Dear ILE - a plea

Yeah, ditto.

and i don't know if it's entirely serious,

of course it was serious

ok, well, again, i think it's a terrible idea. the all-in-together messiness and the friction of ile is its strength, maybe its ONLY strength. thread balkanization is one thing; more and more board balkanization will be the heat-death of the whole enterprise, i'm sure of it.

M Grout so OTM!

I do think that if a thread has started to discuss (or avoid) a certain specific subject, people should stick to the topic for the most part. If other subjects arise, new threads can come up. (the way that the "Self" thread evolved out of the "dating non-vegetarians" thread, to me, was a very good example of that.)

In a perfect world, one wouldn't need the concept of "ownership" over threads, because people would be reasonable and polite and not drag threads off topic unduly (Something I used to do myself terribly, before I had the 'Cooler thread to corral all my current obsessions into.) or degenerate into personalness. But the world is not perfect, and threads *do* get prematurely atrophied - or unreasonably blown up into hellish conflicts - when it would have been a lot more interesting if they had stuck to their original remit.

people, here, are exactly like how they are, "for real." i think a lot of times they don't even know how, but they are.

what so there is some sort of ceiling to balkanisation? anymore and the engines cannae take it cap'n? doubt this myself

again all i am advocating is a quicker move towards what started happening 2/3 years ago. logical progression and conclusion. because i don't think this thing has a reverse gear.

I'm often more charming, witty, and better looking here.

(Take no notice, I have no Idea what I mean by that, I think)

This whole spectacle hasn't really been edifying for anyone especially Lex and Dom. FWIW the post Lex linked to wasn't about Dom getting dumped nor was it about a suicide attempt, but it did paint Dom in a very poor light indeed which is probably why a) he got so enormously pissed off and b) he made up that suicide stuff as an appeal to sympathy and a way of winning a fight.

Many xposts - using the noise board as a scapegoat for everything that's wrong with ILX is disingenous considering the real bitter rivalries stretch back way before that and the noise board was actually set up in the first place to keep this stuff OFF the rest of ILE.

The point is that the people going "ooh you are all being nasty and bullying" and the people going "ooh you people are just being oversensitive" are NEVER going to agree so there's no point in even having this argument.

The problem with zing culture is its BORING. You open any thread and then there's the same four or five posters all zinging each other and you can tell THEY'RE not even finding it particularly entertaining, they're just doing it because they're bored and they can't stop posting. Enrique did it about four posts into this thread with that knackered old Mark C/Pringles meme that surely only the most easily amused can still find funny. It's fucking annoying for the rest of us to have to trawl though as well.

Might I add that I think the turning point for ILX was when the number of posters who didn't know or care about Freaky Trigger exceeded the number of posters who did?)

This is OTM I think, the moment when the sense of cohesive community sort of evaporated and as did any claim to some sort of universal 'ethos' of the boards. And although Ethan asks can someone please name any of the intelligent, enriching, worthwhile posters who left because ilx was 'too mean'? it's pretty clear that the likes of Tom E, Mark S, John D and so forth stopped posting as much (if not left) because the overall atmosphere was something they didn't really want to be involved in.

so I could edit messages and embed audio after ILE banned me from doing it!

yeah no-one is really saying this. see my post re 'boards vs boards' mentality.

But the world is not perfect, and threads *do* get prematurely atrophied - or unreasonably blown up into hellish conflicts - when it would have been a lot more interesting if they had stuck to their original remit.

they got exactly as interesting, or not, or atrophied, or blown up, based on what the people participating in them wanted at the time. look, this is a market, not a project. you have to take the occasional shitty outcomes with a little zen grimace and just get on to the next thing, srsly.

as i SAID, but i expect nothing less from them so it had less impact.

There are some subjects on which I'd rather have one post an hour, which was on topic and thought out - than 100 posts in a row of meaningless chatter and nastiness.

not a week seems to go by on watercooler threads without some massive argument about what can and can't be talked about on them.

