It’s popping up all over the SDMB. A few people criticise others for using the Dope as their personal blog, and suddenly everyone jumps on that band waggon.
It pisses me off because I’ve been here for seven years, and back in the early part of those years nobody minded that a LOT of people used the Dope like that. Now some ill-tempered people are trying to take the fun out of it for other people. by belittling their posts for being too much like a blog. Well that’s what the dope waslike years ago.
So the dope as a place to visit is nothing like as entertaining as it used to be. It’s useful for getting answers to questions (after you’ve tried google) not that a few people won’t flame you for not exhaustively trying the internet first.
It’s almost as if some people don’t want anyone else but themselves and the people who stroke their ego to post here. I don’t go round shitting on all the posts that don’t entertain me. I just ignore them. Why can’t anti-bloggers just ignore the bloggy threads?
Dude, I’ve been here longer than you, I remember all of that stuff also. What I ALSO remember, was that it was pretty much only in MPSIMS, which is fine, hence the title Mundane Pointless Stuff I MUST SHARE…makes perfect sense for it to go there. I can’t see any reason whatsoever for it to be in ANY other Forum. In my case, I don’t believe that blog-like threads belong in Great Debates and therefore I said something about it.
I just notice the use of the criticism seems to have increased rapidly and ten-fold. I feel like I have been a victim of it.
The Pit was also used a lot for personal blog style rants in the old days. I do (or rather did… I’ve now been put-off entirely) restrict my own to MPSIMS and the Pit (less-so the Pit)
I’m not directly criticising your post. I agree the GD is for - Great Debates.
It’s just that your post triggered mine.
ETA: People indulged me when I ‘personal blogged’ in the old days. I’m bound to have been encouraged by that. I admit it probably isn’t the best use of the Dope. But can you blame a person when they’ve had years of encouragement?
Plus ça change, plus c’est pareil. It was always better back then, and it will always be better now than it will in the future. Except not.
In other words, Lobsang – no, you know what? I don’t care. Whine all you want about how much better things used to be, but don’t be surprised when “new” people who have been here only three years feel offended when you do.
If you’re looking for an honest attempt at an answer, I’d say there’s two reasons. One is that there is a reason that message boards and blogs both exist on the internet, and aren’t interchangeable. Each has it’s own purpose, and there are tools better suited to that purpose belonging to each one.
A blog is essentially a thesis that one author begins and is mainly there for the benefit of the blogger. They may or may not allow comments, and they control the content of the comments they allow. A message board is designed around discussion and communication between more than one author. One person may begin a discussion thread, but they don’t own it, and are not in control of the content that follows.
When someone creates a thread that is essentially a livejournal post here, people dislike it because they know other place exist that the author could be using that are designed for that purpose. They came here, instead of any other those other places, because they were looking for a different kind of content.
The second reason that people don’t ignore it is because if they don’t voice dislike of that type of posting, there’s nothing to stop more and more people from doing it. It sounds simplistic, but even 50 people- a fraction of the users here- posting on these boards in a livejournal style could overwhelm the board. It would be very difficult to ignore.
Oh, no, Zoe, I didn’t mean that these types of threads are somehow to blame for any of the Dope’s technological issues. I meant, overwhelming to the eye. I also didn’t mean that there are already a lot of these types of threads around- I was responding to Lobsang’s question as to why people don’t ignore blog type posts if they don’t like them. People voice their dislike as a deterrent.
Indulged, perhaps – in the sense of “ignored,” I’m guessing. “Years of encouragement” I’m pretty sure existed mostly in your own mind. I recall a discussion between you and several of us – including me, before I became a moderator – several months ago, in which we communicated to you how fucking annoying it was and you agreed to stop doing it.
If someone tells a story or muses on life events in ways that are personal and idiosyncratic, but that allow room for others to respond and participate, that’s completely appropriate for the Dope. We’ve seen many great threads of that sort over the years, many of them in MPSIMS. Posting every single random thought that passes through your mind, no matter how colorful, is not appropriate for these message boards.
I’m not going to comment on the current Lib/GD foofooraw – but I will say that there are limits to how mundane and how pointless – and how solipsistic – the threads in MPSIMS should be, and I’m going to lock those that, in my opinion as a moderator of that forum, cross the line.
Note that this isn’t me going off half-cocked on some mad mod power trip – there have been, and will continue to be, discussions among Marley, Invisible Wombat, and me about where the line is.
Online blogs fail in one massive way which puts me off using them:
There is no ready-made audience. When I blog I feel like I’m talking to myself. I’m not a diarist so I will probably never be a blogger.
In other words there’s litterally no motivation to blog using a blog service.
And if that exposes me as an attention whore well so be it. Most people who ‘contribute’ to message boards ARE attention whores, even the ones who deny it to themselves.
And It’s not all in my mind. Years ago I created threads that people enjoyed. Sure it wasn’t every one of my threads, and I created some shit threads. It’s just that the ability to create a good thread has all but disappeared. And like I said further up, I am no longer motivated to create blog type posts here.
The main aim of THIS thread was not to defend blogging, it was to express my annoyance at the jumping-on-the-bandwagon and the inappropriate vitriol against bloggers.
If these types of post are not the cause of the boards bandwidth issues then there’s no problem. If you don’t like these posts just ignore them. don’t make the effort to say you don’t like them in a nasty way.
So, the fact that blogging in the appropriate venue wouldn’t interest anyone enough to read it voluntarily makes you feel justified in misusing a message board to force your blog posts upon others? That’s…great.
Reread Rin Twisted’s first post in this thread. It’s an excellent summary of why using a message board to blog may be good for you, but it’s selfish and inappropriate.
I did as you requested, and reread Rin Twisted’s first post. I agree with the gist of what he said. And to his credit, he admitted that his modeling was simplistic.
But there are times when the two overlap just a bit. A poll, for example, in a message board thread. The author of the thread has control because, if he didn’t, a poll could not take place. So that’s an easy example.
But Great Debates has even more subtle examples. It is true that the author of a thread there does not have control over the thread, but his *topic *ought to be the topic of the thread. In other words, if he opens a thread about Obama’s tax policy, it’s not really proper message board protocol, in my opinion, for someone else to come in and say they’d rather debate whether Michael Jackson was gay. The topic of the opening poster prevails, or should prevail, in Great Debates, I think. Same for IMHO (when they aren’t polls).
But MPS or the Pit, no harm no foul if it is hijacked or meanders all over the place.
Not to defend the practice of using the boards as a blog, but now that every man and their iguana has a blog, the odds of anyone seeing a particular non-commercial blog are almost nil, unless the blogger has a wide circle of friends (or can get a link happening with an existing, popular site).
So I can understand the desire to share thoughts with people (say, on a messageboard) and not feel like they’re simply talking to themselves- although, as you say, treating a messageboard like a personal blog isn’t really Cricket (nor should it be, I hasten to add.)
