BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Sage advice from the very fount of respectful messaging. I’m sure we’ll all be lining up for our flails and hair shirts.
That argument is lost anymore, I mean I guess it can work until your subscription expires. But when I seen the post made a while back something about not really wanting subscribers wanting advertising I knew why.
Now we are paying to not see ads that is all. Not saying I disagree with the hypocrite part if this isn’t vanity well but I also didn’t notice the forum until this thread. Can you put ignore an entire forum area?
I’m not generally one to side with TPTB, but meh. It’s Ed’s site, he’s the administrator, he can create an ego forum if he wants.
But with all due respect, Ed: Don’t fool yourself into thinking it isn’t an ego forum.
For those of you that are posting there to complain about how we don’t need it - DNFTF (do not feed the forum)
Yeah, OK, it is kind of a joke, but for those of you asking for more honesty: he did say right there in that forum that he gets to do it because he’s the chief. What more do you want from the guy? As for me, I was a little miffed that a new forum popped up just like that, with no regard for what we thought, but it is his board, and he does get to do it. This is nowhere near the level of, say, Fathom–not until we see Ed’s name face on every page, at least.
::shrugs::
It’s Ed’s place. He can do what he wants. It’s distinctly weird, IMO, given his lack of participation or interest in the board but it’s still his to play with as he choses.
So we should have taken him aside and discreetly whispered that it was a tacky little ego forum instead of yelling that across the room.
We’ll remember that for next time.
Can’t we take him out back and give him a good kicking, instead?
If it wasn’t for every one of us posting questions, answers and content in general this board wouldn’t exist – where’s our respect ? Where’s our fucking forum ?
Respect is earned.
In my view the powers that be have treated this board and it’s members with thinly disguised contempt (your post is a prime example). So no, I have no respect for Ed. And any I did have would have evaporated the moment his little vanity forum appeared on the front page.
I appreciate the work you’ve all put in to keep this board running and upgraded.
But respect? Hell, no!
SD
Then why isn’t it called Ed’s place?
Why didn’t my money go to Ed?
Silly me, all along I thought it was the Straight Dope Board. If, in fact, Ed Zotti = Straight Dope (column, books, website) then call it that.
I, for one would not have resubscribed, were that the case.
It seems to me one of the things that has led to the success of this board is that it’s not Ed’s, Tuba’s, etc. To see it turn into this or that person’s personal playground where they get to do things, “just because I’m the chief”, is contrary to everything I respected and believed about the management of this board.
Yuck.
In the years I’ve been a member, through all of the changes I’ve seen, I’ve been pretty accepting of change being a given. I never really cared one way or the other with most of those changes.
But, I can honestly say, for the very first time, I have a very bad feeling about where this ‘little’ change is going to lead.
Ed, you are a vain blowhard. Which will come first, 1000 posts in Ed’s Pet Forum, or 2009?
At the risk of sounding a little radical, might I put forward a different suggestion - that this is the whole reason the board went back to free to post?
Seems like a bit of a coincidence that the free to post thing happened at exactly the same time as the release of the new book. I don’t believe in coincidence as a rule.
In order to generate sales for the book, the board had to be free otherwise the only people available to comment on (ie advertise) the book would be the increasingly small number of paying subscribers.
Too radical? I dunno, maybe.
On the other hand, who cares? Just ignore the forum if you don’t like it. Even with my above cynical explanation, it doesn’t bother me.
Fuck Ed Zotti and the donkey he rode in on. How’s that for respect, toady?
Pretty much my feelings. I’m having a lot of WTF? about the new forum, but I figure it’ll probably die a natural death before too long. The great thing about writers’ blogs is that they can, y’know, add new content to keep discussions fresh. (I’m thinking of authors like Neil Gaiman and John Scalzi.) Sticking a forum for it in the middle of an otherwise-unrelated message board seems… weird.
I have to get to work so I don’t have time to read this whole thread yet. I just have time to say that this new forum is total fucking bullshit. Getting rid of p2p is what will be driving up membership. No one gives a shit about the Brotherhood of Wood or whatever the fuck.
Well, see that’s the thing. For a forum like that to work, you need to be responsive and knowledgeable. You also need to spend a ton of time researching obscure questions like-“I have a 1902 light fixture manufactured by Edison, and where can I find replacement do hickies for it?” I don’t think Ed can commit to the time necessary to do that, and just because you write a book about something, doesn’t mean you know shit, just that you can write.
So, if Ed doesn’t happen to know that kind of stuff off the top of his head, he needs to have a rolodex full of people who can answer that stuff. The Straightdope doesn’t. In my couple of years here, I’ve seen maybe 20 people that that respond to threads that are in the trades, who do it for a living every day. Maybe twenty Realtors who have a different kind of perspective.
To look at it another way, how many threads deal with homes on any given day? Not that often. I don’t think there is a pent up desire for this, not like the Game Room, where people asked for years to have one, and there were always multiple game threads every day.
If this is to shill his book, we didn’t need a forum.
If this is to garner more traffic specific to homes, we need some experts.
Ill conceived, poorly implemented, limited interest in this market, likely to fail.
I think you have it here.
While we’re at it, let’s change the name of Microsoft to “Bill Gates’ Money Machine”, and NBC can be “Jeff Zucker’s Channel”
You’re a genius.
Have I slept in? Is it 1st April already?
And can I just add - irony upon irony. For those of us that can see ads, the ad in this thread is for, yes you guessed it - Ed Zotti’s book (since that’s what the thread is about).
Priceless. A thread decrying the existence of an ad forum serves as yet another ad. We are defeated whichever way we turn.