I've got something to say about The Straight Dope

[danceswithcats]

I think you are wrong, I think Ed just made a series of poor decisions in trying to get more out of the Dope in terms of revenues.

The biggest mistake he made was not planning for enough cash to do the server upgrade correctly instead of the half-assed upgrade without the IT resources to do it correctly the last two times. He never should have made the other changes without fixing the mechanics of the board first. We have a special term for that in IT circles, it is called "failure!"

OK, enough of the colors for me. Just playing.

I'll disagree on one aspect. When in a position of management, if one realizes something is going sideways, tell those who will be affected right away. Silence and/or stonewalling alienate people, without whom it's awful hard to turn revenue issues around.

Crashes, delayed improvements, and such were annoying, but could be accepted. The way folk were treated was not acceptable.

[TheFlame]

Crashes, delayed improvements, and such were annoying, but could be accepted. The way folk were treated was not acceptable.

Certainly. I really feel that the 'Revised Pit Rules', and Ed Zotti's behaviour in connection, are just the straw that broke the camel's back for a lot of people. The uncertainty about the board's future, technical-related disappointments, and other assorted contemptuous behaviour by TPBP (culminating in the Pit Rules fiasco) has combined to create the current situation.

[prr]

Can anyone flesh out my more paranoid musings about Ed's master plan? I really don't know how much sense it makes for Ed to be deliberately encouraging Dopers to reject voluntarily their Charter Memberships (by pissing them off with all this stuff--the rudeness, the contempt, the patronizing comments, the lack of responsiveness to specific complaints about policy, the whole fucked up Chicago-centric bullshit forums, the sexually oriented focus on "cunt" as the root of all evil, the mercurial bannings, the inconsistent warnings, the heated defense of Lynn's stupid Modding, all of it) when he could, if he just wanted us not to renew would be to raise the cost of a paid subscription to $600 annually, with half going to Charter Members. That would drive us all off the Board fast enough, so I don't know if my musings make much sense. OTOH, he's being so obnoxious and erratic and offensive that I can't believe, either, that there is no ulterior motive here.

[color=#008080]I think you are wrong, I think Ed just made a series of poor decisions

You're probably right--the more I thought about it, the less sense I was making. But do you think that Ed wants more paying posters, or more ad-viewing posters? Do you think that Ed, or CL, regards the Charter Memberships as a millstone around their necks that they now wish they were rid of? It's always risky to offer something in perpeptuity, especially so long after the benefits (a ton of signed up Charter Member= a shitload of revenue at a point when the Chicago Reader really needed some) are gone.

[pepperlandgirl]

I've been on the Dope since 2000 (not under this username), and though my post count is quite low I read it most weeks - daily at times.

My memory of the Dope's moderation differs from the impression most people are giving. manhattan I remember in particular as an awful mod, highly capricious. He could be vicious in the closing of threads and giving of warnings, and there were some members he just seemed to hate. Most of them ended up banned.

Man, I loved manhattan (or "banhattan"). I also loved AlphaGene, Coldfire, UncleBeer, and yes, even Lynn Bodoni, back in the day. DavidB was an excellent mod in Great Debates (I really miss him). Why? Because they weren't pussies! Not only could you Pit them, and they'd read it without crying like babies, but they'd also come back firing on all cylinders. Pitting mods meant you were actually engaging with the big boys--I still remember when Ed announced that AlphaGene would be the new Pit mod. Gene had delivered a particularly nasty insult to Duck Duck Goose in a thread about all the "sluts" at Church (people with their bras showing) and Ed had highlighted that insult as a feather in Gene's cap (I don't recall if said insult was "sexual" in nature").

The last time "cunt" was discussed this much was when somebody (I think it was pldennison (I miss him too!)) called Jodi a cunt. The thread in the Pit went on and on, and you know, nobody ever made a rule saying the word was verboten. That was probably the time to do it.

On the flip side of that, CK Dexter Haven posted the most vicious, horrible Pit thread in the history of the boards, and to my knowledge, it never contained the word "cunt" once.

[TheFlame]

pepperlandgirl: You've named some of the other moderators I disliked in the 'early days'. I guess because my idea of good moderation involves being cool-headed, even-handed, and staying largely 'above the fray'. manhattan fit none of those descriptions.

[What Exit?]

I think you are wrong, I think Ed just made a series of poor decisions in trying to get more out of the Dope in terms of revenues.

