what obligation is the person leaving under to prove the legitimacy of why he or she left? none, is my opinion.
if that person chooses to stay in the relationship (community), then I would respond that hey, we need to address these issues so point out their occurences.

other than that, the person who left is liable to just think to him or herself, oh now you're going to addresss what I felt? or why point out what happened, so you can solidify in your mind that you were justified in how you acted toward me and feel better for my absence?

at this point, nizzle's beef is what it is.
if anyone wants to take it seriously, they'll have to watch themselves and make sure they don't run roughshod over someone else's opinion and make them feel unwelcome. there isn't much chance nizzle is going to come back and help with that process because if he cared he would still be here.

that's really all I was driving at, just because you don't see it and he doesn't point it out, doesn't mean things didn't happen to make him feel the way he does.



all that said, we should also keep in mind whether the so-called evolution of members can contribute to declinging membership. it's quite possible that the internet allows people to think and behave in ways they won't or can't in real life interactions. so much like people "evolved" out of titty board into general discussion or "evolved" from politics into the general community, perhaps a natural thing for the membership to do is to evolve out of the board into real life. and in that respect it can be understood as a net positive (in terms of the notion of growth for individuals as opposed to growth of the community). but if that thesis is correct, what one might expect to find is that the remainder are people less adept at handling social interactions in real life. and you might expect a certain brashness to their online interactions with other people, as well.

my sentiments on that interaction exactly

OK, I still don't get what's broken, despite NG's post. I can understand if this is a simple conversation about increasing the ranks, but I think it's fair to say that we're all well past that, and I think that one issue has been a minor part of the discussion anyway.

As far as the mood goes, what mood? There's some collective mood around here? The other day when Shani was ready to kill anyone who crossed her path, I was fine. There's no mention of impending doom that I've noticed. The only time I've ever been "moderated" was when I told a noob to basically look something up themselves, and I deserved it. Maybe I'm not reading the threads where all the personal attacks are going on, but even over in Politics things generally stay fairly civil (most of the time). Even over there, a gentle reminder to "relax" usually calms things down fairly quickly. So again, where's the problem? It seems more like real life to me than any pervasive problem with moderation or lack there of.

As far as any "edge" goes, I think a definition is in order or at least a description of the types of threads that someone feels are lacking.

Edit: for the record, my singling out of Shani was only the first example that came to mind. Normally she's quite nicer than I am.

(just for the record my mood had nothing at all to do with TFP lol....it was those other dreaded initials....PMS)

Yeah, and you know, we can all do this - doesn't matter if it is Halx or moderators or members of the community.

I'm going to make a point of popping in there once in a while just to say "Hey".

My observations, including a little bit of searching:

The basic premise was highly successful. What does the screen say, the record in 2004 was 1200 people on at once? It was apparently due to the porn connection, so the decision was made to eliminate the site's no. 1 draw. Now we wonder why there aren't more new members.

I'm a member of several other forums, and frankly, they are now more entertaining. When I post here, I always wonder if what I say is going to get me a warning, or banned. There is evidence that others feel the same way, and it stifles lively debate.

I pretty much have decided to speak my mind, and if I get banned, it's off to the other forums. While I'm on that subject, the guy who told me about TFP got banned. There was some crazy message about his IP, and he must be a duplicate account. We happen to live in one of the first totally wired communities, and I can only guess that was the cause. He was not broken-hearted; in fact, he didn't even bother to communicate the mistake. However, I now wonder if at some point I will be banned because of my IP. Or because I logged on using a friend's computer.

On that subject, I will mention another reason the other forums are more fun--the lack of buttinski mods. There was one thread I saw yesterday along the lines of "ask an unemployed black man anything." And they DID.

"How can you afford all your fried chicken now?" "Do you have 8 kids?" "How big is your dick?"

And you know what? He just rolled with it, and no mods interfered. By the second page, even the obnoxious members were telling other obnoxious people to STFU when they made rude comments.

Around here, warnings and bans would have flown. Unless it was a mod making the offensive statements. Or one of the mod favorites who have been described elsewhere. There was one jackass here who talked about killing cats, and anyone who told him he was a douche nozzle would have been banned. Having mods who want to be big shots by throwing their weight around is not the way to keep members. If a bar owner hired bouncers who wanted to fight every unruly patron, that bar would soon be out of business. I won't name the mods, but other people already have, if you care to research it.

