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Barbelith beyond Barbelith

02:25 / 27.05.02

I thought it might be nice if Barbelith as a whole made some organized efforts to have relationships with other places (specifically other forums) on the Internet. Some of my ideas are posted in the second post, but I would like to hear other ideas.

02:26 / 27.05.02

Here are a three ideas:

invasions
In this case, a number of ‘lithers would move temporarily to another forum, and, taking special care to respect their rules, provide our input on discussions, while also getting their input. We might start some topics and let them play out there. This could be good for both forums. One problem with this is that I’m not sure how other places on the web would like us doing this. Another problem I see is this: We would want to have different perspectives and different opinions about our discussions, but we would not want to walk into a new forum and just have twenty folks tell them that they are all wrong and rather stupid as well. I am not proposing confrontations, but alliances.

mini-invasions by topic
I post a topic somewhere else on the Internet called “Chomsky and the X-Men.” Then, rather than posting that topic here, I just type in the subject “Chomsky and the X-Men (mini-invasion)” and type a link to that other forum. We wouldn’t actually discuss it here. One potentially serious problem with this idea is that we may have to sign up each time somebody wants to participate in the mini-invasion, and this may take more time than it is worth.

forum exchange programs
This would be an organized movement between the administrators of each forum. We ask volunteers to leave Barbelith for short period. We might even consider banning those ‘lithers from Barbelith for the time of the exchange.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

09:44 / 27.05.02

It just sounds a bit like intellectual trolling to me. Going in a gang somewhere, even with good intentions on our part is going to look like the alt.trolls summer holiday.
Why do we have to go and spread the word about www.barbelith.com in such a fashion anyway? I'm very particular about who I tell about this place because I don't want more Knodge's coming back. Also, as Knodge is obviously still around, there's nothing to stop him from reading 'let's go to forum X' and him going ahead of us and saying "I'm from the mighty Barbelith! You're all fuckers!" We start off on the backfoot and have to persuade people that he's nothing to do with us.

Such things are best done individually. I certainly have limited time on computers, pretty much everything I post on Barbelith is done when I should be working, so I think any concerted group effort is unlikely.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

14:32 / 27.05.02

I don't think this is such a bad idea- in theory. It needn't be a matter of intellectual trolling- "oh, look at us, we've read Chomsky, nyahhh!"

I was thinking about something like this myself, but in terms of approaching boards and communities with more specialized interests and agendas. For example, it would be nice to find boards where people discussed mostly science, with a view to perhaps picking a few choice brains; or perhaps a group of us might visit an art and design-related board so that we could aquire (for example) a better understanding of how to market work. This wouldn't be a one-way brain drain because I'm sure that we've all got something to offer other communities.

I suggest that if this was to be a successful project, we would have to go about it in a fairly structured way.

We could start by having a small group of people volunteer to act as co-ordinators; they'd track down interesting discussion groups or communities and then give a brief report on Barbelith.

This outline would include the nature of the group in question, but wouldn't name it or give a URL. Interested people could PM or email the co-ordinators for further details.

Would this work?

Matthew Fluxington

21:05 / 27.05.02

I think that it is not in Barbelith's best interests to develop imperial tendencies. There's no reason for any of us to try to concur the rest of the internet - growth is best organic and natural, I think. We already have ties to other boards and communities - one thing I've been discovering is how my net social circles seem to get smaller all the time when I notice the connections from one group to another. Just leave it be.

05:49 / 28.05.02

I think that it is not in Barbelith's best interests to develop imperial tendencies

I disagree.

Just wait until the other boards witness the might of our fully operational battle station!

Our Lady of The Two Towers

12:49 / 28.05.02

Yeah, like we could ever get the pirates and ninja's to agree on a timetable for manning it...

16:47 / 28.05.02

This is a good, if slightly delicate, idea. It fits in well with whole semantic web thing and I'd be willing to give it a go. I like the idea of barbelith as more than just a messageboard. Probably best to avoid terms like invasion though and do it via PM.

Matthew Fluxington

19:48 / 28.05.02

Why can't we just leave other people alone? I don't know where some people are getting this messianic complex. How about we focus on making Barbelith the best it can be, and leave the rest of the internet to its own devices - no one wants to be told "hey, yr bit of the net kinda sucks, why don't you join our exclusive club", and if people started doing that on Barbelith it wouldn't be met with a very enthusiastic response. As a rule, Barbelith frowns upon trolling - we should be so kind as to not troll on other boards as well.

08:40 / 29.05.02

I actually agree with Flux on this, I just wanted to be part of an evil empire.

