Free-for-all weekend discussion

The BBQ Pit
61

I was, and am, on record as having enjoyed it. I am not sure if anything was really said though that couldn’t be said in the Pit as it stands now. Threads like, “who should be banned?” are no different than threads calling out a specific poster. It just allowed those complaints to be aggregated. What I saw happening is some posters whose opinions tend to run counter to the board’s culture felt freer to express their opinions. This is probably because they didn’t have to defend those opinions over many days and face a pile on.

I know my posts were nothing I would mind being permanent, and I sensed that was the case for almost everyone. The SDMB has become a self-reinforcing bunch of geeks with the same rough interests, political opinions and pet peeves. I actually don’t necessarily use geek in the pejorative sense, although we have our fair share of losers. What we don’t have is the diversity of personalities that I remember from several years ago. I use geek in the sense of a group of people sharing a narrow set of esoteric interests. The Republicans are pretty much gone, we ban the true eccentrics, and the religious are hounded into submission. Most of what is left is people patting each other on the back for how smart, tolerant and devilishly attractive we all are. It gets old.

I am looking forward to free posting and to a more diverse user base. There are many of us who more or less gave up because to express a contrary opinion meant dealing with the inevitable pile on and a comittment to do battle on your own, and I am unwilling to devote that kind of time or effort. How funny, because I am not Republican or religious by nature, but those groups especially are ones I would welcome back.

62

Well, that would sort of defeat the whole ephemeral aspect of Amnesia Weekend, right? Wouldn’t the same if if was on the record.

63

I had a damn good time and like many others, was more active on the board this weekend than I’ve been in a long time. I’d be all for loosening the pit rules and having it be more of a free for all. Not completely free of moderation, of course. Personally, if the posts from the weekend still existed, I’d be fine. I still posted by the “nothing on the internet ever really goes away” standard that I figure is the safest bet. So, if anyone’s counting, yes, I think at the very least some of the pit rules should be slackened. Or if we did more amnesia weekends on holiday weekends or something that would be cool too. I said this elsewhere, but I maintain my opinion that a Pit with less rules would not become like the Snarkpit, mainly because we have names attached to our messages and thus are accountable for what we say. It’s a lot easier to be an asshole when you’re posting anonymously.

64

I had a damn good time and like many others, was more active on the board this weekend than I’ve been in a long time. I’d be all for loosening the pit rules and having it be more of a free for all. Not completely free of moderation, of course. Personally, if the posts from the weekend still existed, I’d be fine. I still posted by the “nothing on the internet ever really goes away” standard that I figure is the safest bet. So, if anyone’s counting, yes, I think at the very least some of the pit rules should be slackened. Or if we did more amnesia weekends on holiday weekends or something that would be cool too. I said this elsewhere, but I maintain my opinion that a Pit with less rules would not become like the Snarkpit, mainly because we have names attached to our messages and thus are accountable for what we say. It’s a lot easier to be an asshole when you’re posting anonymously.

65

I had a damn good time and like many others, was more active on the board this weekend than I’ve been in a long time. I’d be all for loosening the pit rules and having it be more of a free for all. Not completely free of moderation, of course. Personally, if the posts from the weekend still existed, I’d be fine. I still posted by the “nothing on the internet ever really goes away” standard that I figure is the safest bet. So, if anyone’s counting, yes, I think at the very least some of the pit rules should be slackened. Or if we did more amnesia weekends on holiday weekends or something that would be cool too. I said this elsewhere, but I maintain my opinion that a Pit with less rules would not become like the Snarkpit, mainly because we have names attached to our messages and thus are accountable for what we say. It’s a lot easier to be an asshole when you’re posting anonymously.

66

Well good god. Only meant to say it once.

67

I don’t think you understand the rules of “Great Debates.” You’re welcome to get as heated as you wish as long as you’re not insulting the other poster directly. If you start insulting the other posters, you’re not debating anymore, and that’s when you take it to the Pit.

The Pit was never intended to be a debate space for pottymouths. First of all, it’s not for debates; it’s for insults, diatribes, bitching, moaning, ranting, raving, complaining about the mods, and general griping. Second of all, there’s is no requirement that you be pottymouthed in the Pit, and no rule against being pottymouthed in Great Debates (it’s bad debate technique, but it isn’t against the rules).

68

I had the most fun ever this past weekend. It was fun. It was silly weekend in the Pit. What about every six months or so? It was a good experiment in human behavior and I think overall the SDMB passed.

