Dear ILE - a plea

am sad to read that zoe espera has/had decided staying away/not posting is/was for the best. nothing much to be done, though. if you are upset/annoyed/put off, the only options, really, are (as zoe espera (amongst others) said) to stop posting or start ignoring

yes. you should. please do.

Might be a bit of a task logistically, and goes against the idea of One Community, but given the chimerical nature of the latter it's probably what's going to end up happening.

yes. you should. please do.

Er, no! The problem with the ignore-the-badbits plan is that it leads to everyone squirrelling away into their own threads and boards and effectively abandoning the mainstream to the mercy of the fannies.

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.
Ye think? Legislation is all about other people's behaviour! Do you go "oh, hey, lots of muggings in Glasgow. Ach, well, can't legislate for behaviour. If you don't like being mugged, just try and ignore them".

Then when you text your pals to come out, and nobody does because it's the fucking badlands, you mutter "ah, well, natural evolution of the city. If i don't like it, tough."

It may only exist inside computers, and it might be possible to turn it off and walk away, but it's also obviously important and personal to lots of people, and can make them laugh or cry, become sad or happy etc and is filled with lots of other people they value and care about. Why something like that's "just" anything is beyond me.

er, yes. this is ILX. it's totally, totally different. we are all, basically, intelligent people. any true sociopaths can be banned. all the rest is mere irritation.

Er, no! The problem with the ignore-the-badbits plan is that it leads to everyone squirrelling away into their own threads and boards and effectively abandoning the mainstream to the mercy of the fannies.

what fannies? people acting the tool doesn't make them fannies. it just makes them posters who are acting the tool. they've got as much right to post here as anyone else. or do you want it to be a private members' club? :/

if everyone stopped getting so hung up on other people's behaviour, this board would improve no end. like i say: if people have a genuine complaint - eg "i feel i'm being victimised/bullied" - then it's a matter for the mods. but what's happening most of the time is a pile-up of other posters going OOOH THAT'S TERRIBLE SOMEONE GOT ZINGED OOH DEAR IT'S SYSTEMATIC BULLYING I TELL YOU HEY SEE THAT POSTER OVER THERE THEY'RE A RIGHT CUNT. it's just tedious.

you're a site admin; you probably see it differently, and i appreciate that. but you can't control everybody's behaviour. you can try ... but you're going to end up with a very small board indeed.

okay: your personal investment in this is obviously way more than mine, and i'm sorry if you find my attitude glib. but i'd say the same about any other social situation, to be honest: it's just a pub/it's just a workplace/it's just a city. pragmatism 101.

i like ILX. i wouldn't post here otherwise. i care about it. i wouldn't have donated to the server fund if i didn't. and i have made a few genuine friends through this board (which is a pleasant surprise, and more than i'd ever expect of an internet forum). but the vast, vast majority of posters are simply acquaintances with whom i have only one real thing in common: we post on ILX. it's, er, just a message board. sorry.

And people mugging people doesn't make them muggers, it just makes them people who are mugging people? They've got as much right to roam the streets as anyone else.

if everyone stopped getting so hung up on other people's behaviour, this board would improve no end.
Q-afw-FT.

it's just a pub/it's just a workplace/it's just a city.
Which comes back to the "ach, fuck it, it's just X, why bother changing it". Yet you're the one who wants to shoot all the people who panic-buy petrol come the revolution. You're going to end up with a very small country.

1) of course i don't want to shoot people. i might, in sheer frustration, have said something like that (the fact you remember this worries/amazes me). but, you know, although i think there are millions of wankers out there in the world, i have no choice but to respect their right to exist.

2) ILX isn't a microcosm of society. it's mostly intelligent, educated people with an interest in contemporary pop culture. i think, on that basis, it should be pretty much self-regulating. sure, it needs mods for when things get out of hand. but really: what's so bad here that it can't just be ignored? so poster A is being a fanny. big deal. posters B through Z aren't. go hang with them instead!

need to nash; will be late for work.

There's a bloke who acts like a fanny in every pub ever (sometimes it's me), I still go to pubs. Pubs are still mostly fun. If it gets too serious the fanny is removed, but usually "ignore him, he's a fanny" suffices.

My best friend in elementary school was Fanny.

The skill needed to get the best (i.e. what I want) out of ILX these days seems to be about identifying where the little islands of civility exist and enjoying them, and trying to forget that the rest of it is there, and so very pish. (This is the view correctly ascribed to me by Keef above).

I used to be able to use ILx differently, and follow conversations about which I knew little or nothing, because the general tone made it a pleasure. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore. So it goes I suppose. Things change, so do I. On those occasions where I see what appears to be bullying, most usually low-level unpleasantness, it reinforces my view that most of ILx is not the place for me to hang out, so I don't. That's what grimly recommends, I guess. Well done me, proper Thatcher's child behaviour.

So, in summary: I got old and less grouchy and I don't have the time or the energy to waste it on fights here, or (for that matter) to try to convince other people that they might like to behave differently. Hats off to anyone who feels like giving it a whirl, though.

Or, more likely, another pub? ILX isn't full of fannies (let's call them wankers to avoid offending Nathalie's Fanny). I think of ILX as the pub people go to to avoid the ones full of wankers. It has a better good guy: wanker ratio than most other Internet forums I've been to.

(love the zingmonkey!)

I like the idea of I Love Books but whenever I feel the need to start a literature thread, I'm pretty sure I'd do so here. The last Pynchon thread on ILE got way more responses than the equivalent ILB thread. That said, I like the idea of ILB and I'm glad it's there.

(xpost - ILB ended up in like five newspapers!)

hahaha remember when I started a mini feud between ILB & NB last year? no blood spilled. I can be such a dick sometimes.

what newspapers was ILB mentioned in? UK I presume.

no-one's "irreplaceable".

xpost

Better than what ILM/E have become even in the past 6 months, but still pretty bland.

a ton of euro papers. cuzza the one thread that mikey started. it was briefly a webenomemon.

Alisa, post on TITTWIS. it is open to all posters and all topics.