The biggest mistake he made was not planning for enough cash to do the server upgrade correctly instead of the half-assed upgrade without the IT resources to do it correctly the last two times. He never should have made the other changes without fixing the mechanics of the board first. We have a special term for that in IT circles, it is called "failure!"

I'll disagree on one aspect. When in a position of management, if one realizes something is going sideways, tell those who will be affected right away. Silence and/or stonewalling alienate people, without whom it's awful hard to turn revenue issues around.

Crashes, delayed improvements, and such were annoying, but could be accepted. The way folk were treated was not acceptable.

Good point and one that annoyed me enough to start a pitting and a few ATMB threads. I just keep recalling reading about how he was going to grow the board and that was where my Tech rant came it. So it was two prong failure. He did not plan well for the upgrade needed to grow the board and in the meantime alienated many long-time previously loyal posters.

You're probably right--the more I thought about it, the less sense I was making. But do you think that Ed wants more paying posters, or more ad-viewing posters? Do you think that Ed, or CL, regards the Charter Memberships as a millstone around their necks that they now wish they were rid of? It's always risky to offer something in perpeptuity, especially so long after the benefits (a ton of signed up Charter Member= a shitload of revenue at a point when the Chicago Reader really needed some) are gone.

I think the part I bolded is the heart of that problem. Ed himself does not know what he wants now. As to the Charter Members, all he has to do when he wants to get rid of the paying members is to raise the price for members and charter members and the ensuing shitstorm will ensure a great many will not renew. The original agreement did not offer $7.95 forever but apparently 50% off the full price membership. Of course that will also lose another batch of posters. So maybe he does regret it at this point.

You know what is silly. If Ed had appealed to the board about raising more funds and worked with the membership I think I am correct in saying most active posters would have rallied around and put up more money and most Charters would have been content to pay full price if they could keep their titles.

Do you think I am right or wrong on that last part?

(These nested quotes might become a problem, Mods you might want to look into options on this, I just cleared out a bunch of repetitive text.)

[prr]

Not sure if I would have paid any sum to keep my charter membership, but I am sure that the pittance currently charged (the figure that sticks in my head is $7.48) coupled with the fact that once I let CM-ship go, it's gone forever, make this a no-brainer for me. Mad as I am, I'm thinking of renewing just because I want to wait until the dust settles a bit.

[SmartAleq]

The thing about Charter Memberships is that it's a good way to guarantee that a lot of your oldtime reliable content generators stick around to engage with newer members and hopefully cause the kind of fun clashes that keep a board interesting. Quite frankly, if eight bucks per CM is all that's standing between the SDMB and complete finanical failure then the problems are worse than anyone could imagine. And yes, if there had been an appeal for fundraising, I'm quite confident the Dopers would have risen to the occasion--shit, we've as much as offered to BUY the fucking board outright on more than one occasion and it's not as though the operating costs are that onerous. If you no longer have to justify the board as a money maker to a batch of bean counters, all that remains is to ensure it doesn't LOSE money and that's a trivial problem.

And may I just say that a "Bad Words List" is just about the stupidest, most kindergarten solution to a non-issue I've ever seen? For fuck's sake, what is Zotti's goddamned problem? As has been pointed out, CL has no issue with running ads from women who want to fuck/suck off hundreds of guys and are auditioning blatantly in the paper, they take ads from whores who charge by the quarter hour (intelligent pricing scheme, though, considering the prowess of your average Joe--Ed should be taking notes!) and the SD columns themselves are no strangers to random naughty language. So a mod doesn't like being called a cunt--but also doesn't want to stop acting like one. Solution--oh, let's not tell the mod to sack up and stop acting stupidy, let's not tell the mod that perhaps she's burned out and not up to the job (which should be patently obvious considering Bodoni has said as much about ten times in the past day or two,) no, instead let's make uselessly stupid rules for EVERYBODY ELSE. Yeah, that makes a TON of sense! And "no BAD WORDS in Pit thread titles" but no similar rules for any OTHER forum? WTF? Who the hell are they trying to fool here?

Blood pressure rising... :twisted: Must go to happy place in head... :ugeek:

And yes, it does make me furious to be treated like a naughty child when I'm one of the people who keep the fucking board going. Mods and admins are overhead--in the large scheme of things they produce precisely dick. It's us members who actually MAKE the board what it is and I resent being told that I have no input into how the board is run when they're making money off of my time and effort. Fuck you, Zotti, right in that sandy vagina you deny you have...

