Longtime ILXors - how has this board changed over time?

In the early days it was possible to be up to speed on everything. A thread with more than 100 responses was huge and probably indicated that Momus had been there. A side effect of fewer questions and fewer posters was that almost everyone read almost everything. So there was a period, shortly after ILE started, when people realized they could start a question about ANYTHING, even just have the first post read "qqqqqqqq" and an interesting thread would spin out of it. It was like a magic discussion generator.

ps, thankig u for the reset, stet or keith

Site New Answers is good. I tended not to play a ton in ILM because I was always looking at the ILE new answers page, but since I started using SNA I see a topic and I dangle a toe in. It's fun. (Annoying for the rest of you but as long as I'm amused, that's all that matters lol)

yeah in my first few years (11 years ago what have I done with my life etc, I was a lurker) I was strictly ILM because I felt like ILE was a little gang of friends in the UK and some random Canadian with a Britpop fetish wasn't exactly welcome, but then one day I clicked the Site New Answers button and have never looked back. Ditto with bookmarks - for a long time I was a circle-click proponent only but I love being able to bookmark things now. Especially for when I get interested in a topic, hunt up its associated thread and then don't miss future revives.

oh yeah and bookmarks are KEY

especially for rolling threads or looooooooong threads.

ps, thankig u for the reset, stet or keith

― Your sweet bippy is going to hell (WmC), Thursday, August 9, 2012 12:05 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i HATE the resets. i usually just gloss over the closed circles, looking for the open ones that i've been reading, so when they are reset it takes FOREVER to find all the threads i'd been following. i assumed they reset them for a reason, not just for the heck of it?

(ps i know, bookmarks. i don't bookmark every thread i want to read or am active in tho)

wait what are you talking about closed circles? what circles?

the bullet points on SNA beside each link have closed or open circles depending on whether you'd clicked them in the past, or at least on some stylesheets.

i use bookmarks either for threads that 1) are updated daily but may have had >50 posts by the time i get back from school/work (eg politics thread) or 2) threads that are updated very infrequently - because these would probably have a closed circle next to it so i'd never notice it was bumped without the bookmark (eg, out there r&b or something)

I am running oldest of the old school site setup, so I have heard of the circles from time to time and thought that they sounded nice.

I have just noticed that they are actually there (on individual board new answers as well), and possibly have been there all the time.

Quite scared now.

lol really? I never ever noticed that. It doesn't seem consistent though. From the looks of it they're supposed to be open for ones I've read in the past but there are definitely some solid circs on threads I know I've read.

it continually blows my mind that people have different ilx habits than me, for whatever reason. like not using SNA just seems insane to me

Like this circle is solid and clearly I've opened this thread a bunch.

I just thought those were little bullet points.

xp like wmc and i were talking about, the site was just "reset" so all the circles re-closed

also, the circle becomes hollow if posts have been added to it since the last time you opened it and then goes back to solid once you've "caught up"

It is solid if you've read the whole thread. The circle is open on threads you've read before but have new answers.

xp

You have to be logged in to make the circle change. Sometimes I actually log out if I want to check out what a new thread is about, because I don't want to get the open circle and be OCD-forced to read it for the rest of time.

of course, the semi-hilarious thing about the advent of SNA and the democratization of the subboards is that I think the rise of its use directly parallels the rise of the city/regional/rolling subject matter threads, like the community basically keeps saying "you can equalize all you want, we will still figure out how to silo ourselves in the name of convenience/expediency"

― keeping things contextual (DJP), Thursday, August 9, 2012 9:44 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think it's the bit i bolded. i think it's become much more common and even preferred to keep a certain long-running interest to a set of long-running threads. genres, politics, certain issues and interests, etc. i have to remember to scan away from my bookmarks a lot of the time.

the rest of the internet has become much more message-boardy in intervening years and sort of takes up the slack of posting about every little thing that happens, i find.

i use bookmarks either for threads that 1) are updated daily but may have had >50 posts by the time i get back from school/work (eg politics thread) or 2) threads that are updated very infrequently - because these would probably have a closed circle next to it so i'd never notice it was bumped without the bookmark (eg, out there r&b or something)

― k3vin k., Thursday, August 9, 2012 5:31 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is how I use bookmarks, too. Everything in between gets no bookmark love from me.

This all sounds very complicated.

I use bookmarks on the threads I care about so the circles seem redundant?

The circles are dangerous siren calls of "You didn't care enough about this to bookmark it, but there are some new answers, and really, if it's this vs work...."

one thing I love about the code for this message board is the myriad of ways it can subtly tell you that there's something on a thread you might want to read; it just fits practically anyone's idiosyncracies

The circles are vestigial; I had honestly forgotten they existed but yeah, back in the day I used the same kind of shorthand processing through the optic nerve of which threads to click on based on the circles. If some people are still in the habit of using them it makes sense that they're around, but bookmarks really do all of the things circles do, and more, and they don't get re-set.

x-post - oh I bookmark too often if anything so I don't think I've ever had that problem. Huh. That's weird.

I don't like knowing about these circles. I can't have a new "thing" to worry about. I like my bookmarks and that's that. I wish I'd never found about about these darn circles dammit! ;)

I don't need to
Click around on circles, click around on circles

I've found that I've leaned on/integrated with ilx a lot more in the last few years, despite having lurked and posted very irregularly since... 2003ish? I feel like ILM was an entry point, with some of the other topical things and polls that floated in ILE being a way I drifted into that side of things.

The combination of having a private board where people are more likely to share and the fact I went through a ton of bullshit in my personal life a couple years ago really made me feel a lot more like sharing and being less anonymous. In the last few years, I've either had a drink with or at least said hi in person to about 11 or 12 ilxors, and regularly email or talk to a handful of people off the board.

imo blog view is mostly there to get innocuously angry about random threads you'd have never clicked on because the topics are annoying

yeah I don't personally find blogview helpful -- I'm kind of an 'all or nothing' person

It is solid if you've read the whole thread.

my life coach tells me this every time we meet

Everytime I remember that 77 exists it just strengthens my resolve to quit again :) Fucken members only boards on ILX, man....

The number of interesting threads, artists, music that I have discovered through using blog view (I'm mystified by people who claim never to have heard the top stuff in the yearly singles charts - it's so easy to spot good tracks that are blowing up by using blow view!) >>>>>>>> the random stupid shit that pops up.

btw the mid 2000s, noize board, and the like were when things were actually interesting to me as free-form discussion and not intellectual post-indie theorizing about pop music (which I liked, but never felt I had much to contribute to) or the in-talk of people who met up regularly off-board. really felt like the old guard of the board wasn't really threatened by that, but the complaining about things being different really was the catalyst for confrontations

I sometimes think I'd be in a much worse place today if not for 77, it's definitely helped shape my self-actualization and ability to accept and read other people

oh yeah, blog view would be good for ilm, might be cool to have filter settings for it to limit it to certain boards!

does anyone use the Board Email Subscriptions?

ugh I'm dumb -- blog view's ideal for ILM.

"blow view!" is a really good idea for a feature actually - - only shows you threads that are BLOWIN' UP

I use SNA but ignore the circles.

I don't use bookmarks or blog view.

I tick the boxes next to the threads I want to read, hit refresh to get rid of the others, arrange them how I wish, and then ask my assistant to print off each one for me so I have something to look at in the toilet stall after lunch.

ILX is beemed DIRECTLY INTO MINE BRANE via neural implant

you guys are killing me

Even the Dutch board? xp

It's really difficult to tell when, say, there's a random thread titled something like I JUST WANT YOUR FULL ATTENTION - is that about a band, a track, a new thing, someone just attention seeking? But with blog view, when you see every person on ILM, one after another, going "holy shit, this track is amazing" - you know that it might be something worth checking out.

And mh, I honestly don't mean to start anything up again, but what the old guard were complaining about Noize Board was not "things being different" but some quite seriously over the line, aggressive and bullying behaviour. Which it's very easy to forget or overlook when you were not the repeated target of this. But not if you were, for example, singled out for repeated harassment for two years solid, because you once asked someone to maybe resize an image.

ENBB you should come now while the Lobster wars are occuring - fight for the Maine resistance force against the maple menace to th enorth! LObsters are so cheap now the local papaer was actually beggin Mainers to eat them

xxp Are you one of those people who use Google Glasses? This isn't the Middle Ages you know. Sub-meson neural interface with Autotranslate provided by the BabelFish module is where it's at.

devastating 2 me how succinctly this digression unintendedly answers the thread question :(

x-post - Yes! My dad was telling me about all these cheap lobsters last week. Gonna be there in October but would like to drive up sooner just cause it's so pretty. Also, CHEAP LOBSTER.

xp On a serious note, I think that technology has had an impact. There is a drop in long form posts. We're used to posting tweets, and viewing websites on mobile devices.

x-post what's that supposed to mean, huh? :(

old ilx never spoke of lobster