Dear ILE - a plea

watching alisa and kate fight makes me so hot

GZeus I kiss you.

Hi Ailsa... OK will do.

-- lexpretend (lexusjee...), February 14th, 2007."
Hooray for avoiding the issue and taking my exaggerations(slight as they may have been) seriously(and somehow PERSONALLY) as you have.
Slight of hand in attempt at putting any annoyance on me.
How entertaining...oh wait, I mean boring.

I think you should.

And Stet said this: “Kinda tricky to prove a negative, innit.”

I discovered ilx after someone pointed me to a thread where something I had done happened to be mentioned (all good-natured, I was amused). I liked the place and starting posting a little tiny bit but stopped when I was living at a friend’s. Once I got an internet connection in my new house, I was really very reluctant to post because of the bad-naturedness of some of the threads and the general feeling that it might end up being unpleasant. I wasn’t necessarily intimidated (maybe a bit?) but I just thought: nope, that’s not the environment in which I want to discuss things.

It was a shame, because I liked reading some threads (and now and then still do), particularly after an interesting or important news story. It is difficult in real life to get access to people wanting to discuss the same things you do right there and then (and with the same wit and intelligence that some ilx posters do). I wanted to join the Isabel Allende thread, for example, for that reason.

As Ailsa said, if people don’t like the way things are, they can just go away and not post - which is what I did. I’m just saying this because someone was wondering whether willingness to post has been affected, and in my case I think maybe it was.

But then I’m posting this - so maybe that shows that really what I should do is just contribute and not pay any attention to the badbits. Cos clearly I think it’s a generally a decent place, worth the effort of Saying Something in an attempt to be constructive.

fwiw

Whilst Ailsa is OTM about the current state of things; I don't have any desire to watch people being unpleasant to other people I think it is worth pointing out (given the increasing frequency of this sort of thread since "Has ILE gone down the dumper") that I do think something has been lost. I remember a thread a few years back about an ILE compilation album that went off co-operatively and without a hitch. Now I suspect it would be a mere five posts old before some goon posted "lolz people on internetz be making shit musics". I don't think that it matters that someone would, it's relatively easy to ignore: it's just a shame.

Re the balkanization of the boards, I don't think ILE should be treated as a sacred cow. I actively prefer I Love Cooking, in part because I actually get some response to posts, due to the pace being slower and more considered, same goes for I Love Books.

Dunno about that -- I have good memories of the book threads, the film threads on here I always read. I'd say it would be great if ILB (as much as I like it and have no problems with) would simply move back here. Except of course you can get readers at these satellite boards that you don't get anywhere else.

This 'plea' at the beginning of this thread is the most pathetic load of shit I've read in a while. This thread getting 500+ messages is the 'problem'.

ILE will never be another sinister Barry. LEGO!!! xp

Agree with the latter, think [mggmgh -mod edit]

Or did I 'bully' you into it?

obviously that was never going to last forever - it's 5 years later and ILX is huge now. I think it is true that a lot of ILE has turned into a huge zing-fest, which is a bit if it makes people ignore the really good bits of ILX - eg for me the dance/jazz/experimental threads on ILM, the noise boards, and on the rare occasions I remember they exist the books and cookery boards (which I agree could easily be moved back to ILE - see eg the ILE pynchon thread).

i've just installed killfile, and I rather suspect that's going to improve ILE a lot for me. perhaps some other people here should try it too.

I was *so* convinced that first ailsa post was Grimly Fiendish

hey, so was i for the first couple of lines. i thought i must have got up in the middle of the night and done it. and started using capitals.

although then i started to disagree with bits of it and got confused.

there's absolutely nothing anyone can add at this stage that will act as a panacea for all ILX's perceived ills. but i do think this thread is fulfulling a useful purpose, insofar as it's allowing people to get shit off their chest in a marginally more constructive manner than usual. and mark's original comment is absolutely OTM: he's not trying to turn it into alt.hug, just pointing out that, you know, perhaps we shouldn't spend all our time jumping up and down and shouting at each other.

anyway. my thoughts. briefly.

1) things change. ILX has changed quite a bit since i started posting in late 2004. such is life, eh? as someone (dan, i think) said wisely upthread, nobody - not mods, not admins and certainly not thread-starters - can legislate for other people's behaviour. trying to impose rules of engagement is a complete waste of time.

similarly, any "balkanisation" or otherwise is just part of the process - like it or not, ILX is now much bigger than the sum of its parts, and is going to evolve in ways you might not like. tough.

it's an internet message board. lighten up, people.

2) sometimes people say twattish things. sometimes a couple of posters will get into a fight. jon's daft louis/google thread might have overstepped a mark, but why does the whole fucking board have to get involved? we have mods. they sorted it, quickly and efficiently. louis handled it all very well. end of story. move on, there's nothing to see.

it's an internet message board. lighten up, people.

3) sometimes threads go off at tangents. sometimes those tangents are irritating and silly and seem to be nothing but zings. sometimes that kills threads completely. sometimes it makes them brilliant.

it's an internet message board. lighten up, people.

4) the problem, if i may be so bold, isn't that people are getting "bullied". that's a hell of an emotive word to be throwing around. it's simply that there's been a bit of low-level sniping and zinginess and suddenly we're acting like it's armageddon. it's not.

it's an internet message board. lighten up, people.

5) like i said on another thread recently, when someone said: "people are being nasty and no-one's doing anything" - i am. i'm ignoring it. i'm glad so many others feel the same. if individual posters (louis, dog latin etc) think they're being hard done by, they should raise it with the mods. the rest of us should stop piling in and shouting FITE FITE FITE.

it's an internet message board. we all care about it too much. that's nice for us. now let's get some perspective, eh?

but, yes, this is an internet message board. don't think we need say any more. unless says something that annoys us or we can make fun of

- there's no point trying to lay down ground rules of behaviour and say: "if you post on ILX, you must act like this".

- there is every point in ignoring behaviour you don't like and not rising to it.

that's how i can be agreeing with mark's first post and then seemingly disagreeing within the space of a sentence. sorry, should have spent more time on it.

but then it's only an internet message board and ...

I know that there was a good feeling about both ILM and ILE back then - but a large part of that ws in the discovery of this place, and then in looking back I always tend to remember the good bits mopre strongly. The board has over time developed as its grown in number, but like you I still get a good feeling out of some threads. I still feel that if I put some effort in it's possible to get some good convo, which is not very different from 2002, though it might be a diff kind of effort.

(I honestly can't remember how good it was to compare, just that it was very good.)

-- temporary enrique (miltonpinsk...), February 15th, 2007."
Um...you just proved otherwise in posting that...

oh, and I just tested. No problems loading.

lots of good advise since my first post, from grimly in particular. thinking about it more, it's not 'bullying' which ever annoys me (i'm still not sure i've ever seen any of this, tbh), but the same lame jokes again and again (which i'm hopeful the killfile will sort).

-- nathalie (wotwotwo...), February 15th, 2007. (later)

you are wrong!!

-- RJG (RJ...), February 15th, 2007. (later)

No, she's right. What did you think it was

"No, she's right. What did you think it was "
Did you take that seriously? It was just a perfect example of what's wrong with the boards currently, and should really just be ignored.
Sarcasm cannot be properly recognised over the internet. It's also rude by nature.
This is why I only use it in private.

xpost

what a fascinating insight, i totally agree.

it wasn't 555 posts, either

crossposts