An open letter to ILX & mods re: an alternative to the current system

wat

― aerosmith: the acid house years (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, November 21, 2010 4:33 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

"wat's beef," u mean

i sometimes SB people just coz i remember to at that moment, not because the specific post p'd me o

wat ttyler

lamb not beef people

Just add "disingenuous" to the long list of "clueless, socially retarded, etc." of things I'm supposed to be, because the SB system is so inherently flawed as to not tell people what they are being punished for.

The *point* is that not telling people what they are being punished for leads to random paranoia and confusion, not to any kind of behavioural change.

i SB-ed you when you made a completely unwarranted attack on me.

i sometimes SB people just coz i remember to at that moment, not because the specific post p'd me o

― rip whiney g weingarten 03/11 never forget (history mayne), Sunday, November 21, 2010 2:37 PM (6 minutes ago)

this might be the most informative post on this whole thread, i was actually wondering about this tbh

I would support letting K8 code an alternate system an then trying it out for a period of time, if that was proposed - I don't know if it'd be better but I doubt it'd be a disaster and it'd be a cool experiment.

anyone know where the source is kept? i seem to remember it being called "messageboard" or something, but that's not the easiest thing to search for on code.google.com

can i vote that masonic boom not be let anywhere near the code of this board - or any other poster who isn't a mod, come to that

i mean didn't jon williams effectively get barred from ilx for tinkering with the board code???

Just add "disingenuous" to the long list of "clueless, socially retarded, etc." of things I'm supposed to be, because the SB system is so inherently flawed as to not tell people what they are being punished for.

The *point* is that not telling people what they are being punished for leads to random paranoia and confusion, not to any kind of behavioural change.

― Karen D. Tregaskin, Sunday, 21 November 2010 22:39 (4 minutes ago)

the general problem - and the wilful mischaracterization of others that has annoyed ppl itt is a symptom - is that the time you spend reading/understanding other posts seems miniscule compared to the time spent expounding yr own opinions, and the interpretative charity you demand of others is seldom displayed in your own posts.

anyone know where the source is kept? i seem to remember it being called "messageboard" or something, but that's not the easiest thing to search for on code.google.com

it's been taken down iirc

ah ok. see, was operating under the impression that the "do it yr dang self" crowd was suggesting that since the code is freely available for people to read and tinker with. soooooooo if it isn't, you do what? draft up an entirely new forum? i mean i just wanted to look at it and see if it even made sense to a guy that took a single programming course like 8 years ago.

yeah funny how that crowd doesn't seem to understand how things actually work

actually, my mistake -- it looks like it's still up, but you have to have a password.

http://conversationboard.googlecode.com/svn/trunk

that being said, kate seems to have volunteered herself and i think she should be given enough of the code to get started

yeah funny how that crowd doesn't seem to understand how things actually work

― questeon the answers (call all destroyer), Sunday, November 21, 2010 4:52 PM (36 seconds ago) Bookmark

not sure if i'm sposed to feel zinged here or not

fuck threads

no dude i'm zinging underrated aerosmith

i am over my obtuseness of earlier

*IF* it is in SQL, if it's in a flavour of SQL I recognise, if I can still remember how to code. I haven't written anything except a SELECT or DELETE statement in 2 years at this point. That's a lot of ifs.

(Wait, is it IIF(condition,return1,return2) or is it IF condition THEN return1 ELSE return2; - I can't remember which is MS and which is MySQL any more etc. etc.)

x-posts

I mean, this is the problem "CODE THE DAMN THING YOURSELF IF YOU WANT TO COMPLAIN!!!" vs. actually, no one is allowed to see the source code. Which is a bit of a catch 22.

yeah funny how that crowd doesn't seem to understand how things actually work

yeah it would be sisyphus rolling a rock up a fucking hill to start a thread saying "can somebody email me, a regular long-time poster, the code so I can play with it and maybe draft an alternative to a system I loathe" - impossible to imagine that working out in any way

I have two choices: I can try to change that which is making it so uncomfortable, or I can leave. This thread is an attempt at the former.

I did the latter for a while, not because I thought I was at risk of being SBed but because I didn't like using a forum that has a suggest ban link at the end of every post. It's overwhelmingly negative. It assumes that every post/poster is potentially bad and imo has tainted the whole site as a result.

I've slowly increased my usage of ilx in recent months because I really really like the site and the people (it's my favourite msg board of all time ffs) but this sb thing continues to bother me. It's heavy-handed lazy modding in response to a handful of destructive posters.

