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INTERVENTION (PICS, NSFW depending on your workplace's attitude to fully-clad pictures either of Grant Morrison or of Ron Mael, depending on whether that moderation action goes through)

 
  

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Neon Snake
20:56 / 06.01.09
Well, it ensures that everyone is informed that there is clear intent to shut down the site. If you rely on people reading the pager thread, or the Policy forum, then you will inevitably miss a whole load of people, and present a petition that is not representative of the people who are using the coloured forum, and getting something out of it. Instead, you will get a petition representative of people who have a need to visit the Policy forum.

It seems a reasonable assumption that those who have no problem with Barbelith are less likely to visit the Policy than those who do.


Hm. Having said that, you asked for an email address from a place of work - chances are, a lot of those email addresses will no longer be relevant. Ah, well, fuck it.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
21:15 / 06.01.09
I think some of my friends were thinking of interceding with Tom for the sake of my mental health... that might work.

Grant said in the thread about aggressive stupidity:

've been out for a couple of weeks.

Strep throat - don't let it happen to you.

Plus, moving.

I've yet to read anything beyond Policy. I take it things have taken a turn.

Anyone else care to try simply deleting offensive posts?

It's a functionality we still have, after all.


Which, well. Another moderator has just burned their password. I haven't run the numbers, but that might have put us to the point where we can't delete content in some fora. Also, I don't think we can rely on that functionality. For one, because it is much easier to post than to delete. For two, because it's pretty hard to get consensus on the remains of the moderators, especially when the issue is not violent attacks. We only got a functional process for agreeing to ban people when Randy and I basically stopped asking for consensus. See Vladimir J Baptiste, for example.

So, yes. I'm not sure if that's practical.

In terms of Barbelith - I had my cold water in the face moment, really, when one member tried to kill off an actually interesting and engaged discussion of race in a comic book by calling it "mumbo jumbo", and then another decided that it was appropriate, when his behaviour was questioned, to respond in a parody of a beaten slave. Atrocious racial insensitivity, an active and gleeful desire to upset and (quite liderally) denigrate others using racially charged language. And, specifically, the trust that they could do so in a consequence-free environment - they had each other's back, and there were plenty of others who would be happy to defend them.

Which, I think, gives us our two points. At one end, you've got Mist and Keggers in the petition thread - who use Barbelith basically as a chat room, and don't really have any investment in whether the bits which are not being used for chat are being used as a hate rally but would like to continue to have access to the parts of it they like. This is a convenient place for them to hang out and talk, and, you know, that is a valuable facility offered by this and other message boards. There are people here who would certainly be more isolated and unhappy without the Internet. The question possibly being where Barbelith sits in that - how necessary is it? Could that function be fulfilled by Livejournal or Facebook or, indeed, Liminal Nation?

From there you have two options, really. One is to set up an autoreply so that everyone who emails the Barbelith application email gets instructions on how to create a login, or we just put it in the wiki or the discussion thread. No more barriers to entry, no more possibility of banning, really - anyone who wants in gets in. It becomes a place with no control, little or no functional moderation, and so on.

The other is to stop applications and just have it as a kind of old folks' home - a legacy board where those who got in can stay if they want to, or can go at a time and in a method of their choosing. That's the model we basically have at the moment - a slow descent with some degree of control, but with no way of dealing with outbreaks of racism, sexism and unpleasantness that we used to have some sort of at least consensus condemnation. Once Randy and I go, there's not much in the way of immune system and less in the way of moderation.

Next along, which I think is what the petition is basically asking for, is an end to posting. That involves Tom turning a spigot. In that model, ideally, people could still log in, read and over time download their PMs, read the discussions but there would no longer be any way to contribute to threads.

And, at the far end, there's shutting the whole thing down, closing the board, either booting everyone out of their logins or just taking the whole thing offline.

Some of these options are more possible than others - the first two are actually quite easy, but they do involve basically giving up on the community as a place it is worthwhile to occupy, or the past of which it is worth trying to preserve. Which is a position, and maybe a healthy one. To make any of those the annointed status quo I think I'd probably want to get Tom's opinion. However, he's got a lot of stuff going on at present, and I don't think Barbelith is much of a pressing issue for him.
 
 
Closed for Business Time
21:37 / 06.01.09
Haus, your opinion on one thing: Starting a new thread in every forum asking people to weigh in either on the aye or nay threads. Good or bad idea? It would at least get more people's attention. Is conceivably spamming...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
21:47 / 06.01.09
I'm probably the wrong person to ask, because I don't think that this is an issue around quorate - I don't think it's a simple majority issue. It sounds satisfyingly dramatic, but all it's really communicating is that the moderators and, for want of a better phrase, actual contributors around here are pretty much at bay. If I were MFreitas or similar, and I felt that my opinion had merit and would have the power to persuade (which I would), I'd be pretty happy with that situation and eager to keep Barbelith up and running. However, it's pretty apparent anyway.

Ultimately, I don't think you'll be banned for that sort of spamming. If there are enough moderators left in some forums, you might get some deleted or moved to Conversation, but I doubt it. It would create a bit of heat and noise. Act as the spirit moves you.
 
 
Anna de Logardiere
21:52 / 06.01.09
It would be neater if you linked back rather than compiling votes in so many various threads. Less work for you too and less annoying for people who bother to read more than one of the fora (if there are any).
 
 
Tsuga
22:07 / 06.01.09

I don't know. I respect what people are saying, but I don't want this place to go. I keep reading people saying the internet is a big place and there are plenty of other places that can duplicate this one, but I haven't seen it. Maybe I just don't get around enough. I'm not signed up to Facebook or Livejournal, from what I can tell they may be interesting in their own right, but not the same. I enjoy the anonymity of this place (which yes, you can find elsewhere) combined with, well...what was the level of discussion, and the individuals that make up the place. It's not all total shit now, though it's mostly much lighter, nonsense fare. Good posts of any depth are few and far between, though there have been occasional bursts out of nowhere. I know that I've wanted to start topics but don't feel the effort would pay off. It's a little sad to spend an hour on a post and get no response, or maybe one or two pity-posts.

It's like the tanking global economy. The infrastructure is still there, but the equity value is dropping like a turd on a ballet stage. You who've been in this market for a long time see your investment disappearing and confidence is at an all-time low, many of you want to sell. Continuing the stretch of this useless analogy, some people, maybe who have not been here as long, or who are hopelessly optimistic lottery-ticket-buyer-types, want to stay invested in this Ponzi that depends on more and more good people signing up and posting.

No, that wasn't very good. I'm just a little bit hopeful that Tom will someday decide to do something, anything, to let this place take another step up or down. I'm willing to stick with it as long as a few others of you are. If for some reason people suddenly get a wild hair and start a thread about something I feel like I could add to, fantastic. If it's only stallion and Jawsus lol-ing, no offense, but even I may give up then.

As it stands now, this place is already an archive, so long as Tom is hosting it. It's just an active one that can be sullied, somewhat, by current posting. It could be enhanced by it, but that's not really happening much now.

I don't know. I don't have the same amount of time and sweat equity invested in the place as some of you. So I respect the opinions of you that want to shut it down, but personally, I disagree.
 
 
Pingle!Pop
23:09 / 06.01.09
I'm willing to stick with it as long as a few others of you are.

My finally giving up is largely based on the fact that those few others just don't exist any more. I've just looked through the moderator lists for all the fora - obviously that's far from a reliable or complete list of the most worthwhile posters on Barbelith, but there's a reasonable amount of correlation with those long-time posters who've been most valued in the past (and obviously the board hasn't been too hot on huge intake for a long time) - and virtually every one has given up. Of those that haven't entirely, those that post the most are I think Stoatie, Ermintrude and Haus. Stoatie and Ermintrude still post very little, and I think Haus has made fairly clear that his enthusiasm for the board's continued existence is pretty limited.

Even if Tom were to suddenly come back and wave a magic wand to introduce all the features everyone's been so desperately desiring, there's barely anyone left for whom to save Barbelith. Which is, I think it's safe to say for a pretty long time, a moot point anyway.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
23:41 / 06.01.09
Anyone else care to try simply deleting offensive posts?

It's a functionality we still have, after all.


Which, well. Another moderator has just burned their password. I haven't run the numbers, but that might have put us to the point where we can't delete content in some fora.


^This^

For about 6 months now I've been maintaining my log-in so that I could vote on mod requests, even when the thought of reading/posting was making me throw up in my mouth a little. Why the fuck should I or anyone else continue to do this for a board where the atmosphere has been horribly toxic and eyebleedy (and in my case where I've been straight-up informed I'm not welcome*)? What, we can't post here anymore, but we've got a responsibility to keep logging so we can run around with a bucket and mop? Bugger that, frankly.

Most of the people whose names you see at the top of the fora have already left. If the few remaining mods leave, new moderators are not going to be appointed. This leaves Barbelith as an unmoderated forum. Contrary to popular beliefs, "No mods!" does not mean a golden age where the uninhibited exchange of ideas will have us flying around on rocket-bikes whilst firing sigil out of our arses in a jiffy, it means great steaming heaps of obnoxious drivel and no way of cleaning it up. If someone decides to spam the board with scat pron, you won't be able to do anything about it. If someone decides to post your personal information on the public board, you won't be able to do anything about it. If someone finds a way to run malicious code on the board, you won't etc chiz moan drone.

If you're okay with playing pr0n and keylogger roulette until this place keels over, fine, go ahead, whatever. I'm just sayin'.



*Still here for as long as it's going to take to sort through 1500+ PMs (groan). After that, down one more mod.
 
 
Shrug
00:11 / 07.01.09
I'm leaving. Sorry to be all rat off a sinking ship about it but *scurries away and swims for it*.

It's been fun, except, of course, when it blatantly hasn't.
This isn't any particular judgement on whether the board should stay open or not just that I'd rather leave.

A little over 5 years online here, it seems a little inexplicable really, longer than I've ever lasted at anything, I think.
(Huh)
And: Thanks.*


*I'm not sure how this will effect moderation in the meanwhile, it still seems feasible from what I can make out**, but I'm leaving a grace period of a week or so within which time, if necessary, any other mod can contact me and I'll give my suit password and log on with which they can agree or disagree to requests (for functionalities sake).

**I don't really know the current status of some of the other moderators, however.
 
 
pony
04:00 / 07.01.09
Has the possibility of Haus and Randy simply using their powers to ban the shit out of any malign influences (with majority approval, of course) been completely written off? Aside from the unwanted responsibilities for those two, it seems like the only workable way to stave off the death.
 
 
EmberLeo
05:40 / 07.01.09
Somebody pointed out that there are folks who might be supportive (or not) who only read one of the colored forums.

Yeah, that would be me. I've been keeping an eye on the Temple just in case, but it's pretty obvious that with LN up, the Temple is mostly gone. I'm okay with that.

Frankly, my sense of rightness says that the technical issues alone are plenty enough reason to move on. If there is a social body big enough to move as a group, by all means, do so! The Temple set have, at least, and I think it's going quite well.

If it helps, I can sign a petition. But I do agree that you should put a linking thread in other forums if you want attention from folks like me. I had to be told to come look over here for this stuff.

--Ember--
 
 
Closed for Business Time
08:43 / 07.01.09
Ok. I'll post once in what seems to be top, or at least moving threads in each forum, directing attention to the Policy petitions. If mods delete, let them delete. Hell, ban me!

Does anyone even read the Headshop anymore? -sigh
 
 
Z. deScathach
12:16 / 07.01.09
This makes me very sad, really. When I came here 5 years ago, it seemed like an oasis. A place where intelligent discussion wasn't just common, it was INSISTED upon. Over those 5 yrs I've watched the problems multiply. There's one thing that I know. I would hate to see this place turn into what I see elsewhere on the web, and the problem is, I see no way to really keep that from happening. I'd rather see this place exist as a memory, then to have it become a parody of itself. I was really conflicted about whether it should be shut down, but when I think of what it's going to become, I guess I'm headed over to the aye thread. Doesn't mean I'm not going to shed a tear, though.......
 
 
HCE
14:55 / 07.01.09
I keep reading people saying the internet is a big place and there are plenty of other places that can duplicate this one

That's just it. There weren't other places that could duplicate what this one used to be like, or if there were, nobody was willing to give out a link. There were, and are, plenty of other places where you can go to be in a cockroach gang.
 
 
grant
18:01 / 07.01.09
that might have put us to the point where we can't delete content in some fora.

Could be. That's definitely a turning point, if it's been reached. It takes three mods to delete....



Also, I don't think we can rely on that functionality. For one, because it is much easier to post than to delete.

This is true, but I'm not sure trolls, etc. are so good at replacing crap posts for more than a few days. Or minutes. Maybe, maybe not.



For two, because it's pretty hard to get consensus on the remains of the moderators....

So, yes. I'm not sure if that's practical.



Well, I thought I'd bring it up anyway. Consensus is always slippery, but I find myself enjoying a place more when I'm doing *something*, even if it gets voted down.

I spend more of my time hanging on reddit.com nowadays, where everything that is is essentially a moderator action - content is all voted up and down by the whole site. Voting is fun.
 
 
Mirror
19:43 / 07.01.09
Is there, at this point, any wish whatsoever to save Barbelith amongst the more longterm posters?

Not for me, so much. This is obvious, as I essentially no longer post here, so perhaps my input should be ignored entirely.

In the last two major transitions of the board, (or at least the last one, my memory's fuzzy on the prior) the entire history of the board was lost, or at least relegated to some slowly bitrotting hard drive of Tom's. Perhaps it's time to simply once again wipe the slate clean? Or is the lack of momentum now so terminal that such an act would simply be Barbelith's final burial?

I'm forced to wonder whether the real value of this place ended with the fictionsuit era. The best no longer come here because Barbelith no longer has the dynamism that comes with allowing the worst?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
22:13 / 07.01.09
As usual when this sort of thing comes up, the discussion is bewildering. If the Headshop, the Temple or wherever seems to gone down the toilet, surely you either try to start some threads that at least seem witty or interesting to you, or you just leave?

Honestly, what's wrong with that? I don't see how this latest outbreak of effing and blinding is helping anyone.
 
 
iamus
23:41 / 07.01.09
I have to say A-Fucking-Men.

I also have to say that I believe Granny may also be dark stallion.
 
 
iamus
23:48 / 07.01.09
I mean, to me, the whole "It's disgusting that Barbelith has slipped from its previous standards into this" is directly equatable to "Grant Morrison would be ashamed if he saw what this place has become". I can unpack this if required, but what I see it as boiling down to is "people with x amount of investment in the Barbelith of y expect z of it".

I have my own narrative with the place and will go with group consensus. If it closes, it closes, and it's time to figure out what that means for me. If it's open then it's open, and I'll continue to engage with it in whatever way it wishes to be engaged with.
 
 
Tsuga
01:22 / 08.01.09
I think it wishes to be pampered and cooed to, with long walks on the beach and back rubs at the end of the day. Not all of this charming the pants off then sneaking around behind the back leaving with the check nonsense.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
01:28 / 08.01.09
Is there, at this point, any wish whatsoever to save Barbelith amongst the more longterm posters?

Dunno how longterm I count as, seeing as how when I joined in 2001 people were whining about it not being as good as the old days, but I'm up for saving it. Not sure if it's possible, but I dislike the idea that a few people (may) get to choose to close it down, while others disagree. Despite the fact that many of those who will be left are possibly wankers, and the majority of those voting to close are those I respect the most (this is true, and it's uncomfortable to me to disagree with the people I mostly stay here for, but it's how I feel)- I feel I should stick to my guns, and my guns were firmly firing from behind the barricade of "let's NOT close membership" back when we closed membership, which was, well, as far as I'm concerned, when it all started to go downhill. We stagnated, we repeated the same fucking arguments over and over again, and we never got the low-level trolling the defense against which is like antibodies for most boards, and the defense against which was what used to make us stronger. So, y'know, it'd be hypocritical of me to jump ship now.
 
 
iamus
04:46 / 08.01.09
we never got the low-level trolling the defense against which is like antibodies for most boards, and the defense against which was what used to make us stronger.

Agreed > 9000
 
 
iamus
04:48 / 08.01.09
We asked Tom all this.

Did we ever petition him?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
05:16 / 08.01.09
we never got the low-level trolling the defense against which is like antibodies for most boards, and the defense against which was what used to make us stronger.

We did - we just never got the mechanisms to deal with it in a non-ball-aching fashion. A petition to resolve that would be perfectly credible, but I think Nolte's petition thing is based on Nolte's conception of what it might be possible to do.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
05:21 / 08.01.09
Oh, and:

I mean, to me, the whole "It's disgusting that Barbelith has slipped from its previous standards into this" is directly equatable to "Grant Morrison would be ashamed if he saw what this place has become".

I can certainly believe that this is the case to you, but to me this is not the case on a number of fairly obvious levels. If you wanted to unpack why you think it is, go for it, but I'd suggest that a good start would be to select one of the various (and varied) statements that people have actually made rather than putting together a statement that nobody has - I'm not even sure that anyone has so far expressed disgust, rather than e.g. frustration, sadness, perplexity. Stick to the real.
 
 
Closed for Business Time
07:41 / 08.01.09
You know, Haus, at this stage I don't have any idea what is or isn't possible in terms of changing this place. I doubt if more than our Distant Creator and his Archon Cal actually do.

As I said to Ermintrude, this petition thing I started could well be futile, spurious, or an outbreak of illusions of grandeur on my part. At the end I guess it is what people make of it, and that could be nothing, another sob in the echo-chamber (haven't had my coffee yet, sorry about the drama).
 
 
iamus
08:08 / 08.01.09
I don't believe that Barbelith's problem has ever had anything to do with its technical limitaions. I've always thought it had a phenomenally good mechanism for dealing with trolls, which was its unique combination of serious intellect and complete irreverence that came from having many, many smart and funny people revelling in each others company and all talking at once.

That's not something Barbelith's had in a while and I think that has everything to do with the inability to invite people in through the doors and nothing to do with the ability to boot people out of them.

As soon as the stream of new voices dried up, Barbelith very quickly aquired a really unhelpful recieved wisdom about what it was and why it worked the way it did, simply because it had the time to catch its breath and do so. The same conversations got replayed over and over, people ceased to be challenged, and as a result a lot of people got really bored, really quickly, leaving in droves.

As the number of voices on Barbelith dropped, the volume of those that were left got louder and louder. Trolls that otherwise would have been shouted at,laughed out the door and then left behind by five pages of lime shower gel were able to find their voice, attract attention, dig their heels in and piss a lot of people off. There's been a good few really justifiable blow-ups about stuff, but there's been a vastly increasing amount of really inane back-and-forth that never would have been given the time of day before because everybody had already forgotten what they had been talking about, ten minutes down the line.