It reminds me of that Twilight Zone movie where the kid had special powers and turned his house into a cartoon world, and nobody dared say anything against him.

i *might* be exaggerating a little there tho

Sometimes I like to take a kitten in a can, chew it up, and use the resulting paste as a sandwich spread between two intact kittens in cans.

I get this with Jon too, but it's probably 50% projection (and he must surely expect it if not enjoy it).

Yeah, I forgot to say, that's brilliant.

-Football/sport
-Big Brother/reality TV shows

That's the point of them. If a person wishes to talk about those things, there are dozens of other threads on ILX on those subjects.

People may say that it's random that I picked those two specific subjects to ban, but it's not. Those are the things that people chatter about when they've got nothing else to talk about. The rest of the world - well, my bloody office, people in the pub and on the bus - I have to put up with it there, I want to just draw a line in the sand where I do not have to listen to it.

The early pre-cooler thread was an experiment to find out that if those "substitute for conversation" topics were banned, what would people talk about? Would they feel freer to talk about themselves and their own lives/concerns? What other things would people chat about? Now, obviously, it turned out to be a success, and there is a culture there which a lot of people enjoy and stay for - EVEN WHEN THEY DON'T LIKE ME. Funny, that.

As ILX has got nastier, I've got more defensive on them, yes.

And people have joined in the conversation/atmosphere who don't understand the principles of why those certain things are banned, and then go off and start massive rows when asked not to talk about sport and/or reality TV programmes. Which again, makes me defensive that the 'Cooler is getting ... *infected* with the whole culture it was trying to avoid.

Upset about locking bummers thread?

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e66/LimitedLiabilityGirl/LokiSulk.jpg

so much so i don't even see the problem... jokes, but yeah i am a bit, but less than OTHERS I COULD NAME. i have no respect for this thread and the tired zingle i came up with was all it really deserved. note steve thought it'd be deleted, and i kinda did too.

+
other people's programming
computer games
other people having sex
etc.

basically anything that doesn't interest you right? i mean why not just admit it?

Which makes me think that all the hand-wringing about how poor LJ is a great example of the nasty dickishness of ILX not only bullshit, but insulting. It seems that he needs your hand-holding about as much as he needs serious advice on how to lead his love-life from you people. So, perhaps we can drop that trope, yes?

It's not like ILE was wall to wall threads about sport and Big Brother ever. There must be more to it than this.

It seems fair enough to want to carve out little niches for ourselves and our friends/anyone who'll play along, but when this happens I dislike the pretence that ILE has any real meaning still. It's lost a lot of it's value conceptually as a result.

isn't this what i just said re balkanization??

Suggesting that there are other threads where people could get more helpful advice on programming is not the same as shouting at people.

Computer games come under sport, as far as I'm concerned.

Shouting at other people for having sex is so clearly a joke that I wouldn't have thought even you would take it seriously, Stevem!

There are many times that I've suggested and/or "shouted" that people take a subject elsewhere, usually if I think it's going to be a long and involved conversation. I do the same thing myself if I'm on a tear about Tiffany Lamps or Am I A Hott Scot Or Not (recent threads I have started so as not to bore the 'Cooler with whatever has caught mine eye) and don't think the general regulars are interested.

basically anything that doesn't interest you right? i mean why not just admit it?

I do admite it! All the time! I've never been anything other than honest about them being threads FOR MY PLEASURE, INTEREST AND ENTERTAINMENT. It's a wonder to me that other people post to them at all sometimes.

if people don't like the atmosphere of the 'Cooler, then there is a whole interweb of other threads out there that they could be enjoying and contributing to! This is not said with nastiness or elitism or anything else, but in the original ILX spirit of DO NOT READ IF YOU HATE US. Is that really so hard?

I know that I am unlikely to like the atmosphere or spirit of the Noize Board. Guess what? I don't read it! Ditto football threads, big brother threads and threads about knitting!