This is NOT an advertisement for the “splinter” boards – apparently any passing mention of those places with a url is considered “advertising” and thus verboten and grounds for suspension (though Marley states outright in several places that it’s OK to discuss “other” boards).
This is also NOT a place to talk about how cool the domebo and Giraffe boards are. There’s already a thread in MPSIMS if you want to discuss that. (So mods, please don’t move this thread to MPSIMS and then close it because there’s already a thread there.)
This IS a thread About This (SDMB) Message Board (see the forum title mods) and how the splinter boards will affect it.
Firstly, my thoughts:
This is the first time in 7 yrs that I have seen such a ruckus about rule changes, with 2 mods resigning and essentially leaving to set up a new board, and with another group of diehard posters leaving to set up yet another board. This is also the first time I have seen such a nearly universal meltdown from members of all stripes (usually it’s just one small group or another). In other words, this is not your average passing shitstorm. The very fact that we have 2 boards set up in the past 2 weeks with HUNDREDS of SD members joining and posting tells me something is going off the rails here.
So, my questions:
How will this affect the SDMB? Clearly, every post in one of those other boards is a post NOT here – and while it might not be many today, it could become significant. Does that matter to TPTB?
How do Ed and TPTB view the other boards? As sidebars to this one or competition?
Do you see this as a passing nuisance or a serious threat?
Will there be any disciplinary action for posting negatively on either of the other boards?
What’s the legality of all this stuff (copyright, etc.)?
Please keep any SD board bashing in one of the (many) other threads – I’m only interested in issues directly relating to how this will affect the SDMB, and how TPTB view things.
Mods, if you have an issue with this thread please PM me before closing so we can edit appropriately.
I’ve no crystal ball, so the long-term fallout for the SDMB is beyond my ken.
The rapid rise of “alternative” boards truly is breathtaking. One, in the space of about a week, has picked up some 350 fifty members. Since they presumably are all Dopers, this represents ten- to twenty percent of our active membership. If this doesn’t impress upon Ed the enormity of the present train wreck, nothing will.
(The heavy-handed response to Baldwin’s attempts to “advertise” one of them pushed me into signing up yesterday. Granted, since his posts were edited, we can’t know if he really crossed the line or not. But the mod action comes across as spiteful - or fearful.)
I still suspect we have not gotten The Straight Dope about all that is driving these changes. Nor, I fear, shall we ever. Rule Two still makes no sense. Why limit the use of crude invective just to Dopers? That hardly “cleans up” the place.
On the legal front, we believe the boards safe, after taking some initial legal advice from various members, and my sister, a solicitor. In particular, we do not believe that any copyrights are being infringed, though we are happy to comply with any reasonable requests.
I think that essentially the deal is done, the boards exist and people are going to move on. I doubt it can be patched up. How people will post is different. I still post here and at Domebo so maybe it’s not that big of a deal.
No. We don’t see this as a zero-sum game. There have always been multiple online Straight Dope venues, some of which (alt.fan.cecil-adams, for example) long predate the SDMB. Naturally we’d be concerned if traffic here were to drop or the conversation became noticeably less lively, but we have seen no sign of this. We get next-day usage reports and have seen no change in traffic. We’ve had about 89,000 unique visitors over the past month and about 21,000 visitors yesterday, a slight increase over the previous Monday.
Neither. We see other boards as a useful adjunct to this one. If people are unhappy here, and they find another board more to their liking and post there instead, this is a desirable outcome from both our standpoints. We wish the operators and users of other boards well.
All we ask - and this applies to any online venue, not just SDMB-related ones - is that you not take an argument from one board to another, and that no effort be made to organize board wars. We have no objection to people expressing their opinions. As always, we would take appropriate action in the event of threats, regardless of where or how expressed.
This has come up in the past. Material copyrighted or trademarked by Creative Loafing (including logos) must not be used elsewhere without our written permission. We are reluctant to allow the name Straight Dope to be used elsewhere but have purposely not trademarked expressions such as the Teeming Millions. We appreciate your inquiring beforehand if you are starting a venture that may infringe on a CL-owned copyright or trademark.
