I was a memeber here until a year ago before they started charging, and I’ve come back now under 1 month trial membership to see if it’s worth paying. It seems to be lacking something now though. I’ve been here a few days and I dont find many interesting threads.
So what do you think? Was it better before? I have to say on what I’ve seen so far it was.
It’s about the same, although the moderating seems more heavy-handed and as a result I post much less often than I used to because:
(1) I find myself second-guessing about whether or not the post is appropriate.
(2) having been here over five years I am seeing the same questions and topics come up again and again*. I’m getting a little tired of explaining where my user name came from for the seventh time. Don’t know whether or not either of these are related to the change to paid subscriptions, tho.
*and again.
Oh god, moderators are the bane of my internet life. Cant stand them sticking their noses into everything. Seems to me you need to be a certain type of person to be a mod - someone who likes rules and likes enforcing them to the letter. Chilled out mods seem to be a thing of the past these days. 
I think a couple of the great story tellers like Master Wang-ka have gone on hiatus–so we are lacking that. But I imagine that is just a matter of timing rather than cost.
No, it isn’t, but I don’t know if that’s because of the conversion to pay to post and the changes it engendered, a naturally waning interest, or something else entirely.
I have noticed the masturbation threads, kinky anal and oral sex threads have pretty much disappeared. If they have not, no links please!
Overall, there seems to be less activity. I’m sure that this is related to the board becoming a pay site. And I share Patty O’Furniture jaded attitude. Having been around this board for years, I feel like I’ve pretty much seen it all. I really, really don’t want to talk about whether Shakespear wrote his own plays for about the sixth time now, or explain the American political compass (liberals vs. conservatives, Democrats vs. Republicans) to non-Americans for about the dozenth time, or read yet another post in the Mac-vs-Windows war, the the bitterness and longevity of which makes even the Isreali-Palestinian troubles look like a lovers’ spat.
On the other hand, is there any place better on the Web?
You know what’s even worse?
Unmoderated boards.
Never seen one tbh. There’s usually always some moderator cleaning things up.
You think this board is overmoderated? I lurk at another board where the rules seem to be insanely strict. You aren’t allowed to post a “boring” or “useless” thread lest you get suspended or banned.
I think it’s much the same. Some weeks, there’s so many amusing and informative threads that I can hardly keep up; some weeks, it’s mostly pointless squabbling, and I get annoyed. The hamsters seem to be getting better food now- I remember how often I’d get an amazingly slow connection, or time out before a post would post, and that seems to be a lot less common these days.
As for the mods, I like the strong moderation here. I’ve seen too many boards full of idiocy, and I think the moderation here, even if people sometimes feel like it’s too much, keeps this board the haven of reasonable debate, entertaining humor, and pretty good spelling that makes it my favorite place on the internet.
I think its about the same as it ever was.
As far as moderating, all I can say is that the best thing that ever happened to this board was handy getting banned. What a waste of bandwidth.
Try the Usenet…
I personnally think the board has declined.
It’s a FUCK of a lot faster.
I’m not thrilled with all the rules, but I’m not sure any of them changed when it went pay (besides the ones about going pay, obviously).
This sort of seditious propaganda will not be tolerated! Take him away!
Yes, but none of them are as active. You guys think this place is slow? Most of the other boards I post at have fifty regular members at most and maybe, at most, a hundred new posts a day (not topics–maybe five new topics a day at the most active one) and most of those are junk posts by really obsessed people who have no jobs and do nothing but waste time on the Internet all day. Also, this board is the most diverse one (politically and age-wise, anyway) that I post on. The other boards are predominantly comprised of people in their twenties with radical politics who are either in college or right out of it, and while I do fit in that demographic it gets boring to run around in circles with people who think a lot like me. Here I’m challenged, and I like that.
I wasn’t here prior to p2p, so I can’t compare. However, I think the moderation level is average-to-good; people at my other boards tend to form tight-knit clans who war over the most piddling things and since the mods are also allied with certain posters some people get away with so much shit whereas others have to walk on eggshells. It’s not what you say, it’s who your allegiances rest with. I haven’t seen much of that type of behavior here.
I wish I had been around before p2p; I like this board a lot and it would have been nice to participate when the board was “better.”
I browsed before the board was P2P. I stopped browsing because it was just too damned slow, and kept crashing on me.
I missed the “golden age”, but I think the tradeoff is relatively good to be able to access the site on a regular basis, without having to wait twenty minutes to get a page. And the site is active enough that I can have it open for 8 hours, on an 11pm - 7am shift (like I’m on today), and still have plenty of discussions to read/join in on.
Plus, I prefer a moderated board. I’d rather spammers, trolls and other assholes get dealt with than run rampant.
I definitely prefer a moderated board to an unmoderated one. Unmoderated boards usually end up being overrun with assholes.
Incidentally, if you think that the moderating on this board is too strict, then you should have been here a few years ago. There was one moderator, whose name I don’t remember, who would ban people for all kinds of trivial reasons. Often, it was just because she didn’t like the political opinion someone had just expressed. It was like having the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland as a mod. Eventually, this mod got banned herself, and things returned to normal.
(This is just from me as a member, not as a mod)
Sure, the excitement of the board that was here in the 1999-200x period is waning. Just like being married–you fucked your brains out while you were dating, then you got married and the frequency dropped off. That’s real life, whether in a marriage, or on a message board.
But it’s still the best place out there.
You have to ask yourself “where would I go that provides me more satisfaction?”
If you find that mythical site, let us all know.