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Are you getting 100% from your Barbelith?

Our Lady of The Two Towers

16:36 / 15.08.01

Who regularly contributes to every forum here? Are there some you miss out? Why?

Personally I go everywhere except 'Creation', the 'Art' forum, 'Magic' and I leave 'Conversation' until last so I only go in if I have enough time. Mainly it's just a lack of knowledge and/or sometimes interest that keeps me away. And the fact that the few times I've mlooked in 'Creation' everyones been intent on doing things a lot more fun than I could manage...

Ronald Thomas Clontle

16:44 / 15.08.01

As you can tell by either looking at the forums themselves, or extrapolating from Tom's "embarassment of the month" thread, I'm a ubiquitous presence in the comics and music forums. I also post in the conversation, gathering, headshop, film/tv, and switchboard forums. I tend to never even look at the magik forum out of disinterest. I'm not sure what's going on in the creation thing, so I never look at that either. I usually read a lot of the Laboratory forum, but seldom have anything to add. This is probably my second or third post to Policy. I don't look at Books or Art/Design very much, I'm not sure why not. I mean, I'm a visual artist mainly, I go to art school, I see galleries regularly. I'm sure I'd have something to add.

Lord, this is such a useless post.

18:47 / 15.08.01

I don't go to the Magick forum much these days, partly because I'm not doing any magic at present and partly because (how can I say this nicely?) it tends to feature a lot of repetition, meta-physical hoo-ha and deeply personal stuff that means next to nothing to those not involved.

I haven't made my debut in the art forum yet because ..well.. I find graphic art pretty difficult to get to grips with and my views on the subject are idiosyncratic and ill informed and would only cause trouble.

Similarly, I don't go to the Laboratory much as hard science has always baffled me and probably always will (though the cool end results are fun).

And I'd like to take this oppurtunity to point out that while I don't post much in the Headshop / Switchboard, I do try to read as much of it as possible.

00:43 / 16.08.01

I'm afraid I hit the revolution every time, the core occasionally, and rarley look at anything else.

13:08 / 16.08.01

I avoid the magic forum, as - despite an initial interest in the idea behind it - I found it didn't contain anything much of interest.
The lab interests me, but I don't have enough science know-how to contribute much.
Policy too is one I should visit more than I do.
If there's anywhere I guarantee I'll end up, it's music.

20:55 / 16.08.01

I'm beginning to think that we need some kind of outreach program for each of the major sections of the underground and I'm thinking the zine would be the ideal place for it.

Do you know why I don't go into the Magick section very much? Because I don't feel like I understand it well enough, and because part of me thinks that it isn't for me. Which is very strange, since I am very interested in the cross-over between philosophical theory (deconstruction and postmodernity), quantum processes (observation / cause and effect) and magickal processes. But we've almost got to a place where the sections are ghettoising themselves.

What I wanted from the zine was it to be a place where people could produce work - thought through, composed and designed for a more mass market audience - about the issues that this place gave them an opportunity to talk about.

More articles about Magick would make the Magick forum itself less impenetrable to people and disseminate the ideas. And the same holds true across the site. And think of it this way. Your thoughts on this board are fleeting and prone to the occasional collapses and purges that mean it can keep functioning. In one form or another, I have no intention of EVER taking a feature down from the zine.

01:12 / 17.08.01

Here's something to consider. When I posted on the delphi forums, I always checked every section, from general to comics to whatever else the WEF had. This is because it only took an extra five seconds to see titles for all the topics. I didn't have to click on a drop down menu and wait a couple seconds for a new page to come up.

I know this sounds lazy, but it's true.

Of course, the disadvantage of delphi's format was that it discouraged long posts. If you ever really got going on a post, your message was truncated. Fonts were bigger and you always felt like you had to keep the discussion short.

04:25 / 17.08.01

I try to check out every thing that has a new post since the last Time I arrived...although I wish people would spend more time making their point clear rather than just making their point.(especially on the art threads)
As my colour theory teacher yoused to scream: K.I.S.SS: Keep It Simple Stupid.

09:11 / 18.08.01

quote:Originally posted by SMatthewStolte:
I didn't have to click on a drop down menu and wait a couple seconds for a new page to come up.

I may have missed something here as I've only ever visited a delphi forum once, but smart use of the direct links that are the forum names here and the 'back' button on your browser means you never have to even look at the drop-down menu.

09:30 / 18.08.01

Drop down menu is usually my prefered navigation around here, actually. It's not that specifically. It's that each subject---conversation, policy, head shop, etc.--- is like a different room here. You have to actually go there before you can see the thread titles.

At delphi, there's a column off to the left of the screen with all the thread titles with nothing but a dividing line between two subjects. I'm suggesting that this format is more likely to allow cross-breeding than the Barbelith format.

Mordant Carnival

17:19 / 22.08.01

How 'bout making the "today's active topics" link availiable from any page? I know, I'm lazy, but it'd be handy.

The Return Of Rothkoid

18:03 / 22.08.01

I tend to work my way through the daily summary page; it's on my toolbar at work, and is an easy way to see what's going on, although I know that it's easy for stuff to fall through the cracks that way. I go pretty much everywhere, but don't contribute that much to Head Shop or Magick discussions, usually because there's some chunk of theory I'm missing.

In other forums, I just fake it.

18:13 / 22.08.01

Oddly enough, I find Head Shop and Magick the easiest places to fake it. Everywhere else is intimidating.

Imaginary Mongoose Solutions

22:14 / 24.08.01

So, as a longtime MAGICK poster and frequent poster to many other things, I have to wonder:

If you see something that puzzles you or looks obtuse, then why don't you ask?

I mean, one of the reasons we're all here is to exchange ideas, right? An idea exchange isn't going to get very far if we can only exchange ideas we already know about.

Here the MAGICK folks keep running on about how Magick needs to be accessable and part of everyday life and various social constructs and yet tons of people avoid the forum because they feel that it isn't accessable.

When hardcore pagan people are also leaders in the anti-WTF movement and are using both magick and sociology to meet their goals, there's no reason for the MAGICK forum to be ghettoized. And yeah, I'm talking about Starhawk. Hell, I don't even like Starhawk and I'm using her as an example.

Why is the MAGICK a ghetto? How can it be fixed? How can cross-pollination of threads be acheived?

Or is everyone too cool to ask questions?

23:00 / 24.08.01

I think Mordant Carnival's idea would help wuite a lot. The main thing, I think, keeping people out of one forum or another is that they don't see most of the topics discussed there.

13:18 / 25.08.01

I'm not getting 100%, but then it's a time constraints thing, and I'm not giving 100% here either.

One day, I will manage to visit and read/post to every thread. But not right now.

Mordant Carnival

17:42 / 25.08.01

Maybe a specific FAQ for each thread? That way we could dispense with quite a lot of repetition, and also help people to feel less intimidated.

Jack The Bodiless

22:15 / 26.08.01

Now that's an idea. A FAQ for The Magick would actually make me want to go there.

Jamieon

10:39 / 27.08.01

"The Magick" is a bit of a misnomer. Basically, it's not "magic" it's concerned with, but Chaos Magic. Now I know not everyone there is a chaote, but every other topic seems to be, in some way, tangentially linked to Phile Hine's trip. There's so much emphasis on spell casting, sigilizing, servitors, etc. and very little on meditation, mysticism, illumination, martial arts, alchemy, etc... and I don't really think many people there really want to talk about that stuff or there'd be more posts about it. And, invariably, there are none. The interest just doesn't seem to be there.

And before anyone says: "Well why don't you start posting about that stuff, then?" I think I've already answered that question. No one seems into it.

And who's to say I haven't already?

[ 27-08-2001: Message edited by: runt ]

17:16 / 27.08.01

I dunno. I've seen that ebb and flow twice now.

Lothar and Wyrd have had some rather huge shamanism discussions. What you don't see much of is tolerance for Wiccans.

[ 28-08-2001: Message edited by: [YNH] ]