Longtime ILXors - how has this board changed over time?

ned, homie. ned.

I love it when a good plan comes together.

In my estimation it's been a good thing for Momus to lead an ILx-free lifestyle, godspeed you white nihonophile

It's certainly been a good thing for ILX.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y296/imomus/pornotopia.jpg

Back when he blamed SB for Bimble's suicide, he said he still lived a daily-ILX lifestyle, he'd just managed to quit posting.

I've never posted very frequently, but reading ILX has been a really important part of my life. I feel like I'd be really culturally naive if I hadn't found this place. Noise board anarchy was my favorite period, when there was tons of stuff like this: http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=60&threadid=2955 , which used to autoplay Hystereo's "Gonna Love You" but now doesn't :(

The suggest-ban era, when a few voices got really self-righteous imo, was a low point. It was a big mistake to let users ban people for being brash or having unpopular opinions, or really any reason at all. The mods just shouldn't have delegated that function. Everything's cool now, I think largely due simply to the "suggest ban" button being re-named "flag post", as people have noted before.

It still boggles me that anybody could get to 51 'ban' votes without being just an incredibly egregious shithead, but I only ever SB'ed one, maybe two people, as opposed to merely saying "SB so-and-so."

Have pppl not noticed that basically no one gets SBed off the board anymore? Not that ive noticed.

And That Is A Good Thing

It is a shame ethan and loujag left, but they've both made the decision themselves, so kudos to them tbqfh.

I like how this thread is full of people saying they don't want to rehash old battles and then immediately jumping into the next segment in this Danny Boyle-style trip through old ILX battles.

Past is past, man. I have no desire to rehash, dunno why other people do. Its all out there to google already, why repeat it.

I've already murdered anyone I ever disagreed with on ILX, for any reason.

Revises opinion on Lucas. Barricades door.

isn't this thread just like when people remember the fifties, & they talk about how you could own your own house & people were making pies all the time, but then you also have to remember that there was endemic blasé unremarkable racism & people were comparatively limited in their scope of movements. ilx probably just used to be kinda 'different' in various ways, some + some -. it's really good now. like the thing ryan said about how you can post something & be pretty much assured to get something good back from it, you like films and so you get the reassuring pang of knowing someone else likes films, likes a different film, can't believe you haven't seen a film. i don't really get the noize thing but presumably ilx now lacks some kinda additional zeitgeisty thrill of people's posts existing in an exciting kinda scene. but that stuff is finite and comes and goes anyway, & dies when it's past its period of relevancy. ilx is really good now. look at the recent hiv thread: what a valuable, thoughtful community resource, it is like what discussion in the world should be like, it makes ilx a place you learn from. or look at tmi; the social function it has in giving voice to things that just fit really well on the internet, a lot of things that we spend our time wrapped up in thoughts of but don't give voice to. there are so many thoughtful posters that lamenting the absence of others feels shortsighted?, i think, or insinuates that we are like some public sector deprived of first-rate minds because of the allure of the private sector (in this scenario living a non-internet-centric life), as many people now writing fascinatingly about the newsroom or photography as there were writing about stones on the beach or AZ & chinese literature. ilx is still v involving, & whether or not it has the extra added bonus of having some auratic epochal ~feel~ is besides the point of what makes it good, useful, challenging, &c.

errr...

what

I tend to be pretty flexible in my analogies, but I think "just like" is doing a lot of work there.

oh okay sorry! that was meant to be light-hearted; it was misjudged. was referring to the weird weighting of broadly 'preferring' another time, which is something that i sometimes see done historically & always feels really confused. it didn't stick out reading my post back, but yeah i hadn't meant to sincerely imply that any era of ilx was actually comparable, or that eras of racism would be an appropriate comparison. my bad.

i think this is the most pleasant time for ILX. The only time I didn't like it was when I was being chased round the board by zing crew and pretty much couldn't post without some asshole making snidey comments. That was a really unpleasant time. The other time I didn't like very much was immediately after when all we seemed to talk about was Suggest Bans and whether or not we should have polls and list threads. So yeah - 2005-2007 is that period IIRC and then the board crashed and seemed to bounce back in a much more pleasant way.

NOISE & zing eras had their cruelty but aside from that they could be funny as fuck and a welcome relief from the earnestness elsewhere. Now I think there's room for everything on the twee-zing scale and bookmark/board balkanisation has mostly allowed people to find their own spaces within that.

"funny as fuck" as long as someone else was the target right?

It was a joke. A fairly good joke, but ultimately a single joke not deserving of 2 - 3 years run on a general purpose messageboard. Hate to be a downer.

I said aside from the cruelty. xp

I think a lot of the people who had a problem with Noize actually had a problem with Jon. The 'call out poster x' threads were lame but a lot of it was just anarchic goofing around and looks pretty tame in retrospect. By the time of Ask Chaki etc that had solidified into this culture of disgruntled perma-sniping but a lot of that is gone now.

Yeah I know it's not perfect now etc etc but it feels stable in a way it didn't a few years ago.

it's a little too stable, i don't feel people interact with new people anymore or it's not a vehicle for that. i mean it's nbd, lots of friends here, but everything is indeed pretty sectioned off.

I don't think there are that many new people really. I suppose I've been thinking the opposite but maybe that's because there have been a load of catch-all threads for massive events that are attracting a really wide pool of posters - cf Olympics thread.

How many new people do we get though? The only person in a long time who jumps to mind is Vic Perry, who hasn't posted in like a week or so...

xp

Didn't silby just admit to being here about two years? Seems like newer people can still integrate.

yeah maybe no new people. that's pretty shit imo, why is it the case?

basically ilx will end when we all die

There are several new regs per day, but it doesn't translate into many new regular posters. Actually, I've seen more new names lately -- about half of them brand new, and the other half people who registered months ago and apparently lurked and read for a while before starting to post.

what is our lurker/poster ratio?

Alternatively maybe there are loads of new posters but they tend to slip in fairly quietly and largely unnoticed and then suddenly it seems like they've been around for ages.

it doesn't feel that way to me, surely we should foster growth? i suggest a recruitment drive.

We don't have an admin tool to see how many people have posted over the last X days (which would be very handy, now that I think of it -- I'm sure Stet has such numbers at his fingertips), but we have 2388 registered users and god knows how many unregistered lurkers, so, uh, I don't know.

xp Matt OTM. I just noticed a new name, looked up the info and saw they'd registered 2 years ago and had 90 posts. Stealth!

we need a 'valuable new posters' equivalent for when that happens

Alternatively maybe there are loads of new posters but they tend to slip in fairly quietly and largely unnoticed and then suddenly it seems like they've been around for ages.
hi
been here since 2005
i mentioned this before upthread and the only person who noticed was mark e, who has met me in person

i think there are a lot of ilx wallflowers. a peep here and there, but mostly observing and not dominating any particular conversation.

i'd have definitely guessed you'd been here since at least 05

re: new posters, did the switch to reg-only as a spam fighting move also end up walling off the more... impulsive, shall we say, strain of visitor we used to get?

lol, maybe we should integrate with Facebook authentication

the only thing it killed off was the Teadrinkers board I think.

ILX: What year did you start posting?

So yeah, if that poll is to be judged as a representative sample there's been a real falling off in recent years.

I keep forgetting how long I've been around but my first post was in December 2003, and I think I lurked for a few months before that

lol I searched that thread and the second post I made on it is "did reg-only slow down the addition of new posters?"

so I guess I'll be having this conversation again next summer

One thing that's changed is the display names.

Lots more security, you know? I feel like I'm having a staring contest with a anonymous username but I won't back down

in October I'll have been posting for 10 years. in December I'll turn 25. someone please shoot me in the face.

But then you won't be able to post about the worst part of getting old.