I know I just blew a lot of minds with that totally unimaginable suggestion tho so I'll allow some time for its revolutionary nature to sink in

yeah i'm just holding my breath waiting for our fearless leaders to sanction this, don't mind me

baffled by yr venom itt, aero.

btw I'm aware of the cockheadedness of complaining about a free service xp

i've only been posting for two years, but this thread sure seems to be covering the same exact ground as every other thread about sb's.

I'm pretty sure they're cool w/it

xpost to c.a.d.

again i must have missed all the angry demands that keith and stet get on this RIGHT NOW but i have trouble seeing people put time and effort into building a feature when there has been no official position on whether the feature might be adopted or not!

for christ's sakes the cart is way, way down the road and the horse is just standing here

if I am sexist are all my posts sexist or only the sexist ones

http://xec.xanga.com/abf88b2bc2230183988765/z19974.jpg

http://www2.expta.com/uploaded_images/CartBeforeHorse-738021.jpg

well, you could setup a locally hosted version of ilx on yr own computer and mess with the source and see if it seems viable, setup a sandbox for the mods, etc. i mean any work done would have to be on spec anyhow, requiring a consensus before working would be a foolish expectation.

SB'd sarahel for image-bombing

anyway, i'm just curious to SEE the source code. guessing it's several echelons above my paygrade, but w/e

yeah and consensus is the wrong word--maybe more like "yes, if you build this and demonstrate it we will consider adopting it"

and i believe all we've gotten is that wmc likes the idea and justen doesn't and those are the only two mods that talk now

xp - please ban me from this thread, i'm too tempted to post another dozen funny .jpgs of carts and horses.

'funny'

and maybe some of the people who use the board but don't get all excited for a Sunday night SB fight might have an opinion on enforcing ILX's "core values" too.

baffled by yr venom itt, aero.

I can't say I really understand it myself but it's like visceral - it's like - this seems to me a clear case of, there are unpaid volunteers providing you a service, if you don't like how the service works, guess what, the world's your oyster - it's like bitching about mainstream music - don't like what you hear, make your own & shut the fuck up - nobody's making you listen to shit - if your scene sucks, it's your fault - this is punk rock 101 imo

ok then

It's heavy-handed lazy modding in response to a handful of destructive posters.

I'm not sure I agree with this. It isnt "lazy" at all - the bans are NOT automatic, the mods still exercise some discretion on them and still have to action them, as has been stated several times upthread and in previous threads.

Just sayin'.

Punk rock, to me, means, if you don't like something, you own your scene, you have the right to try and change it for the better. You can go off and make your own little scene, or if you have time and effort already invested in something, you can try to change it from the inside.

Sometimes that means making suggestions if you don't have direct access to the means of production. Or if access to those means of production have been blocked for perfectly good reasons. (I certainly understand why the source code is private, after the actions of people like Graham and JW.)

But what it does NOT mean is that you do not have the right to ask to make something better, if you can think of a good idea that you think might have a reasonable shot at working. That to me is just bullshit "my country, love it or leave it" conservatism, and nothing to do with punk rock at all. That attitude really does get on my fibroid.

Now I gotta go to bed.

how would mods feel about a thread where we explained why we've just sb'd someone?

That to me is just bullshit "my country, love it or leave it" conservatism, and nothing to do with punk rock at all.

otm times a billion

how would mods feel about a thread where we explained why we've just sb'd someone?

maracas.jpg

It isnt "lazy" at all - the bans are NOT automatic, the mods still exercise some discretion on them and still have to action them, as has been stated several times upthread and in previous threads.

Curated crowdsourcing is still crowdsourcing. That's fine when it's gathering new ideas for a business venture or summat.

Again, it's the presence of the sb link on every single post that bothers me the most. It's not coupled with anything positive like karma or (hvn forfend) a 'like' button.

aerosmith's maybe over-extended himself on this point- iirc his point from these numerous threads is not 'my country, sign up or gtfo'. it's 'stop blithely assigning work to volunteers'.

there's not much of that going on itt imo.

but the notion of people designing their own site and that then being switched for ilx? madness, you know that, right? couple of you seem to think that's accepted at this stage.

It's kinda hypocritical double-bind to say "STOP MAKING DEMANDS OF VOLUNTEERS!!!" (who was demanding? I was suggesting.) and then turn around slap someone down for daring to suggest "hey, actually, I'm a programmer, I might be able to help you out."