69

As a lurker/freeloader/“who the hell cares what that dude thinks anyway?”, honestly I thought it sucked. Too chatty and a few people took the jokes way too far. But I can see why people who are active members of the community would have enjoyed the change of pace for a little while. Hope a free-for-all atmosphere won’t be a regular thing though!

70

Second Star to the Right, did you have a damn good time?

Me too! :smiley:
There were a few elements:
[ul]
[li]Amnesia-inspired openness[/li][li]NSFW links[/li][li]Discussion of illegal activities (e.g., drugs, file sharing)[/li][li]Remembrance of banned posters[/li][li]Knife fights[/li][li]Non-traditional pit threads (i.e., things that would normally get moved to MPSIMS)[/li][/ul]

IMHO, the amnesia inspiration went the furthest to the general atmosphere of fun (i.e., lots of mock, non-anger flaming). Not really repeatable on a regular scale. Maybe annually, but wouldn’t that need a special once-a-year forum, so as not to lose an ongoing discussion/pit?

NSFW links could work in the forum, if properly labeled, but I could see that turning into something of a moderator-intense hardship (of course, that could be an interesting way of getting to a mod).

Illegal activities, IIRC, stem from a CYA perspective. Though arguable, from an admin viewpoint I can’t see the overall risk being worth the benefit. Since it’s too hard to find that line between the easily identifiable no-nos and that gray area of maybe, the blanket rule helps us all.

I loved the banned poster threads – one of the great rules relaxations. But from what I read, by and large it was something of a love fest of posters gone awry. There wasn’t so much poster-bashing, the ostensible reason for the rule, and most of the people discussed had personal meltdowns and weren’t likely to get a rise out of us talking about them. If it were possible to retain the rules of no attacking the defenseless and not feeding the trolls without leading to more problems, this would be a great relaxation.

I believe knife fights were another extension of the amnesia, but they captured a wonderful roughhousing spirit. With the exception of death threats (and modding the serious from the not-so-serious strikes me as impossible in the long run), there’s no reason the pit has to have a rule where only vitriolic posts can be made.

Same thing with non-traditional pit threads. Yes, many would have been moved to another forum but for the language and general ruckus, but the weekend inspired a LOT of posting that otherwise would have been much more sedated. The only rule that kept them from here is general housecleaning.

Lastly, getting to once again “pull up a chair” and whatnot was fun, but the reason it’s frowned upon is that it got old, real old. Relaxing that admonishment (is it a rule?) would lead to the same thing – not an improved Pit.

All in all, the rules relaxation played a large part, the amnesia was certainly the catalyst, but it seems to me that the general outcome was due to overall spirit. Kind of like when your parents first started trusting you without a babysitter.

71

I had fun this weekend, posting silly crap in the knowledge it was going to disappear soon. It’s nice to do that once in a while, but it would get tiresome as an everyday thing. Plus I think I just lowered everyone’s opinion of me with the lame shit I posted.

72

As a result of this weekend, I’ve come to think there are some rules here that really don’t need to be applied in the Pit. For example, discussing ignore lists. Anyone who uses an ignore list is a drooling idiot, IMHO, and there is no good reason why that topic should be off limits in this forum. Similarly, I seem to recall many years ago that solitary comments like, “Pulls up a lawn chair” were frowned upon, for what reason I have no idea.

But the unlabeled NSFW links were completely and totally over the line. I think the Administration of this board owes paying members another serious, heartfelt apology for a seriously stupid mistake in deciding the waive the rules, but not thinking for one fucking second that a no-NSFW link rule was a very important one to keep in place. In fairness, the mods did act with some haste after at least one link was discovered, but the horse was already out of the barn in terms of risking having an unwitting member in good standing suffering a loss of a job or a reprimand at work due to one jackass poster, and more importantly, sloppy administration that is more becoming of McCain’s VP search team than a popular and intelligent message board.

I thought for quite some time whether I should continue to be a member of this board, and am still thinking about whether it is worth being a paid member of the board (after the eventual switch back to free posting privileges) due to the horribly incompetent decision by the mods to suspend all rules this past weekend.

I never thought I’d say this, but shame on the administration of this board.

73

I thought it was dumb and pretty much indistinguishable from the SnarkPit in content; a juiced up MPSIMS with false bravado.

R-word? P-word?

74

In my opinion it was mostly just harmless. It certainly made my weekend less boring.
I thought it was a great idea and really what harm was done?
The threads are gone now and thankfully some of my posts are now gone as well.