Sad to say that it feels like the conversation has waned considerably since the Brewhaha™. CS and TGR seem particularly affected and there seems to be a dramatically reduced number of bold threads with new posts when I return each day.
I feel like I’m singlehandedly propping up the sports talk. It sucks.
And yet the official response reminds me of Terry Jones in Eric The Viking, as he’s perched on top of his island which is rapidly sinking beneath the waves: “It’s all right; it’s not happening!”.
Actually, no. You can discuss only one of them there. Mentions of the other one have been deemed “advertising”, and have been edited out. Yes, edited out.
(I’ve heard the pitch about removing the links, and how that’s “always” been done, but if a person is editing anyway, he can just as easily replace the link with the name of the board.)
Frankly, SkipMagic’s mutilation of those posts flies in the face of Ed’s it-doesn’t-bother-us-and-we-wish-them-all-well declaration.
Don’t forget Bagdhad Bob! “There are no Americans here.”
It’s related to the topic of this thread, so that would be a waste.
I know what the edits looked like, I’m taking issue with the conclusion you drew: you’re allowed to mention other boards. Repeatedly linking to them in threads where it is not called for is spamming, and we asked someone to stop doing that yesterday. You are implying we allow references to some boards and not others, which is not correct.
With respect, drawing arbitrary implications can lead to misunderstandings. My concern, as I’ve twice expressed, is the mutilation of the posts. Rather than choosing to make the posts incomprehensible, one could have chosen to delete the posts if they were advertisements. I don’t recall ever seeing a spam post remain with only its key terms removed, but then I haven’t spent much time in MPSIMS. You will disagree, of course, but in my opinion the choice made betrayed a grudge of some kind, or a move to exercise power for the sake of demonstrating that power. As the president has said, one should lead by the power of example, rather than by the example of power.
Spam posts (by spammers, as opposed to members) are usually moved and the spammers banned. When a member posts spam or a link that’s not safe for work, for example, we generally do the same thing you saw in those posts: remove a piece and leave a note explaining the edit.
Otherwise, when it’s not a straight-up spammer; when it’s a member who advertises his or her site without staff permission, yes, we remove the link, make note of it in the post, and move on to the next thing that pops up. We edit posts for copyright concerns in song lyrics, spam, NSFW links, etc… This is neither new or noteworthy.
Also, when someone’s spamming the boards, I don’t think it’s a good idea to remove the link but leave the site. That’s just free advertising, and defeats the purpose of editing out the spam in the first place.
I detect a teensy-weensy flaw in your reasoning here, since like it or not it is zero-sum, especially since these new boards, unlike previous ventures, have been specifically set up for posters disenchanted with some of the recent changes here. Our loyalties here and elsewhere may be fixed-sum - although at present I wouldn’t trade too hard upon it - but our time and money most certainly aren’t.
To return to my pub analogy in another thread, let’s suppose I have two hours to waste each evening hanging out in bars and catching up with the regulars. I used to spend both of those hours in Ed’s Throat Emporium, but I’m less than happy with some of the new rules there, and have taken to dropping in at Bill’s Boozarama which has just opened across the street. An hour I used to spend at Ed’s is now spent at Bill’s, and that’s an hour - an hour looking at Bill’s advertising and clicking on his links {yeah, I know he doesn’t have them yet. Work with me here} - Ed can’t have.
With all due respect, this answer is in direct conflict with the answer provide by Ed Zotti in this thread. ( Bolding Mine )
A careful reading of this informs us that if we were to register to another message board somewhere out there, and say something that Ed deems to be a threat in any way, he will take appropriate action. As defined by our Rules, that would ( at the very least ) include Banning.
Therefore, your statement that " We don’t punish people for off-board actions " is incorrect. Or, Ed’s statement is incorrect.
It means that the Rules that we agreed to as posters of SDMB now extend to the entire Internet. Ed may decide to ban anyone for saying anything anywhere on the Internet.
That is how it reads. You can see why this would be disturbing. Please speak with Ed and could one of you clarify the position? It would be quite helpful to anyone considering posting to a message board other than SDMB.