11:41 / 29.05.02

It would be tempting to see if we could roll out the software to other sites and form some kind of mutual relationship - so that you could be a user of the software and then have a kind of 'passport' to the various sites that use the same software. Does that make sense? Then you could visit as a kind of 'tourist', which would be quite interesting. Mini states or something...?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

13:19 / 29.05.02

I agree wholeheartedly with what Flux says, I just don't see how it relates to what SMS is proposing. I don't see how going over to another board to share ideas constitutes trolling.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

15:03 / 29.05.02

Well, I think the use of the term 'invasion' probably had something to do with it. What he was suggesting sounds like a good intentioned version of when alt.troll go on one of their sprees.

02:17 / 30.05.02

Sorry about calling it an invasion.

I like both Tom's creation of states as well as Mordant's ideas.

Would anyone be willing to help track down interesting sites on any of the subjects (science, magic, philosophy)?

10:23 / 30.05.02

Tom: "It would be tempting to see if we could roll out the software to other sites and form some kind of mutual relationship - so that you could be a user of the software and then have a kind of 'passport' to the various sites that use the same software. Does that make sense? Then you could visit as a kind of 'tourist', which would be quite interesting. "

you mean, like one sign-in name and password could be used across several forums like ezboard does? or something else?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

18:40 / 30.05.02

I think some ways we could avoid being percieved as a pack of stinking great windup merchants would be:

a) Lurk first. Lurk long and hard.

If the board in question is a rough-and-ready sort of place where the conversation is routinely punctuated by compromising images of Jordan, we're probably not going to go down well; likewise if the talk is highly technical and miles beyond our ken. Best to slip away unseen.

Look at the comings and goings, see the sort of questions that come up, ask: "what do we have to offer?" (Not "what do we have to gain?").

b) It might be best to start with large, impersonal spaces at first, rather than a "communities"- say, a newspaper talk-board. That way we're less likely to present an intrusive presence, even if four or five 'Lithers all start posting at once.

14:42 / 03.06.02

Personally I think keeping intelligent debate here where we all come to look for it should be the first priority. Relationships with other boards should be done on the basis that we have something to offer each other in terms of interesting individuals not in terms of 'attacks', 'invasions' etc. I would love to find some other communities with overlapping interests to barbelith and encourage people from them to come and participate on Barbelith as well.

What I was thinking of in terms of the password thing would be a way for individuals to pass between web communities as if they were individual states with relationships with one another. Ie. If someone from another board wanted to login to barbelith then they could enter the name of the board into the login page, at which point we could run a 24 hour poll on whether or not we wanted to declare a formal relationship with that board, which would mean that people FROM that board could post on barbelith easily and without restrictions and vice versa.... So you'd be a citizen of Barbelith abroad. Or something.

Something like that... I'm still thinking it through...

11:04 / 06.06.02

I think this is a slightly bizarre idea. All it's doing, surely, is formalising the normal process of people suggesting and visiting other boards? I suspect that the members who would participate do that already, and the ones who only visit Barbelith would not be that interested.

Example: the Warren Ellis forum is constantly mentioned and referenced around this board, often in terms of specific threads there. If anyone has any interest in going there, they could quite easily (okay, they'd have to search for it but that's it).

No offence, but if I was to go elsewhere I wouldn't want to identify myself as a "Barbelither" or a "citizen of Barbelith" at all. I prefer to avoid any preconceptions and to generate opinions based on what I say. (This was one of the reasons Haus banging on about the "special board" all the time got on my tits.) I generally have the same username so that people who know me from elsewhere can recognise me, and so I don't forget it, but that's it. That takes away a lot of the point of the suggestion.

The details of that would be hard to work out, anyway, and could end up being as nonsensical as the idea of "citizenship" in the real world. Does a community have to be your first community ever for you to be a member? Do you have to fill in forms? No borders, man!

I've posted the same threads in more than one place before, and I can see that it might be interesting to say "for an alternative perspective on this issue, check this thread here", and people could, and if they liked the look of the place they could join and contribute on a temporary or permanent basis.

The "passport" idea does have legs but I think that's a separate issue - maintaining a consistent apparent identity across more than one board. It's really just extending the idea of a username on one board (giving you a consistent identity in every thread and forum of that board) to apply across divides that were "physical" rather than just organisational - different URLs, policies etc.

I'm thinking in terms of a Yahoo ID sort of thing here. With Yahoo, you can join many different independent groups, each with their own policies and restrictions (or not), under the same ID, look at them all from a central interface, change settings etc easily... it's very convenient.

11:39 / 06.06.02

When I'm talking in terms of being a 'citizen' of Barbelith, all I suppose I'm saying is that you've managed to get past the 'exhaustive' processes of becoming someone who can post here. Particularly as these processes get more important and difficult to subvert. This should come with a bit of respect, and it might be a bit of respect that another board might like to recognise.

i.e. if we were to release the board functionality with the proposed changes to new memberships, then someone who respects the barbelith board may wish to strike up a formal arrangement between the two boards which meant that people from one could easily post on the other without going through such exhaustive registration processes.