On the flip side of that, CK Dexter Haven posted the most vicious, horrible Pit thread in the history of the boards, and to my knowledge, it never contained the word "cunt" once.

Can a girl get a link, pepperlandgirl?

[Baldwin]

I'm still trying to decide whether to stick with SDMB, or get myself banned in a spectacular and memorable fashion.

The irony -- apparently invisible to Zotti -- is that I (and probably a lot of other posters) who would very, very seldom heap cunt-related abuse on another poster, now feel a compulsion to do so. I believe in civility, I don't post in the Pit that often anyway, and when I do I don't often lay into another poster. I spend far more time in Cafe Society.

But, I don't want Ed Fucking Zotti giving me a list of words I'm not allowed to use.

[pepperlandgirl]

The search won't let me use Dexter's name (I guess because of the CK)...and I'm not even sure I want to find it that much. It was really horrific, and the main subject of his (misplaced) vitriol is no longer with us (passed away).

[What Exit?]

The search won't let me use Dexter's name (I guess because of the CK)...and I'm not even sure I want to find it that much. It was really horrific, and the main subject of his (misplaced) vitriol is no longer with us (passed away).

C K Dexter Haven started only 8 pits.
I suspect you mean this one:
Who the hell cares what happens to my children, as long as the SD Community loves me

In the Advance Search, pull up C K Dexter Haven, then select Threads Started By and select Forum: The BBQ Pit.

[Brewha]

I'm still trying to decide whether to stick with SDMB, or get myself banned in a spectacular and memorable fashion.

I was kinda thinking the same thing. But, I'm not clever enough to make it spectacular or memorable. I'd probably just tell E.D. to fuck himself and call him a cunt. My post would probably get disappeared and I would be banned.

Really no advantages to burning bridges at this point.

[featherlou]

I'm still trying to decide whether to stick with SDMB, or get myself banned in a spectacular and memorable fashion.<snip>

At this point I'm planning to keep my Charter Membership because that's exactly what Clueless Ed *doesn't* want. It's worth seven or eight dollars to me to stick it to The Man. :mrgreen:

[SilverTygerGirl]

I'm still trying to decide whether to stick with SDMB, or get myself banned in a spectacular and memorable fashion.

If Ed pisses about enough (and I'm sure it'll be Ed) to make me want to leave permanently I plan on going out in a blaze of glory. I shan't reveal my plans.

[TheFlame]

I carelessly lost my Charter Membership a while back, so I probably won't renew this time around.

[prr]

C K Dexter Haven started only 8 pits.

You must be mistaken. Dex never even visits the Pit, much less posts there.

[TheFlame]

prr: They were all from at least 3 years ago.

[MsRobyn]

What Exit?, yup. That's the one. That thread, and lee's pitting of Ukulele Ike stand out to me as two threads that show just how nasty and personal some of those threads can get. The latter turned out OK, but it started a meme that, frankly, isn't the SDMB's finest.

And fuck this 300-second wait between searches. That's bullshit.

[mozg]

What Exit?, yup. That's the one. That thread, and lee's pitting of Ukulele Ike stand out to me as two threads that show just how nasty and personal some of those threads can get. The latter turned out OK, but it started a meme that, frankly, isn't the SDMB's finest.

And fuck this 300-second wait between searches. That's bullshit.

As long as I live, I will never, ever forget the 'wonderful living woman sperm.'

Ever.

[Tinker]

Why is Clueless Ed doing this? Why is he coming down from on high now and dropping decrees left and right? What's his endgame? And, most importantly, how do we thwart it?

Well, I think the people that are suggesting that he's bowing to pressure from the Creative Loafing folks are correct. They want the board to be repackaged as an advertising tool for their products. People calling each other cuntwaffle or douchewater are too much for advertisers. You have to remember the board is in the US where seeing a nipple caused people to have the vapors.

Well except those people calling each other cuntwaffle and douchewater are the customers that the advertisers hope to cater to. The SDMB is no worse than the discussions I see in major media outlets forums.

[Tinker]

If anything, it's Guests without Adblock who should be making the demands - they're the ones who are going to lose the SDMB the most money when they stop viewing pages.

At about 8 cents per thousand, I doubt that the number of Guests without Adblock who leave will amount to a fart in a windstorm, especially since the traffic was already headed for the ground at Mach 3.

Umm...people keep sayign this so umm...cite?

[Guinastasia]

I actually like Lynn as a poster-as an admin, I think she's burned out and really should just retire.

[BiblioCat]

... and lee's pitting of Ukulele Ike stand out to me as two threads that show just how nasty and personal some of those threads can get.

I'll have to re-read that one. I remember it being funny as hell. I guess I'm blocking out the nastiness that developed.

[elmwood]

People calling each other cuntwaffle or douchewater are too much for advertisers. You have to remember the board is in the US where seeing a nipple caused people to have the vapors.

Remember, though, Creative Loafing owns alternative freesheets, where one will find swearing in the articles and editorials. These are publications that print ads for, as they say on The Sopranos, hoo-wahs. We're not talking about "family" and senior citizen freesheets here, that offer advice on mommy clubs and finding an honest Buick mechanic.

[Fenris]

I wonder if they've considered some very easy solutions, like hiding the pit from non-members, etc.

Won't work--everything I've read from Ed and Dex is that they want to get rid of member status. They make much more money from ads than they do from memberships, so any perks that would be an incentive to become a member are right out.

Were I pit mod, my rules would be:

1) Don't be a jerk-and yeah, I'll know it when I see it. Telling someone you hope their kid gets raped? Jerk. Telling someone that they're a goat-felching cum belching gutter-whore? Not a jerk.
2) No posting real-life info on any poster. Or net-info. No stalking (net-stalking or otherwise. Remember the thread with the woman who was bragging about how she was cheating on her husband with a cop and Hubby was too st00pid to figure it out? As much fun as it was to see her get tracked down to within a few blocks of where she lived, that was probably wrong.)
3) No actual threats or calls for real violence. This is a fuzzy line, live with it. ("I hope you get cancer"? Probably ok. "I wish I was next to you so I could push you in front of a bus"? Probably not. "I will find where you live, drive out there, kick open the door, kill your cat and stuff it's corpse down your throat so you suffocate!"--that would be a "not ok".)
4) No fucking politics-you want to say "Obama's the Anti-Christ!!11!" or "Bush Suxxxors!!" then get thee to Great Debates and defend your position. Political threads in the Pit are ALWAYS either Cheerleading ("YEAH! YOU TELL 'EM!") or anti-Cheerleading ("You stoopid leftie/rightie"!) and they're boring to read. OR they turn into debates and therefore shouldn't be there anyway.

About half of Lynn's rules, the idiotic "They annoy me but they don't actually interfere with the Pit's functioning" rules ("No "lawnchair" posts", "No joke (and I won't define what I mean by that) threads") will be stickied so we can point and laugh at them.

Any others?

[Fenris]

I actually like Lynn as a poster-as an admin, I think she's burned out and really should just retire.

That's precisely how I feel. She and I have near identical tastes in books and when I'm in Cafe Society I make it a point to look for her (too infrequent) posts--she's always got interesting stuff to say.

But as an admin? < shudder >

[wring]

Remember the thread with the woman who was bragging about how she was cheating on her husband with a cop and Hubby was too st00pid to figure it out? As much fun as it was to see her get tracked down to within a few blocks of where she lived, that was probably wrong.)

My take on that whole situation was that the woman was so fucking clueless, bragging about her situation and certain she'd never get caught cause her hubby was clueless (ironic, no?), it took posters actually demonstrating how close they could come (metaphorically speaking) to convince her she should shut the fuck up about it. IOW, w/o the specifics coming out, she would still be clueless. IIRC, she changed her screen name, stopped (at least then) the affair, but jury is still out if she ever got a clue.

On another topic: HI FENRIS!!!!!!

[Fenris]

[
Nor should any of us be surprised at the "Its our way, or no way" attitude of The Reader, its always been that way.

Quibble: there's been one (1) notable exception.

When Giraffe, Fluiddruid and Veb took over The Pit, they (gasp!) asked the users for input--and there was close to zero outrage or hysteria or anger when the rules changes happened. People who didn't get their way after the discussion shook out were still generally supportive.

Compare and contrast:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/...d.php?t=365978 This strategy

Hey all,

In response to poster feedback, TVeblen, fluiddruid and I [Giraffe] have come up with new consolidated rules thread to replace the hodgepodge of stickies, rumor and hearsay that we've been using so far. We'd like to hear your thoughts. Is it clear? Are we missing anything? Would a new poster be able to read this and immediately become a good Pit citizen? (No, I'm not writing Pitizen. Stop it.) Any and all feedback and suggestions are welcome.

Once that thread seems to contain everything needed to run a forum, we will (insert drumroll here) unstick all the other stickies and let them sink gracefully to the depths.

with this one http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/...7&postcount=16 this

You know, we could have a long discussion about better or worse ways to do this. All I know is, we made a lot of little tweaks, and they just weren't solving the problem. So my feeling was, I'll just jump into this with both feet, and everybody will scream and shout, and eventually we'll wind up with something everybody can live with. Which I think is basically what's going to happen. So it took like, what, five days? C'mon, Veb, you used to do this. That's record time. So yeah, everybody thinks I'm an asshole. Worse things have happened.

Guess which one had two very polite, very thoughtful threads and lead to like 3 of the strongest years the Pit has ever seen and which has lead to (at quick count) like 14 threads, 99.99% of which are filled with people who are pissed.

[DeadlyAccurate]

I actually like Lynn as a poster-as an admin, I think she's burned out and really should just retire.

I've actually had Lynn over to my house, and she is a very nice woman. Also, without going into details, although I did something that upset her in real life, she never once took it out on me on the boards (or elsewhere, not that it needs saying).

[SmartAleq]

Remember the thread with the woman who was bragging about how she was cheating on her husband with a cop and Hubby was too st00pid to figure it out? As much fun as it was to see her get tracked down to within a few blocks of where she lived, that was probably wrong.)

My take on that whole situation was that the woman was so fucking clueless, bragging about her situation and certain she'd never get caught cause her hubby was clueless (ironic, no?), it took posters actually demonstrating how close they could come (metaphorically speaking) to convince her she should shut the fuck up about it. IOW, w/o the specifics coming out, she would still be clueless. IIRC, she changed her screen name, stopped (at least then) the affair, but jury is still out if she ever got a clue.

On another topic: HI FENRIS!!!!!!

Not only that, but her original username was basically her initials and last name and she'd been using the exact same username for photo hosting and blogs and gods know what else so you pretty much had to try VERY HARD not to figure out who she was. Also, the majority of the disclosures were made in the Snark Pit and were then tangentially tipped into the Pit thread. That chick REALLY needed a wake up call, and got one. Whereas I don't approve of net-stalking, nor of outing people on the internet in general, when you have someone making that much of a trainwreck of their life (remember that earlier on she confessed to a major pill habit--something like 3-400 Vicodin a month from multiple scrips along with her medical marijuana habit) sometimes it's just being a good neighbor to dope slap an out of control idiot to attempt to get some sense in their head.

[Fenris]

I've been increasingly dissatisfied with the SDMB in recent years. As far as I can tell there are not many posters anymore who joined before me and who are still active (I joined in November 2000). From my point of view, the problems started even before the whole pay-to-post thing. Capricious moderating and arbitrary policy changes have resulted in a board that has become increasingly insular and stagnant. < snip >Hell, Fenris disappeared for a long, long while and has only recently returned, and not I think in full force.

Correct.

A few cases of obviously politically motivated biased moderation* combined with the idiot "No joke threads in the Pit rule."

Whatever positive reputation I had for good posts at the SDMB in large part came from me (at least trying) to write funny rants in the Pit and occasionally ATMB. There was a period where Scylla and I were going after each other in a series of more and more over-the-top threads that, at least personally, I thought were pretty funny. One day, out of the blue, Lynn bans those types of posts and then within a day or so bans (and or bans-then-reverts-to-suspends) Esprix for...frankly no reason. That kinda did it for me.

Nowdays, I'm on the SDMB to be in Cafe Society.

*I can't think which ones in specific that pissed me off at the time, but they were along the lines of when Lynn made up the "All thread titles must be 100% accurate" rule to get a poster who posted something she didn't like about Planned Parenthood--and ignored a few dozen other threads with similar or more misleading titles. And I notice that that rule didn't make it to the final cut of new Pit rules. Nor is it in the Lynn's recently resurrected rules.

Note that most mods didn't and don't do that-they seem careful to separate out their moderation from their biases. But back when, there was just one too many for me.

[RedFury]

...As long as I live, I will never, ever forget the 'wonderful living woman sperm.'

Ever.

You and me both. I still need brain-bleach when I think about it. Ironically enough I thought I was as liberal as they come* up till that thread.

*Not sure if I intended that pun or not. Whatever.

[XJETGIRLX]

When you look at it from the perspective of an editor, what Ed is doing makes perfect sense. He's trying to shape and guide the content to be something more packageable and marketable as a product. And I'm sure he's a great editor.

The problem is a message board has absolutely nothing in common with a newspaper staff, or novel writing. Hell, Ed's even referred to how he "doesn't need a bunch of freelancers" mucking things up.

We aren't freelancers. Our content is not created for a marketable audience. Our motivation is not to reach an audience, or get paid for our work. We are here for entertainment, plain and simple. Ed will never understand that.

[pepperlandgirl]

Well I hope you fucks can keep this board interesting, because I just closed my SDMB tab--something I have never done before. But I figured if everybody who finds a new "Internet home" away from the SDMB just closes the tab/window, Ed might notice he's losing traffic. And the bottom line is all that matters. Maybe if enough people walk, the higher-ups at Creative Loafing will get off Ed's back, and he'll get off our backs, and everything will go back to normal.

[What Exit?]

Whatever positive reputation I had for good posts at the SDMB in large part came from me (at least trying) to write funny rants in the Pit and occasionally ATMB. ...Nowdays, I'm on the SDMB to be in Cafe Society.

Interesting as I actually thought your very positive rep was for brilliant posts in Café. In my case I was especially fond of your detailed Heinlein posts. You know Heinlein the way I know Tolkien. Heinlein is my second favorite author and I know next to nothing compared to you. I also knew you had a great rep among the Comic Book fans. You were one of the few posters I ever mentioned as being sad to see gone and I was happy when you returned.

Your posts remain witty and well written in whatever forum you were in apparently.

[DeadlyAccurate]

Well I hope you fucks can keep this board interesting, because I just closed my SDMB tab--something I have never done before. But I figured if everybody who finds a new "Internet home" away from the SDMB just closes the tab/window, Ed might notice he's losing traffic. And the bottom line is all that matters. Maybe if enough people walk, the higher-ups at Creative Loafing will get off Ed's back, and he'll get off our backs, and everything will go back to normal.

I actually took the Dope off my SpeedDial (FireFox add-on) and replaced it with this board. I've never Pitted another poster; I rarely even read more than a page or two of most of the ones out there; and I don't know if I've even joined in the Pitting of another poster. And Ed's decisions still pissed me off enough to leave the board. It wasn't so much the rule per se; it was the whole attitude of "Yeah, I haven't done a damn thing with the board in ten years, but now that I want to take an active part in it, it's going to become the board I want. Fuck those of you who actually made it what it is."

[TheFlame]

It wasn't so much the rule per se; it was the whole attitude of "Yeah, I haven't done a damn thing with the board in ten years, but now that I want to take an active part in it, it's going to become the board I want. Fuck those of you who actually made it what it is."

I concur wholeheartedly with this. It's Ed Zotti's attitude (and that of some of the other mods behind him) that has pissed me off enough to want to be here far more than I want to be there at the moment. I very rarely directed any kind of abuse at other posters (I Pitted maybe once or twice a year, and wasn't particularly venomous when I did). None of the new Pit Rules would have affected my personal posting. But Ed has completely screwed the pooch, and shown a contempt for the members in the way he has gone about his changes in a way that I don't think has ever happened in the near-decade I have been a Doper.

[SmartAleq]

I'm also getting really, REALLY tired of people telling us that we're playing in somebody else's sandbox. It's only true to a very small extent--Zotti and minions may technically control/own the SDMB but I argue that it's the members that have actually MADE the board what it is. I'm not a terribly prolific poster, but I have about four times the participation buy-in that Ed does. Without CONTENT, in the form of threads and posts, a message board is precisely NOTHING, it's a 404 waiting to happen. Treating us like shit is like refusing to put oil in your car's engine--yeah, you may own the car, you may be THE BOSS, but that engine can and will seize up and leave you as King Shit of Turd Hill if you don't acknowledge the importance what the engine is telling you to do.

We're like tenants who've made gigantic improvements in a house, turning it from a tarpaper shack into a nice three story mansion--yeah, we don't own it, but we deserve at least some respect and consideration for our efforts, which have greatly increased the value of the property.

[3trew]

When you look at it from the perspective of an editor, what Ed is doing makes perfect sense. He's trying to shape and guide the content to be something more packageable and marketable as a product.

This is an excellent point. It's also the biggest reason I foresee a great deal of doom in the SDMB's future. For those of you playing at home, I have the remarkable ability to foresee doom and gloom in the planning of a child's birthday party, and was quite surprised to find myself un-nuked at the end of the 1980's, but bear with me.

They'll get rid of the sex based insults, then the general vitriol, then they'll get rid of the Pit altogether because that didn't work, then they'll decide that all of the views they lost in the last few months are due to those horrible, horrible people in MPSIMS with their poop talk and icky girl parts discussing, with the clots and the cups and the glayvin.... Assuming the Pit dies, I give it a year maximum before the chill sets in with a Mod Note that says "if you knew it was Too Much Information you shouldn't have posted it in the first place".

I moved to the SDMB as my main online hangout because all of the others had become locked into a cycle of constant self-important meta drama that made them very different from what had first attracted me. I am fully aware of the irony involved in coming to the SDMB as a refuge from self importance. It was seeing two posters figuratively rip one another's entrails out with rusty chunks of rebar in the Pit and riff off of one another's puns in Cafe Society, in the same hour, that hooked me.

If you're trying to advertise to somebody who thinks the prohibition on biting, gouging, and fish-hooking in MMA makes it unrealistic, fine. If you're trying to advertise to someone who doesn't approve of knitting because using two needles reminds them of "the queers", that's fine too. Those are two very special markets and need constant tending. If you're trying to get advertisers based on interesting contend provided by your users, on THE FUCKING INTERNET, then you probably need to lighten the fuck up.

May I just say that it's quite nice to have ranted without worrying about being banned for no apparent reason.

Isn't it also odd that I don't worry about that here, on a board I found today and have made a grand total of two posts at, whereas I would on the one I spent seven years reading and occasionally participating in?

[elmwood]

I've said it before on the SDMB, and I'll say it here. I don't have much of a beef with the SDMB, and I tend not to follow the politics and drama. My issue is how conservative the site is. Yes, conservative. It sometimes feels akin to an old-money country club where tradition is thick, and change is slow. Consider how infrequently smilies appear, new subforums added, or even how rare software upgrades are. Even enabling editing took forever, and it was done with a lot of reluctant soul-searching. Many members seem to approve of, and thus enable the board's conservativism; consider how many Dopers feel about avatars, for instance. "They'll bring the lulz crowd to the SDMB", "Slippery slope! Next we'll have huge signature images!" and "We'll be sued by Fox if someone uses a Hank Hill avatar!", they believe.

Also, I think some members are more equal than others, to borrow a line from Animal Farm. Consider Opalcat's promotion of her art exhibits in Cleveland. If it was any other poster, the thread would be disappeared and the user smacked hard, but since it's a '99er legend making the post, it was just closed, butnever deleted. Nothing against Opalcat; it's just that it's the first example of special treatment that comes to mind. While long-established and high-posting members have earned a certain level of respect among the members on other message boards, on the SDMB they've got what seems like celebrity status.

[Pork Rind]

Whatever positive reputation I had for good posts at the SDMB in large part came from me (at least trying) to write funny rants in the Pit and occasionally ATMB.

Pretty sure it was the barbeque recipe that cemented your fame. You started me down a long, smoky path there.

[featherlou]

<snip>If you're trying to advertise to someone who doesn't approve of knitting because using two needles reminds them of "the queers", that's fine too. <snip>

I agree with all of your points, and I just wanted to say how much I loved this illustration.

[sublight]

I never pitted anyone over at the SDMB, nor have I ever been pitted. Hell, I don't even swear all that much in my posts. But it was good to know that the option was always there, and it made watching the neverending semi-chaos of the Pit a lot of fun. The new rules probably wouldn't have changed my posting style one bit, but that doesn't make them any less asinine.

Back around the time Otto first got banned, I said in a PM to another poster that Ed was looking like a clueless executive who suddenly decides one day that he wants to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty working in the trenches, then promptly fucks everything up because he has no idea how anything works and throws tantrums at the slightest provocation.

Anyway, I'll go back for updates to the Death Pool, but other than that I'm here.

[Rabid Renaissance]

With respect to the terms Twatbiscuit/Twatpancake, I believe the correct verbage is Twaffle.

You folks are making me hungry. Damn, I wish they made some sugar-free syrup that tasted good.

Fizz makes some sugar-free flavored lube...

[sturmhauke]

I've been increasingly dissatisfied with the SDMB in recent years. As far as I can tell there are not many posters anymore who joined before me and who are still active (I joined in November 2000). From my point of view, the problems started even before the whole pay-to-post thing. Capricious moderating and arbitrary policy changes have resulted in a board that has become increasingly insular and stagnant. < snip >Hell, Fenris disappeared for a long, long while and has only recently returned, and not I think in full force.

Whatever positive reputation I had for good posts at the SDMB in large part came from me (at least trying) to write funny rants in the Pit and occasionally ATMB. There was a period where Scylla and I were going after each other in a series of more and more over-the-top threads that, at least personally, I thought were pretty funny.

Dude, everyone thought those were pretty funny. Well, I did anyway. Those threads would die a quick death today I think. Collounsbury's fake Pitting certainly would, and that one was pretty funny too (and I don't just say that because of my Star Wars parody using thread participants).

One day, out of the blue, Lynn bans those types of posts and then within a day or so bans (and or bans-then-reverts-to-suspends) Esprix for...frankly no reason. That kinda did it for me.

...Esprix got banned? I missed that one. I thought he just disappeared. That's... damn, that's fucking stupid.

[Muffin]

Remember the thread with the woman who was bragging about how she was cheating on her husband with a cop and Hubby was too st00pid to figure it out? As much fun as it was to see her get tracked down to within a few blocks of where she lived, that was probably wrong.

Yes, I tracked down her complete address. No, I did not send a letter to her husband. Yes, had she continued to brag about what she was doing to her husband, I would have sent him a letter.

[Fenris]

One day, out of the blue, Lynn bans those types of posts and then within a day or so bans (and or bans-then-reverts-to-suspends) Esprix for...frankly no reason. That kinda did it for me.

...Esprix got banned? I missed that one. I thought he just disappeared. That's... damn, that's fucking stupid.

I think he was banned for a day or so and then he was unbanned but suspended. He was certainly suspended.

[featherlou]

Remember the thread with the woman who was bragging about how she was cheating on her husband with a cop and Hubby was too st00pid to figure it out? As much fun as it was to see her get tracked down to within a few blocks of where she lived, that was probably wrong.

Yes, I tracked down her complete address. No, I did not send a letter to her husband. Yes, had she continued to brag about what she was doing to her husband, I would have sent him a letter.

I don't think that would have been wrong. I'm more of a libertarian when it comes to what adults do on message boards - if you're stupid enough to do what she did, then you get to live with the consequences. Same with taking medical advice over the internet - if you don't realize that you're taking advice from strangers rather than your own doctors, too bad for you.

[Beadalin]

I don't have much to add that hasn't already been said, but I fully agree with the OP (and lots of youse guys). I started at the SDMB back in 1999, and I've seen a lot of drama come and go, but none of it felt like a sea change to what the Boards are and should be. This latest round of idiocy from Ed does.

I, too, have never been Pitted and I don't recall ever Pitting another poster, but I love reading Pit threads and knowing that I have the option to participate as freely as I want. Now its entire purpose has been filtered and watered down to the point of pointlessness. That, and the ham-handed way that Ed and his few supporters have brought all of this about, has shifted how I fundamentally perceive the SDMB altogether. It's always felt like "my" place, and now it feels like someone else's. It's too bad.

I hope this place thrives.

[RobuSensei]

I've said it before on the SDMB, and I'll say it here. I don't have much of a beef with the SDMB, and I tend not to follow the politics and drama. My issue is how conservative the site is. Yes, conservative. It sometimes feels akin to an old-money country club where tradition is thick, and change is slow. Consider how infrequently smilies appear, new subforums added, or even how rare software upgrades are. Even enabling editing took forever, and it was done with a lot of reluctant soul-searching. Many members seem to approve of, and thus enable the board's conservativism; consider how many Dopers feel about avatars, for instance. "They'll bring the lulz crowd to the SDMB", "Slippery slope! Next we'll have huge signature images!" and "We'll be sued by Fox if someone uses a Hank Hill avatar!", they believe.

I always got the impression that a lot of the most ardent defenders of the status quo of the Dope are people who have never bothered to look at any other message board on the net, which may be a contributing factor to the conservatism. People who swear up and down that the SDMB is the biggest message board on the internet, so big that vBulletin uses the Dope as a benchmark for what they're doing...people who claim that the Dope is the bestest, most intelligentest, all around ichi-ban neatoest board in the world.

This of course would mean that all the server slowdowns and technical glitches are normal, and that every other board on the internet has it worse.

Now that Ed is almost finished crushing the last thing that made the Dope unique...I think I'm done tilting at windmills for now.