You wanted a straight answer? There it is. It will be awhile before I log back on, so now I can enjoy the suspense of whether or not I'm banned.

Cheers.

I think its kinda funny how defensive your post was, EaseUp. Nobody ever got a warning by speaking their mind in a mature fashion. You communicated your point quite well. Thanks.

Wow.

Hal, you're doing a great job. I really like TFP, and I understand that it's going to evolve, and that the evolution is driven by the people who are on the board. Right now, everyone knows everyone, and honestly you can only talk about so many things with a group of people before it starts to get boring. If porn is going to bring new faces to TFP, then let it. We'll deal with the assholes as they come, and seperate the wheat from the chaff.

That being said, if we DO actually get new people on the TFP, then there's going to have to be some wrist slapping among the people who've been on here forever. It IS a henhouse sometimes, and there when I felt I had to step away for a while it was because I honestly felt like since I wasn't a member of the clique of cool people that my posts didn't count. This is TFP, it's supposed to be a DISCUSSION board (kinda like a seminar in college, I feel). If you want to go somewhere to feel important and loved and in a clique, go play Second Life- it's free too.

Part of what makes the internet fun and humorous is, well, humor. Being silly and stupid. Having people express their opnions and letting them say stuff they wanna say. We can totally make sure that threads don't deteriorate into a flame war, but for fuck's sake y'all, we're all adults. I don't want to feel like someone is going to start whining if I express an opnion that differs from theirs- and that's happened to me. I've totally posted trying to give someone advice and pointing out what I didn't like about previously posted advice, only to have my post be dissected because "ZOMG! YOU DIDN'T AGREE WITH ME!!"

There's reasons why threads like this would have been met with "QQ" or "TLDR" or "L2P" in other forums- because this is the internet, not real life. I deal with snot nosed tattletale kids all day, cause it's my job. The last thing I want to have on a message board is snot nosed tattletale adults. I don't think TFP needs a "goverment" or a "court" to moderate posts- just four or five really good, level headed, dedicated mods and Halx to make sure things are going as HE wants them too. Because what it boils down to is that this is HIS board, HE created it, and honestly he can do whatever he damn well pleases with it IMO.

No offense to anyone, but this is an internet forum, right?

A place where people get together to talk about stuff?

Why does an internet forum NEED politics or leaders or whatever? Why can't we all just get together and talk about stuff? It is always obvious when someone is being an ass, and they can be dealt with in appropriate ways. I don't understand what all the fuss is about. I didn't even KNOW there was something "happening" with TFP until I read this thread.

Great post, Sage.

I don't really agree with the sentiment that this is Hal's board and he can do whatever he wants with it. I look at it this way: Hal is the one who put up the easel, the canvas, and gave us the paints; what has been created has been created by us, all together. Hal has largely just given us the tools by which we all communicate here; we are responsible for the conversation now taking place. I also see this place a bit like a company--Hal is the CEO, and therefore is accountable to the shareholders--those who have donated. Despite the fact that yes, this is his board since he started it, it's also ours because we contributed to it, and we continue to do so both monetarily and creatively. TFP would be a very lonely place without its users.

That said, I don't like the general sense of negativity that the recent start of Concept: Anarchy has brought over to this forum, and I don't like people mentioning drama over there here. To me, that's a whole other world I'm frankly not interested in being part of or interested in hearing about.

As for the state of the TFP, we seem to have these threads every couple of months or so, someone making some doomsday prediction about the TFP. All I can say is that there are two things bugging me: 1) I don't like that people are somehow feeling threatened by the mods and are too self-censoring. That's not what this place is about. This place is about discussion, and it's about being able to disagree with other people or being able to say what you want but being able to say it in such a way that it's not hurtful or offensive. We are about sophisticated conversation here--a well-handled rapier would make its point here versus a blunt object, if you catch my drift. We all need to feel free to say what we want to say, as long as it's well-stated. 2) Some mods have not been good examples of activity--either by not posting enough, not being involved enough in the boards, or by seeming to disregard the rules they are meant to uphold. I can think of specific examples of this, and so if any administrator is interested in seeing what bothers me specifically, feel free to PM me.

That is really about it for me. I've been here a long time, and I will continue to be here. I have made a lot of friends in real life from this place, and a lot of internet friends too. And as much as some people might say "it's just a message board"--it's still a place I really enjoy and want to succeed.

Or you could PM me? I'm fairly certain that I'm aware of 95% of the things that go on that people are irked about. However for that other 5%, I have to rely on the members to actually come to me about them, so I can address them.

Quoted for Truth...

Mood: There's two basic pervaders: 'Woe'-thinking no one cares what you say, so you don't bother to say anything. 'Apathy'-eh, I don't care to elaborate on that one. :D
Edge: the 'Media Mind Control' thread is a good example of 'edge'-thoughtful, thought provoking commentating on the effects of media and commercialization, using the latest media examples and news reports, critiquing, etc.
No edge: "My SO cheated"(generic).

I'm gonna state this officially and you guys can do with this however you feel.

I take majority responsibility for the TFP and I consider it to be "my" place. Just the same way I foot the bill when no donations come in, I take care of this place when nobody else does/can. What you might see is this thread, a few random posts, a journal entry here and there and a whole lot of hoopla about how I run this place, but what you don't see is me staying up till 6am, working on projects for the TFP. You also don't see me confronting in private each person who I've detected has a strong opinion about how the TFP is going. You don't see me negotiating with problematic members or conferring with my staff about issues that are relevant to the wellbeing of this forum. You don't see me scouring the net, looking for a way to increase traffic or add a new feature to this site.

The donors give their money to help keep the site running, and I listen when they have something to say, but they are not shareholders any more than a regular user is. They have a donor tag as a thanks from me and everyone else, not as a board-of-directors member insignia. Many donors, in fact, are users who rarely post. You probably wouldn't be able to tell me much about my top 5 donors if I told you their names. This alone should tell you that the TFP is more than just a social network.

I spend a lot of time trying to smooth out the social game being played here on the forums, but that's a courtesy I extend to you, my friends. The real battle is being fought in the intellectual forums and the advice forums. The content is what creates readers and participants. We need to focus on improving and expanding that. We lose members when there are no interesting topics to talk about, not when Member 28938 insults Member 94273. So, I'd like to get everyone's focus on the real matter. Whether you attribute your quality of experience here to me or not, I am the one fighting to keep it all here, where it belongs.

Are you going to join me in that fight or simply posture about how important your dollar and word is?

I'm at work and not going to read this entire thread, too bad I didn't get here much sooner or I'd added my 2cents. If it matters, I've been off/on poster here since, shit... 2 wipes ago? 3 wipes ago? I don't even know at this point.


From the OP I did read most of, I have to disagree with SC on it being poor judgement of creating the other board. If the other board isn't using any of the TFP donations, it has nothign to do with TFP. It's nobodies business what Hal does with his time and effort, other than TFP. TFP of course is a different situation in which donations are made. I doubt this is even being debated here in page 3, but again I haven't read much of this yet.

2nd, i agree with Hal to make this site a bit grungier(sp). I've seen it, and called people on it, for thinking they've been here so long they are better than new people who may not understand how this place really works. Time to knock a few people down a peg or two.



To be honest, I kinda of agree with Hal on basically all the shit going on right now, which is odd, coz I have never particularly cared much for him. So I guess this isn't a "fanboi" post anyway.

All I can say...... there was a time Hal was not here often, this place went downhill fast.

It's not a suck up to Hal, it's just the nature of the beast.

When someone creates something successful and they leave, it is hard to maintain that same success because noone has the passion the creator did. Plus, there is a certain extra oomph the creator's presence brings.

It's like Apple..... fell apart without Jobs. Microsoft without Gates isn't the same. Chrysler and Iococa, yeah he didn't "found it", but he pulled them out of bankruptcy and made them big again.... when he left, they fell. The examples can go on, those are the 3 biggest that come to mind.

It's easy to say Hal supplied the canvas and we all painted.... but the inspiration was derived from Hal....

Honest, I'm not kissing ass it's just how I see things.

Hal, you have an internet forum that appears to have seen better days and I can appreciate you interest in keeping tfp alive and interesting. I must say that your above proclamation appears to ignore some very relevant suggestions given recently by your members. Is this your 'mission' statement that was also suggested?

The hyperbole of your challenge "to join me in that fight or simply posture about how important your dollar and word is?" strikes me as something quite odd, if not insincere. I have followed the whole debacle of your "Social Experiment" and yet you insist that you are pleased with the outcome. You also claim to be pleased with the direction of the tfp topic regarding C:A. Your comments cause me to wonder what it is that you are striving to achieve for either forum.

Hal, I "fight" for worthy things and I believe you have done more damage to tfp than any of those that stood up to criticize you and your recent decisions. It's been fun, but I have no "fight" to offer you and your forums. That energy is far better expended elsewhere.

Pen

Elphaba, you're reading into things like there's something hidden beneath it all, but it's really all in front of you.

I didn't address many of the arguments because that post wasn't meant to do that. That post was simply to set the record straight on why I claim ownership to the forum. All of the suggestions have been read, a few have been responded to already, and a few are being considered. You will see a definite change in the goings-on of the TFP in the next week, a few changes will be in line with the suggestions you see in this thread. I've spent nearly 3 days trying to get this off the ground already, please don't expect me to respond to every post in this vast thread.

The challenge was sincere. The social experiment was unrelated to the TFP in its purpose. If you want to consider it a debacle, fine. I consider it an incidental catalyst for introspection and many positive changes to come. I was pleased at the reaction... not whether it was good or bad, but that people actually got INTO the conversation. It was quite engaging and interesting to disect. The purpose of the C:A forum can be found in my journal and the purpose of the TFP is the same as it has always been.

You better be prepared to explain how I've done harm. I've talked with many people involved and have come to an understanding. Many people who denounced C:A at first are now opening up to it. The drama it has caused has been resolved under my direction and people are now latching on to it's real purpose. You wouldn't know that though, sniping from the backline. I take full responsibility for the diminished quality of the forum during my 18 month absence, but we're never going to get anywhere moving forward if everyone is as quick to judge as you are.

I'll say it once again... it's all right in front of you in plain writing. No interpretation needed. However, welcome to the frontline and thanks for making your opinions known so I could address them personally.

I, For One......will joint the fight.

He is absolutely correct in this, Members made this place.....and we can make it better now.

Exactly. Less noobish whining, more actually talking about stuff. I can handle having my toes stepped on or being insulted by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about- if someone is going to be an ass on the TFP, they're going to be ignored pretty quickly.

And OMG, I think people need to step down about how "important their donations are." This isn't a stock option- it's a lesiure site. I've donated in the past, and I really don't care what Hal does with the TFP (aside from keeping it on the internets, of course:) ) I don't feel a sense of "entitlement" as to the runnings of the place because I sent money- I sent money because, at the time, I had it and I realized that if TFP went offline I'd be sad. If you wanna keep TFP online, send money. If you don't care, don't send money. Vote with your wallet.

I feel it is Hal's 'place'-it's his baby. My donation is to help him out with TFP, not buy into anything.
I don't think his absence was total abandonment in the sense that he was 'finished'. Even the best artists put down their brushes for a while.
A while back it was discovered that someone was 'stealing' topics from elsewhere verbatim and posting them here, then going back to the original site of 'theft' and repeating TFP's members' responses there. It was convoluted and rather silly, but....the topics/postings stolen actually had some decent life. There are probably very few of us who don't go to other forums. I would never suggest doing what that person did, but look at the other places you visit-what things discussed get the most posts and the most thoughtful response? Has that subject ever been brought up here? Is it controversial without being a flaming exercise? Do you have a feeling about the topic that stirs you and might stir others?
Fear that no one will respond or that you will be seen in a different light is no reason to not contribute a subject. It's a forum, you won't die or break out in a skin-eating rash if your thoughts aren't met with total enthusiasm. But I don't think you can 'complain' about something not being 'exciting' and not at least attempt to insert a little excitement yourself.
/me scratches her arm....:lol: