Nope, not a hanging offense at all. I’m not heading to Chicago with a collection of pitchforks and torches for the gathered Teeming Millions.
At the heart, though, I think this is about the pace of evolution and change at the SDMB. People beg and plead for years to get new subforums added; since 1999 when the BBQ Pit went live, the only new additions to the SDMB have been Cafe Society, and more recently, The Game Room. It’s something that frustrates many here. All of a sudden, out of the ether, there’s this Barn House subforum. It’s something nobody asked for; a subforum promoting a book by someone who really didn’t participate much on the site of his own making, who usually just showed up when something really went wrong.
Maybe if Ed was an active participant in the past, or if new subforums were a more common occurrence, members would be more accepting of The Barn House.
Kindly direct me to where he indicated that the forum was intended to be temporary. And that is not the same as saying he might [parphrase]“pull the plug if things didn’t work out.”[/paraphrase]
I think this bit sums it up:
Doen’t deny that it is ego gratification, just claims that isn’t the SOLE reason. Gotta appreciate the honesty, but that doesn’t make it any less distasteful in my mind.
I want to say for the record, I have never complained about this board before. When people got up in arms about the pay-to-post policy, the slow response time, navigation and search function issues, moderator protocols, or the inclusion of ads, I never thought it was anything to get worked up about.
I can’t really say I’m “worked up” about this either, and I acknowledge fully that EZ and co. can do whatever they want with this board.
You mean like the respect you show to most of us posters here, sweetie? Your idea of “respect”, Tuba, seems to be nothing less than falling to the ground, kissing the hem of your skirt as you sweep past.
You all are upset that Ed opened for a new forum to flog his book on his own website?
Seriously?
This entire site is dedicated to flogging Ed’s books. That’s the whole point of it. That’s why it exists, because Ed thought it would help sell his earlier books. What’s the big deal? If you don’t like the forum dedicated to flogging Ed’s new book, just skip over it. Is that so hard? What’s the big deal?
What bothers me is that it seriously messes with the traditional format of this place, which is that forums are defined by the type of discourse one wants to engage in and not by the subject matter. The Game Room is an exception, but one that solves the difficulty one would otherwise face in placing sports-related threads.
Given the good job the mods and admins normally do around here, this arrangement has worked very well. I love being able to wander into any forum without looking for something specific, and being surprised by something interesting. That’s what the original newspaper column was all about.
It doesn’t bother me because it’s a tacky little ego forum–if it even is that. That would be reassuring, because it would indicate that it’s a one-off forum and that the Dope is not about to become like commercial cable TV, with a dozen topical “channels” whose purposes get all muddied with the passage of time. If forums here become channels, the same thing will probably happen with them.
Well yeah. Ed doesn’t own the trademark for Cecil Adams since he took over the column after it had been in existance for a few years, so it isn’t exactly true that Cecil Adams is just Ed’s pseudonym. But he’s certainly been writing the columns published under that byline for the last 30 years or so. Was anyone else unaware of this fact?
Well, for one thing, the idea that it is not a blatant advertisement. That this particular book, which really has nothing to do with the SD other than Ed wrote it, deserves its own special forum, something which hasn’t been given to the SD books as a whole, let alone singly.
Well, the Straight Dope books are collections of Cecil’s columns, so Comments on Cecil’s Columns is the forum that specifically flogs the Straight Dope books.
This whole site is a blatant advertisment. In other news, the Pope shits in the woods, and Soylent Green is a sled.
The only thing that annoys me is that it takes an eternity to get an upgrade, and no sooner do we get one than we discover something that got piggybacked on to it. This seems to happen every time, and it leads me to believe that the upgrades aren’t done because they’re the right thing to do but rather as an attempt to make more money, in this case handling more traffic due to Ed’s redirect.
It’s their sandbox, it’s their rules, but it’s also got a stink to it that just won’t go away. If only they would be more forthright about why they’re doing things. Yeah, and if your mom had balls she’d be your dad, too. I really oughta know better.
You remembered:) How’s stuff and things? (Aside from the Pit topic, of course. But I gotta think – without having read any of pages 2 or 3 and not much of page 4 – that ain’t any higher on your list of cares than it is on mine.)
Here I was getting excited about the new server, when in reality it sucks and fucking Ed Zotti is using it to fucking push his bullshit books that nobody wants to read.
Fuck Ed and his books.
Gotta appreciate the honesty, but that doesn’t make it any less distasteful in my mind.
You remembered:) How’s stuff and things? (Aside from the Pit topic, of course. But I gotta think – without having read any of pages 2 or 3 and not much of page 4 – that ain’t any higher on your list of cares than it is on mine.)