An SDMB server walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Is this some kind of joke?"

[E-Sabbath]

Cite?

[glee]

@Klaatu

This is because many people here who fancy themselves “intellectuals” are only able to flaunt their “intellectualism” here on this very board, and are totally fucking scared to bitch too much, because their bitching might result in the closure of the board, thereby losing them the only outlet they have to act like intellectuals.

I’ll bear that in mind at my next international chess tournament.

[magellan01]

I’ve just been meaning to say that I love the title of the thread.

That is all.

[Punintentional]

Hopefully when free posting comes in June or July the complaints will stop?
“You can’t complain if you aren’t paying” and all that.

[mhendo]

@featherlou

But, like I said, the good is still outweighing the bad for me.

Me too. The problem is, though, that there’s a dramatic imbalance in the origins of these two things.

Basically everything good about these Boards is provided by the members. All the content, the interesting conversations, the handy responses to questions, the funny stories–they all come from people who pay for the privilege of being here. Sure, not every post or every thread is interesting to everyone, and some people are annoying or stupid, but on the whole the content is what we’re here for. I include here all the good work done by the mods etc.

On the flipside, basically everything bad about these Boards is precisely the stuff provided by the Chicago Reader and Creative Loafing. The timeouts, the crappy search feature, the database corruptions and downtime, and other myriad problems are things that have nothing to do with the content (provided by us, the members), and everything to do with the company that takes our money in order to provide a service.

For me, if you discount the good stuff provided by the members themselves, and focus on what’s being provided by the company that we pay our membership fees to, the bad outweighs the good. And that, i think, is the source of so many of the complaints around here.

[Cat_Whisperer]

All true. Some things in my life that piss me off, I just try not to think about. Like insurance companies.

[Hazle_Weatherfield]

@glee

An SDMB server goes into a bar and orders a beer.

The barman says ‘Sorry we don’t serve SDMB servers running out-of-date versions’ and throws him out.

A year later the SDMB server arrives in the bar again and says…
‘What did you do that for!’

Well done!

[Larry_Mudd]

@Lord Ashtar

There’s always someone (or something) better. Always.

I call shenanigans.

Seven years ago I grudgingly accepted that not all web-based general interest message boards served as an illustration of the verisimilitude of the Kornbluth Hypothesis. Now show me the other one.