Dear ILE - a plea

oh, was it? when did any of those three people say this?

xp

oh does ILX still get spam? i haven't seen any in months and months. and months. funny.

Next time, try actually reading my whole post.

There's a difference between laughing at the occasional well-timed zing (most people do this) and wanting to be in a place where it's like that more often than not. Pretending that no intelligent or valued posters have ever been put off by a consistent bad atmosphere in parts of the boards is ridiculous.

we shouldn't have that argument again tho

But what you have got to get clear, Kate, is the difference between someone mentioning something verboten **in passing** and 'turning the thread into a thread about that topic'.

(checks to see which thread we are on. OK am in clear)

This is me, then every now and then I get lured in by a thread like this and have next to no idea what everyone's on about.

This has been true from day one. Whether the reason is "I can't post here, you're all too intellectual" or "I can't post here, you're all too mean" or "I can't post here, you all know each other", the end result is the same; most random Googlers don't post here. Unless you've been canvassing Googlers as to why they dip into ILX and don't stick around, this is a wholly specious and misleading argument.

This may sound elitist, but I'd rather have the googlers who can deal with the intellectualism or inside jokes than those who can deal with the meanness.

(x-post)

This thread is a plea to people to not act like bullies when they're not bullies. Very different.

There is an inherent presumption here that people who can deal with environment X will behave like Y when introduced into it that I don't agree with. I also think it's incredibly disingenuous to expect that any community, whether it is online or in real life, will retain the same feel as time goes on unless said community features some level of brainwashing in its induction process.

Robin C quit posting so much b/c there was a couple of regulars who were argumentative towards him in a way he didn't like. This isn't supposition, he told me this in an email. This was also a long, long time ago. I do miss Robin participating, I must admit.

xposts

this is totally right and nothing else really needs to be said.

xpost: Define "implode".

Who's asking for that? There seems to be a feeling that the place we've arrived at currently is overly vicious, and this thread was started to ask people not to be like that. It has nothing (in my mind, at least) to do with ye glory Greenspun days in the slightest.

Collapse. Whether it's everyone leaving, or most people leaving and a core remaining.

xposts

You're right, but unless one's attitude is "nothing will ever change", there's some point in trying to bring up things people feel are making the community worse, and discuss whether or not something can or should be done about them. As we are doing now.

xpost: Collapse. Whether it's everyone leaving, or most people leaving and a core remaining.

What are you talking about??? ILE currently has well over 100 consistent, active posters every day; ditto ILM.

Neither: I certainly don't want every googler to join, or I'll spend all my time looking up MySpace passwords; nor do I mind looking bad. What I don't want is a forum that's so vicious in parts that reasonable, intelligent people arrive and go "jesus! fuck this noise", while a good portion of current members are hiding out in their "safe" threads. What is the point of that?

(Nor do I want the reverse, which is that it ends up attracting the type that are all "wayhey! get in, it's a big pagga over here, I'll join, HAY FUK U ALL")

The point is that people are finding spaces where they feel comfortable participating. I've always hated this argument because the not-so-subtle subtext is "I find all of you boring/unworthy, I wish some interesting people would show up/my real friends would come back." However, because no one wants to look bad, no one wants to come out and say that.

You can't have a forum that is wide open to anyone who wants to participate and then complain because it isn't attracting "the right people"; either the forum itself has to change so you can control who has access to it and how they post (or the forum has controls that let you filter the content to your liking, if you don't want to be draconian) or you take the good with the bad.

Because the arguments (well, some of them :) are equally good if you're comparing to "the way we think the board could be".

xpost to Laurel: Yes, we probably are! They would kill the HipHop in the 90s thread, for a start (over 30% of traffic on some days!)

how many of them are spambots?
Not terribly many, actually. They're quite a lot of traffic, but they aren't great in number.

No you wouldn't! That's like expecting every person who reads a random online article/blog is going to fill out the comment form!

I don't know if anything can be read into that, though, Stet. When the AHOT list was at its peak, there were 500+ ppl subscribed, about 30-40 of whom ever posted at all Likewise AH, that still has I believe over 1000 subscribers, I see the same names posting, def less that 50, TGS is down to ~10 regular posters, everytime I look at it I see loads of usernames in the "now online" (ie ppl who've actually taken the time to register in that case) box most of whom never post. I don't get the mentality myself, but the figure/ratio quoted does not surprise me at all.