I truly believe that Barbelith's social functionality was far, far more important than it's technical functionality. Didn't it survive and thrive with tech far more basic than this? Did it ever work at all without the people that loved the place and posted to it because of that?

Without having been here from the start, I feel I have a lot of confidence in talking about this because I came in to Barbelith just after the doors got closed for good, and my complete experience of it has been watching that vibrant, fertile and incredibly smart place take a looong, sloooow slide into the doldrums. The only reason for that as far as I see, was that people got fucked off and found more engaging things to do. And the reason for that, as far as I see, is that people started to see nothing but themselves every time they opened a thread.
 
 
iamus
08:11 / 08.01.09
Worth noting that the better, more concise version of that post got ated by the internets, so what I'm saying there is not quite as close to how it sits in my head as the first was.
 
 
iamus
08:17 / 08.01.09
I also may be overstating terms that were used in a slightly different context the first time around, but...
 
 
iamus
08:30 / 08.01.09
I can certainly believe that this is the case to you, but to me this is not the case on a number of fairly obvious levels.

And I can certainly believe they may be obvious levels to you, but I'm fairly sure we approach situations a little differently from each other. Different things can be obvious to you and to me without either being false.

If you wanted to unpack why you think it is, I'd recommend starting by selecting a statement that has actually been made rather than making one up to caricature a position with which you disagree, but I'm not sure how profitable it would be in any case.

It may not be an exact statement, but I'm not doing it to charicature. Taking an exact statement would mean I'm only engaging one poster's views on the current situation and that wouldn't be helpful for what I'm trying to do, which is to open it out to more of a general take on how people feel at the moment (which is never going to be a perfect representation, admittedly). It's not directed at anyone in particular, but I can see why it could look that way.
 
 
iamus
08:55 / 08.01.09
Also (and I'm just interested in dialogue and not trying to pick a fight, promise) I'm not aware of how you could be sure how profitable something would be until it's actually been done. That phrase doesn't seem to do anything except be, well, a little dismissive itself.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
09:36 / 08.01.09
Well. My intention was to some extent to dismiss, so that was to some extent successful. A posit that what is going on here is best encapsulated using a term nobody has used and, really, which I would only really see as arguably evident in a small minority of contributions so far doesn't strike me as all that profitable to unpack, especially in comparison to a frankly rather silly comparison. We already did this earlier in the thread with jumping and shouting, and it is tricky to respond to commentary on what should have been said rather than what actually _was_.
 
 
iamus
10:06 / 08.01.09
A posit that what is going on here is best encapsulated using a term nobody has used...

Well, yeah. You think that every time somebody posts to Barbelith they're hitting the exact situation dead on? People never say what they really mean, and nobody can ever understand the entirety of any situation. I think my method is probably just about as useful or useless as expanding on an actual quote. Just as easy to use or abuse too.

and it is tricky to respond to commentary on what should have been said rather than what actually _was_.

I'm not actually trying to respond to any one point though, if I was then you would be spot on. What I'm trying to do, I go about differently. I'm not doing what you seem to be thinking I'm doing.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:33 / 08.01.09
At the risk of sounding unduly shavian, I think we agree entirely about what you are doing. You are imagining a statement based on what you believe certain people were saying (or what they meant in your opinion but did not say) and comparing that with another statement which was composed in the same way. Where we differ is on how well you are doing it, and how useful the comparison is.
 
 
grant
11:35 / 08.01.09
Trolls that otherwise would have been shouted at,laughed out the door and then left behind by five pages of lime shower gel were able to find their voice, attract attention, dig their heels in and piss a lot of people off. There's been a good few really justifiable blow-ups about stuff, but there's been a vastly increasing amount of really inane back-and-forth that never would have been given the time of day before because everybody had already forgotten what they had been talking about, ten minutes down the line.

I truly believe that Barbelith's social functionality was far, far more important than it's technical functionality.


Yes, this is true.

I'm not sure what to do about this kind of fatigue, though.
 
  

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