75

I enjoyed it as a nice change of pace.

I wonder, though, if part of the “over the top”-ness of it was because we all knew it was only going to be for a couple of days, and we had to let it all out in that time period. If we had this lack of rules all the time, would we all have been so manic about being out there so much? Maybe not, who knows?

But, it WAS fun :slight_smile:

76

Does deletion screw with large databases or is it just a continuity issue that we tend not to delete stuff? If it’s just continuity we could have a Knife Fight (or Fight Club) forum with the rules:

What happens in the forum stays in the forum. Since the forum will also be used to let out trolling impulses (like amnesia weekend did) we can’t be sure if they were letting off steam/trying to get a rise out of people or sincere. To further, no quoting outside, the most you can mention of a thread there is “oh yeah, there was a thread in the KF forum a while back about this.” Without mentioning any names. Maybe waived with poster permission.

The board should be purged every month or couple weeks or whatever. I don’t know if there’s a vB setting for this (I assume there’s something similar at least since many boards auto-delete threads that go x amount of time without any posts). This a comparable “freedom” like the weekend did knowing that anything you said will disappear, especially in conjunction to rule 1. I mean the posters will remember it, but they at least won’t be bringing it up in future arguments without getting a warning. If a thread is good enough and all/most posters participated agree we could have an “archive” section, or a way to mark threads so as not to delete them but that’s getting a bit too complicated in my opinion.

Something Awful isn’t the worst place in the world, I don’t have a membership or anything, but it never struck me as the unintelligent corner of the internet. The worst part is some of the blatant trolling (and the lack of moderator um… moderation, enjoy your ban). But overall it always struck me as smarter than, say, GameFAQS or /b/.

77

It was an interesting experiment, but honestly, there wasn’t much content that couldn’t be posted any time in the Pit, except maybe the discussions of banned posters. I could see maybe allowing that, but there is a legitimate concern that people would fire unfair parting shots that the banned couldn’t respond to.

Likewise, as others have said, the most fun seemed to be in had in the first 24 hours or so; the rest just devolved into increasingly pointless dicking around. By the end, I found myself wishing for a return to more of the equally pointless but somehow more entertaining recreational outrage.

I somehow avoided the unlabeled NSFW stuff. I wasn’t working anyway, but that simply would not be acceptable for any future rules change and I’d seriously have to rethink my membership if that were to be allowed permanently.

Otherwise, meh, I don’t see that much worth changing, especially if it adds additional complications to the rules. Unless the Mods actually want more complication in their jobs, of course.

78

I enjoyed it, partly for the impermanence as others suggested, but also because many of the threads seemed to lack the usual vitriol of Pit threads, which is why I generally stay out of it.

79

I gotta say, that’s a stupid idea.

80

You kinda missed my point. There are a LOT of posters who hang out in GD who really–and I mean REALLY need to be told something along the lines of “shut the fuck up, you annoying one hit wonder,” or “fuck you, the horse you rode in on AND your incredibly stupid blitherings,” on a regular basis with multi-poster pileons to reinforce the message as needed. You can’t tell them that in GD, so they keep on crapping up perfectly lovely debates with their wibbling and bullshit and all you can do is be politely cutting without going past the rules and THOSE FUCKERS ARE COMPLETELY IMPERVIOUS TO IT, BECAUSE IT FLIES RIGHT OVER THEIR STUPID FUCKING ONE NOTE HEADS. Most of them won’t get near the Pit because they know what will happen when they do; the unsayable-in-GD will be said and it will huwt dere widdoe feewins.

So the Pit, being the place where those annoying, nitpicking, stupid, one trick ponies will NOT go, becomes the place where a good argument can be had without being sidetracked and derailed by those numb fucks screwing it up. To protect the fun argument area, we tend to forego retarded silliness and the kind of stuff that would bury the fun debate stuff under a mountain o’freewheeling rudeness and bullshit. Debate in the Pit is constrained by the unfettered ability of any and every other poster to go off on a vicious rant if necessary–it’s reminiscent of Heinlein’s “an armed society is a polite society.” We’re all armed in the Pit, but it’s strictly a squirtgun world in GD.

I’d say that GD is like church–you can argue there, but there are constraints. The Pit is a local pub–you can cuss and drink and get in a fist fight if you like and the teetotalling church freaks won’t set foot in the door. We still could use the opium den/whorehouse.

So I’d like a forum for freewheeling, weird, rude, off the wall miscellaneous bullshit, illegality and evil, please… :smiley: