Thank you, ecg.
The link in the bottom bar on each page is now wrong and needs updating.
Which bottom bar do you mean? I don’t see anything like that in my theme. The pull downs are correct.
It’s the footer at the bottom of the page. It doesn’t show up in all themes.
Let is know if anything else needs updating.
I don’t like it but I understand the reasons for the change and must bow to the inexorable march of progress.
(why? sheer adversion to change of course, in some matters I’m the most conservative person in the world (don’t try to sell me a change to rules of (real, played with the feet) football, for example, I may become violent))
Posts 4 and 5 in the Registration Agreement still refer to the old name.
Thanks!
Skipping the thread to respond to the OP.
This is an elegant solution to the problem. However, I will choose to be a curmudgeon and say that it didn’t need to be changed. A little dissonance can be a good thing from time to time.
I would prefer it if this remained a place where 90% of the stuff posted is mundane and/or pointless. Fewer “personal” topics will be preferred, and “miscellaneous” topics lack flair. MPSIMS was for shower thoughts, and I feel like those have been unhomed.
Nonsense. Random thoughts and the like still go in this forum, they haven’t been dehomed. And we’ve already had a rule that some posts are too pointless even for MPSIMS. This change just recognizes that peoples’ personal losses or illnesses and tragic news shouldn’t be forced to be called “Mundane and Pointless”.
Just like some posts can be too pointless, some posts can be too personal.
Honestly, it never felt like a big enough problem to require “solving”.
Having a forum that explicitly invites mundane and pointless discussions was the charm of the place. Can you post something mundane and pointless in a “miscellaneous” forum, of course, but that wouldn’t be my first instinct were I a relatively new poster.
Correctness is maybe a noble goal, but when it erases the character of a place it’s maybe not the net result you want. This strikes me as the reaction from a bunch of humorless old heads, which sadly is where the Dope seems to be these days.
I don’t even notice the change.
And i doubt that anyone would have noticed if the change had just happened with no warning.
The content hasn’t changed and probably won’t.
You should re-read some of the comments. It’s not for correctness. It’s because many people felt unease posting significant sad life events in a forum named mundane and pointless.
I’m not unfamiliar with the “issue”. I just don’t think that this is the usage we should be optimizing for.
I have no use for a forum littered with memorial posts and various tragedies. To each their own I guess, but I get enough grief from other channels.
Nearly all of us have been here for many years. Do you really think our posting habits are going to massively change because of the forum re-name?
Nothing has changed in regards to what to post in that forum. The name has changed to reflect what people have been posting there for many years, longer than I’ve been around here.
I don’t want a board where nobody ever posts or discusses serious news events; or for that matter one where nobody posts or discusses serious personal events.
If people could and did go ahead and post those things for many years even though the name was wrong, as did indeed happen: I very much doubt that people posting mundane and pointless things will stop posting them even though they’re now included with the non-mundane and non-pointless under “miscellaneous and personal.” Which name does include the mundane and pointless a whole lot better than the old name ever covered those things that aren’t.
You’re not putting yourself in the shoes of a new poster.
Long time posters are part of the community. They know the people and they know how MPSIMS is used. If they have a serious topic to share they will feel comfortable posting it there based on their experience.
A new poster doesn’t have that experience. They only know what it says on the tin. They hopefully aren’t going to make their first post here some sad intimate issue. That’s not what this is for. But when they see a forum title with a quirky, fun title they are invited to participate in something fun. It encourages the kind of content we need more of. We do not need more deeply personal stories. Those come organically.
It’s about risk-reward. Discouraging new posters from joining and creating light, fun, silly topics will kill this place. Long time posters feeling mildly uncomfortable sharing a serious issue in MPSIMS isn’t going to hurt the community in the long run. They will post it anyways. And if they don’t, well that’s a bit unfortunate but they probably aren’t going to leave the board over it.
This place doesn’t need to turn into the obituary section. That’s not healthy for the community. It’s a mistake to stop promoting this place as a fun, not-so-serious place. The reason people care to hear about these life events is because of the community and culture that was built around shared silliness.
The SDMB is a place built on semi-serious topics. Cecil’s columns, GQ and GD are places where snark is common but the spirit of the forum is fairly heavy, serous stuff. MPSiMS was explicitly created as a reprieve from that seriousness. Now it’s just appears to be a place for semi-serious topics that aren’t otherwise easily categorized.
The Dope is losing something important because of this change.
How many new members do you think we get who came here to post something mundane and pointless? If a new member joins to start a thread, it’s almost always to ask a general question, to bloviate on some political topic, or to share something personal. People aren’t joining to share their shower thoughts. That comes after they’ve been here a while.
Honestly, as a new poster, i avoided MPSIMS, because it sounded boring. It took me a while to realize that friendly discussions of world news and quirky, interesting observations lived there. If i thought the old title worked well for newbies, i would have lobbied to keep it. In fact, i found it off-putting as a newby.
Just my experience.