Not really. Hardly any columns in recent decades were particularly focused on Chicago. I first read the column when I was living in Washington DC, and also read it in New York.
I’d like to reiterate the suggestion for a “like” button, or upvote or whatever you want to call it. I know that many balk at the suggestion, but we want more traffic to the board, right? What board are you more likely to return to - one where your post is completely ignored (at best), or one where you see your post has 5 likes/upvotes/whatever? It’s a nice and quick way to let someone know you read their words, appreciated them, and didn’t really have anything to add to it but just wanted to endorse the post. I know I’ve read many posts that fit this description but didn’t want to post just to say “me too”. I’m sure others have done the same. TubaDiva, do you think this might be a possibility?
edit: I’d like to just note that obviously this isn’t an end-all solution, just another tool for the toolbox.
But only for paid accounts. Thus a sock problem becomes a revenue problem. Perhaps each sock account membership should only be $2 or so since it would encourage some people to do novelty socks for humor purposes.
I agree with this. Also, without a like button, people may tend to write posts with the mindset of “what can I say to get this quoted?” They may write things that are more controversial or inflammatory just to better ensure getting quoted for the recognition.
I quite like the semi anonymous nature of this place, I wouldn’t be following on facebook.
I was a member of a message board which covered oil and gas operations, it was a sort of dope for drilling with a lot of technical content, and an anonymous user base. It had good content, but then the founder died, the site kept going and a parallel facebook page was set up. The message board pretty much died and the face book page is now jammed full of images of rigs with meaningless ’ gosh don’t we work hard’ slogans and some of the dumbest shit I have ever read in the comments. A face book page is fine to post links and make people aware, but It could end up splitting off content and discussion.
So, we’re a month in the the idea drive and several of them have been implemented. Has there been any uptick in traffic or revenue. Have the current round of implemented suggestions done anything?
I’ve seen it on other message boards. The Television Without Pity boards had it in their later years. Can’t remember if they were vBulletin or not though.
Also, this is another reason why enabling tagging posters is a useful tool. I could’ve tagged Tuba in my post upthread rather than waiting for her to notice the post while the thread drops off the front page.
Another suggestion: keep thread closures to a minimum. For example, the hot chicks thread that just got closed (it’s not about that thread specifically, just using it as a current example). If people still have something to say, why not let them keep talking? Eventually the conversation will die off on its own. Especially controversial threads, if anything that keeps posting traffic up for a bit. Just a thought.
All of this. Let the racism and sexism continue to stand and the mods are very explicitly making a choice of who is welcome here and who is not. Bone’s comment overlooks the fact that racism and sexism will also turn off both current and prospective posters but he appears to view that (and their views) as non-important and is focused on ensuring that posters who repeatedly make racist/sexist posts stay because they “may add value”. You guys are making a very clear choice every, single day. Don’t be surprised if your choices have consequences. And to be clear Bone’s still far better on this than tomndeb. Like Lamia said, you guys just need to own your choices and make them explicit so posters can make an educated choice as to whether to remain. Like Lamia, I thought the issue was that some of this wasn’t recognized.
Losing Lamia is a huge loss, potentially losing Kimstu (who has been gone for a while and I’m not sure why) would be a huge loss. It’s ridiculous that they are being compared to StarvingArtist & SlackerInc. But the “free speech” of the latter is apparently more important than bigotry. Both of them should be topic banned IMO. Finally it’s kinda telling that the mods acknowledge that there are prominent posters here who could not follow rules that would ban sexism/racism and they would, therefore, be banned under that scenario. Some of the usual suspects have jobs and one would suspect that they know enough to abide by those rules there. Why not here? Or in other words, why are they being held to lower standards than anyone else? The idea that you can’t ban sexist/racist posts because that would mean banning posts who would refuse to follow the rules…I can’t even. But you do you and enjoy your board filled with posters like StarvingArtist and SlackerInc while Lamia, UnaPersson and others like them leave.
If you want to gain some new posters, you’ll have to lose some old posters probably. There is something to offend pretty much anyone who comes here,
“Scratch a man and find a rapist” is one of my favorites. The board is very much filled with rants and broad brush strokes.
I showed the board to my wife and she just thought it was full of narcissistic know it all types and was immediately turned off and I was like "but honey Mr. Nylock is my user name . . . . "
It was more upsetting than when my fish died and she asked me if I wanted to go out for sushi that evening.
Yes, we need some consistency and realism in Moderating.
Openly state that blacks are mentally inferior and that gets a Note. Imply that several posts made in the thread are untrue- thus that implies that the poster is lying, thus that means it’s a personal insult. That means a warning. Mods must be excellent mind readers and they KNOW the first isn’t being a racist troll, but they KNOW the second is a personal insult.
Call someone a taco n****r and nothing is done. Make a joke about someone’s unfortunate choice of a user name- and that gets a warning.