Longtime ILXors - how has this board changed over time?

as do mermaids iirc

nice

(Also I have an unsubstantiable feeling that post-Balkanisation some of the wordier posts come in some of the 'safer' island areas of the little specialist boards, meaning the mainland feels shorter still. Just a thought.)

xp obv

might another explanation for the decreasing wordiness be the expansion fo the rest of the internet? back in 2001-02 or whatever, people had the time to think through and structure and just write long posts. wordy posts don't just magically happen, you need to put a bit of work into them. but what else was there to even do on the internet in those days? how many online things were people checking daily?

now - in addition to our Actual Jobs - our attention span is divided so many ways - being on the internet generally feels more hectic and more rushed. even people who are prone to writing long posts probably wouldn't have the inclination to do so any more even if the general atmosphere of ilx was the same.

lex otm: ilx predates 'the social internet'

Is Friendster terrifying?

remember when we flooded Friendster with fake celebrity profiles

good times

i don't actually!

Tim is of a similar vintage to me and his description chimes with my experience.

I do have to wonder, though, if another phenomenon is also at work. I think most people, when they first come to ILX, they have finally found ~intelligent discourse on the interweb~ or whatever, and they still have a lot of new ideas to explore. So people in general will make longer pats themselves during their first year of posting. The difference is that in 2001, we were *all* new and experiencing that at the same time. (and also talking about dogs licking peanut butter off balls or whatevs.)

So you had loads of ppl in the first year all making 600 word Momus-posts. While in later years, it's mostly only new people making long posts (so their experience of "when they joined ILX" = long posts) but the rest of us are going "peanut butter balls, LOL!"

xp: I think it was mostly Ally and Otis who spearheaded that one; I just remember becoming friends with Robert Smith, Adam Ant and The Hulk and having them all give me celebrity shout-outs

oh it was here: Friendster - Its the new thing

ilx is conversational, wordier rants migrated to blogs

nabisco posts in ny mag now ;_;

Biggest changes over the years imo are that the average age of ilxors has gradually risen and the number of random googlers who post remarks seems to have dipped (as typified by drop off in revivals of the all-time random googler thread: Joan Fontaine vs. Olivia DeHaviland).

we haven't had a good googler-baiting thread for a while

1) There are no mentions of the chickenbear anymore.

2) We no longer have the ILE Awards.

3) ILE is no longer used to arrange FAPs.

4) A large number of people I actually know IRL have buggered off elsewhere (which probably accounts for 1-3 at least in part)

Thank Christ for 1) and 2) - I think 3) isn't so accurate but they happen in the regional threads, when they were happening in the clear there was a much heavier LDN presence on ILX.

I've been to two FAPs coordinated on ILE this year!

Just wanted to join the chorus thanking stet for the graphs - those are awesome!

I'm not making any speculations for why things may have changed, I was just trying to read Stet's stats such that they sustained my strong sense of shortening. It's possible that shortening was a myth, of course, and that the idea "posts are getting shorter" is standing in for another, less quantifiable, idea:maybe of a lessening of care per post, or somesuch. Or maybe a bit of both, I dunno. It's certainly true that the internet around ILx has changed a lot over the past decade, and that's sure to have had an effect on the who and how and why of ilx.

I don't take any position on whether this is all a good or bad thing, for what that's worth. We've gained something and lost something. I kinda miss the old days, but I've been advocating the closure of ILx for at least a decade.

Thank Christ for 1) and 2)

boo, couldn't agree with you less.

hahaha this thread has now demystified the totally baffling reason that "the hulk" insisted on befriending me on friendster

i was but a twinkle in ilxs eye at that point

hulk ws

omg stet

Someone should do a study on how the global financial collapse and subsequently job insecurity has resulted in shorter ilxor posts from within the workplace.

doesn't it sortof make sense that because people were online less there was less back and forth, conversation happens more and more in real time, less and less a need to outline an entire argument in one or two posts, more intercut dialogue than soliloquies

individuals used to have ideas worth discussing, now it's all this socialist groupthink

clearly, we of ilx need you to step up your game, mh, and give us more ideas worth discussing. i would do it, but i'm currently too busy doing stuff and things like that.

I like turtles

Are you too aimless to consider one topic

i can assure you ur-ilx posters were online all the time

Yeah I've been involved in this level of "online a lot, posting long/talky posts" thing for years, before this, my timesink was Livejournal, disucssing things there with people (2001-2003ish) and from 98-2001 I was on Usenet.

I think it's mainly that some of the first people on this board were/are writers, so it seemed natural to them to write long pieces.

I don't know if newbies tend to write long posts, I'd expect the opposite (certainly as far as I was concerned) until feet got under the table.

These days I bash off quick posts because 95% of my ilx posting is at work when bored (and looking over the shoulder, heh. I've been told off recently for being on "some forum")

I don't know if newbies tend to write long posts, I'd expect the opposite (certainly as far as I was concerned) until feet got under the table.

Yeah, this bit of WCC's post didn't ring true to me, either. Most often, I think new posters probably adapt to the dominant style.

ILX has always been exactly like WWE

We Want Eazy?

I think the London presence on ILX is as big as its ever been but is more disparate and without the obvious social core there was until 2005/06 or thereabouts.

I Love Everyone

I Love Engerland

I like turtles

needs its own thread, f'sure

I Used to Love Cami's til I FOund Cami Secret

A more interesting question to ask would be "how has ILX *not* changed" because I just got lost in a rabbithole of reading a thread from 2002 where people were complaining about nu-ILM and saying how much better things were in the olden days.

if people stopped saying the past was better then i think we'd know we were no longer on planet earth

...because people would be going on about how planet earth was better.

Tim I look forward to a meta thread in oh 5 years where you repeat the "I've been advocating the closure of ILx for at least a decade." thing again!

8 Years Pass

Psts r shrtr nw

(and looking over the shoulder, heh. I've been told off recently for being on "some forum")

this.

i nearly got sacked cos of ilm.

timely revive

Fair point - back in the day it would never have been Beatles / Stones / VU / Prince.

The most excellent change in ilx since the Greenspun days is that the underlying software/server has become an order of magnitude more stable and reliable. The software has also acquired dozens of new and useful features. Hooray for stet, et al.

Also, early ilx (aka ur-ilx) mainly consisted of a small, clubby group of chums whose posts were often so full of insider references that they could not possibly interest anyone outside that small group. Of course, these chums were all bright-eyed and chirpily intelligent, so when they did discuss items of general interest, they did so with wit and incision. Consequently these posts were attractive to the world at large and ilx grew apace.