That's all. It's a way of making it easier to move between boards, rather than more difficult. Virtual statehood would simply be a way of doing that (and it wouldn't necessarily involve you being obviously identifiable as 'originating' in that state, or indeed only having the one identity netwide).

Our Lady of The Two Towers

16:22 / 06.06.02

Well, having just joined the Kitten board, it seems that ezboard allow the option of generating a passport so that you can sign on with the same identity on any of their boards...

Less searchable M0rd4nt

18:23 / 06.06.02

Yeah- on ezboard you have a global identity. You log on and then you can go to any ezboard and post there (assuming it's a public board, that is).

08:17 / 07.06.02

That's certainly interesting, but it doesn't account for 'regional' differences - ie. Barbelith may have very much more stringent entry requirements than Calhoon's Buffy Shack. More to the point someone who is ideal for Calhoon's Buffy Shack may be completely wrong for Barbelith. By allowing relationships on a board-to-board basis, you make it easier to choose the kind of relationships you want to encourage...

Less searchable M0rd4nt

08:36 / 07.06.02

True. And most ezboards suffer heavily from spam and the like; you wouldn't belive some of the utter tosh I've had to delete from mine.

09:24 / 07.06.02

Well, this strikes me as more of a technical idea to me, a global ID for independent communities. Hmm.

That's actually quite an interesting one. I'm starting to think of the implications. Most of the existing global ID systems, after all, are centralised. This would not be.

The issue of security comes to mind. Say user X from community A wants to join community B. You have to pick a point between the current state (X tells moderator of B that they were in A, moderator of B contacts moderator of A and says "who's this guy?", moderator of A contacts X to confirm that they really did make the request) and a fully automated system (some sort of "rating system" of posters or "white list" of communities, and a key, so that X can request access from B's software, B contacts A's software, they exchange data and an automatic decision is made). The latter is obviously going to be subject to hacking, but the former may take time and bother and is not much of an improvement on how it "works" now, possibly it might be more streamlined or formalised.

The problem is that, while a system like this might seem to allow communities to use more restrictions because "valid" new members would find it easy to get in, a known troll is always in exactly the same position as a new user. I don't want to get into the "gated vs open" communities thing, this isn't the place, but it shouldn't be the case that having a blank community passport record means that you are effectively blacklisted as being a potential troll. That, after all, would be what financial companies do. And they're eeeevil.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

09:36 / 07.06.02

Fuck no, that would be revolting. Nah... maybe if you start out with a clean slate, sort of thing, and then you can collect good or bad points? Like a drivers' license, where you get endorsements if you screw up and if you get too many they take it off you (I think). I don't know how this could be organized- there'd be a huge potential for abuse.

Matthew Fluxington

16:33 / 07.06.02

Reading Fridgemagnet's post, I am all the more convinced that this is a bad idea, and that Barbelith (and nearly every other board under the sun) should remain isolationist.

00:05 / 08.06.02

maybe if you start out with a clean slate, sort of thing, and then you can collect good or bad points?

Well, that's the problem, you can't really have negative points in effect, because if you're a troll you can always change identities and start afresh - there's no real way of tracking people. The only effect that bad points could have would be to cancel out good points that you'd earned. So it puts trolls on the same level as new users.

You couldn't really have "generic" good or bad points, either, because it's too subjective a decision. They'd have to be linked to specific sites and known moderators. "I only care about the opinion of moderator A, I don't care what moderator B thinks because he's way too touchy."

I think it's an interesting idea, but the problem of identifying people as opposed to usernames is practically insurmountable. The only way of getting round it is to make people pay for an ID so they would be reluctant to use one for trolling that might get blacklisted, and that wouldn't work because nobody would pay.

All the public passport systems I've seen (ezboard, yahoo, MSN) exist mostly for the convenience of individual users, making it easier to access multiple communities from one location. Also for the convenience of advertisers and market researchers of course.

14:16 / 26.11.02

We're already sharing members with The Cross And Flame message board....

19:49 / 26.11.02

You know, a good non-technical start would be just a page with some links to such sites with commentary on what they are about, encouraging these sites to do the same for us. cross pollination occurs naturally after that.

20:34 / 26.11.02

I'm actually a moderator at www.herorealm.com , now. I really like it, too.

I've tried to encourage people from here to go there, and likewise. It hasn't really worked; although, one guy there expressed a definite interest in having Cameron Stewart come over, independent of any mention I'd made.

Thing is, Barbelith residents could actually *gasp* learn from other messageboards, too, you know. I really like this idea.

20:41 / 26.11.02

I'm not sure how feasible these ideas are, but they certainly sound interesting.

My I be the first to volunteer my services to be Ambassador of Barbelith to the Kirsten Dunst messageboard?