Metadiscussion.

Discussion in 'SF Open Government' started by Roman, Nov 12, 2006.

  1. Roman Banned Banned

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    11,560
    Since this is the only thing we seem to be good at these days, let's talk about talking. No, let us complain about talking.

    Here's a thread from two years back:
    http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=42683

    The beginning of the end. Remember the panic? The flurry of threads demanding bans. Then the new Rule. Ban threads = permaban. Then the Crash, Database Error. How we fear That Name!

    Now Russians have got it. But that doesn't matter. Their moderation is practically non-existant. It has no real bearing on discussion.
    Discussion's the problem.

    Looks like I hit this place as it was coming down.
    We didn't lose interesting posts. We lost our interesting posters.
    We'd have 10 page long threads where 3 colossal egos locked horns. And the topic would be about pooping. Those ten pages weren't about pooping. They were about egos. AND pooping.

    They were about a handful of posters presenting bright intellectual baubles to each other. Nerds wooing nerds.

    Am I speaking of our dear Fish Queen? Mother Hydra herself?
    Gendy was certainly the flagship of the forum's fleet. But let us not forget all the others who collected cerebral trinkets for the Great Bitch. Each rushing to outdo the other in building their bower. Collecting shinies.
    Now there's no one left to impress.

    So what do we discuss. Black people. Muslims. The president. Ubiquitously throughout, the same inanities. Frustating, non?
    And it's not like the posters who stayed have new things to offer. Doc is still having sex with dogs and telling us about it.

    (Parenthetical aside: some of you may be asking, what do I contribute. Good question! A better question is, why are you such a loser? Concerned about your virtual hang out place? Nerd.)

    I propose a project. Let us embark on something of memetic proportions. We have lots of brains here. Old people, too. Surely some of you know people who know people. We could start some sort of phenomenon. It's be the crowning achievement of sciforum glory.
    Starting a meme. Like andre has a posse, or snakes on a plane, orrr... Chucks.
    Yeah. Wouldn't that be fantastic?
     
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  3. spuriousmonkey Banned Banned

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    You lost me when I got to this paragraph. I have no clue what you are talking about here.
     
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  5. Bells Staff Member

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  7. Meanwhile Banned Banned

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    480
    what does ego-talk have to do with sf government? anyway, i doubt very much these people simply renounced their intoxication for show-'n-tell-i-excel-so-go-to-hell. most likely they've discovered greener pastures with a more flamboyant and barbaric herd chewing on the nettle of defiance.
     
  8. baumgarten fuck the man Registered Senior Member

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    1,611
    I mostly concur with Roman.

    Usenet has been in ruin since September 1993, when, thanks to AOL, the usual annual assimilation of new users became a constant flow, inundating the network with asinine "OMG ME TOO" posts and spam. Some of the old veterans still hang around, but the vast majority have long left, turning to mailing lists and web forums to fulfill their otherwise abysmal social lives. What is left is a core of nostalgic old farts surrounded by an ocean of worthless newbs.

    The disease is fatal. More than thirteen years have passed, and the situation on the oldest and largest conference system on the Internet has only gotten worse. The only workable answer has been decentralization, the equivalent of live organ donation. Usenet will continue to exist, but only as an empty shell of what it once was.

    Has Sciforums' time come? Is the only answer now to separate the curd from the whey? Or has that already happened? Perhaps we find ourselves among the has-beens and the young and useless. The few good threads now don't get any attention; the same shitty song gets all the airplay. That's a lot like Usenet today.

    Maybe this ship should have been abandoned long ago. If it was attempted now, it's likely that there wouldn't be enough of a user base to keep the lifeboats afloat for long. There's no leadership here, so forget about putting the life back into the forums; the new administration is as complacent as Porfiry was. The meme thing that Roman suggested doesn't make sense, because memes aren't real.

    There is the story of the official forums of MacAddict magazine, whose tyrannical moderators provoked the formation of a counterculture, an anarchical anti-forum. That bizarro forum thrives today. But MacAddict was in its prime at the time; there was plenty of life to suck from it for the sake of incubating its antithesis. Maybe it is possible to do this anyway.

    The old BBS computers of the 1980s have mostly died out, but a handful survive to this day. Most of these made it out alive by moving to a Unix platform and offerring shell access to members. They have a greater incentive than just a community to keep it afloat financially and socially. New users come for the utilities and stay for the people. The futures of these systems are secured. But this is a web forum; we don't have that kind of flexibility. This sort of change would be very difficult, and very different from the historical precedent.

    At any rate, I don't see things improving without some kind of action on the part of the users here at Sciforums. This forum will eventually die, and its users will lose touch with each other. You, the average user, don't have any friends in the real world. You can't afford to let this pass. What say you?
     
  9. Absane Rocket Surgeon Valued Senior Member

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    The only Usenet place I have been around anytime in my life is sci.math. It's got a lot of great people on there. James Harris on the other hand.. eh.

    As for BBS. Back in the DOS/WIndows 3.1 days when I was 12 or so.. I used to LOVE BBSing because it was the closest I could come to the Internet. I met a lot of great people on there and I have found lots of neat little "proggies" and such.
     
  10. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Same here
     
  11. Meanwhile Banned Banned

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    I think he got carried away with the memory of Gendanken but forgot to be more specific about the project.

    Meme: A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.

    And what could he be thinking of?
     
  12. redarmy11 Registered Senior Member

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    7,658
    He wants us to start a meme. Whatever they are...

    I wonder, did they moan about the good old days in the good old days?

    "So, in the end it comes down to questions and solutions. Why is the quality of threads diminishing? Is it because of the teenyboppers? Or are the teenyboppers just more obvious because of the slump? I actually think that it's the latter. It just seems that things are slow right now and they will most likely pick up eventually. I'm sure this can't be the first slump that SciForums have gone through. And probably won't be the last."
    Originally posted by invert_nexus, 24.11.04
     
  13. Meanwhile Banned Banned

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    480
    Ah -- just the man I wanted to reply to!

    Our monitors are never calibrated exactly the same, especially between PCs and Macs. On a Mac, the gamma is 1.8; on a PC, 2.2, hence colors, saturation and brightness on a PC is harsher: my grey appears very differently to your grey but with the exact RGB formula you would see the exact same grey as the one being used in the bar -- regardless of how I see it on my monitor. I want to use the same shade of grey in my avatar. Happy?
     
  14. Meanwhile Banned Banned

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    480
    Or rather, I did, once-upon-a-time, wanted to use the same grey for the background -- I hate GIFs.
     
  15. redarmy11 Registered Senior Member

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    Reply not accepted. Reason: wrong thread.

    Please wait for a more suitable opportunity.
     
  16. Meanwhile Banned Banned

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    Idiot. The thread in question WAS LOCKED BEFORE I COULD SUBMIT A FUCKIN' REPLY.
     
  17. Meanwhile Banned Banned

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    Anyway, the fact that you're not happy with reason suits me just fine!

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  18. redarmy11 Registered Senior Member

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    Just adjust the gamma.

    Why make a big fuss?
     
  19. baumgarten fuck the man Registered Senior Member

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    Jesus Fucking Christ. It's #e9e9e9. Just view the page source and read the CSS.
     
  20. Meanwhile Banned Banned

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    You're the idiot who started the whole fuss. And even if I re-calibrated my monitor that still wouldn't guarantee you seeing the same colors BECAUSE YOUR STUPID MONITOR IS EQUALLY DIFFERENTLY CALIBRATED.

    Sheesh.
     
  21. redarmy11 Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,658
    Then create 2. 1 4 the PC. 1 4 the Mac.

    Or: just view the page source and the CSS.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  22. Meanwhile Banned Banned

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    480
    I tried that once during the old site design but couldn't quite find myself around the code (I was less familiar with CSS then and there were many grays involved -- which one was right?) See, even now there's a slight difference:

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  23. baumgarten fuck the man Registered Senior Member

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    It's a trick of contrast caused by the window color and drop shadow. The color has to be #e9e9e9.
     

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