This is almost as bad as the anti-avatar threads. OH NOES, WE’RE GOING TO RUIN THE ILLUSION THAT WE’RE A SPESHUL SNOWFLAKE BOARD!!!
Christ.
The lack of avatars does have a certain retro charm, though. I certainly prefer the place without them, but if they were allowed it wouldn’t particularly bother me.
I’m probably wasting my breath (keystrokes?) here, but I think of it a bit like this: When someone is replying to a thread, they’re participating in a sort of conversation with a group of other people. Imagine the conversation is taking place at a party or in a bar somewhere. There are other people wandering around the party (other posters) who may catch snippets of the conversation and decide to join in. That’s fine; generally you have at least some idea who these people are and they’re generally at the party because of a shared interest/sense of community/culture; at the very least you know they’ve made some sort of actual effort to be there and stick around for a bit (generally).
But when people start using their phones to call strangers outside the party and say “Hey, listen to this conversation other people you don’t know are having and then come over here and join in!”, it changes the way the participants at the time might choose to interact with the conversation. And the difference between the way things are now and having an insta-share button is, I’d suggest, comparable (for this analogy) to the difference between having to go and find the payphone on the far side of the bar, making sure you’ve got change/a phonecard for it, then dialling your friends, versus tapping the button in your bluetooth earpiece that will instantly call most of your friends and broadcast the conversation to them. Sure, the effect is more or less the same (conversation shared with people) but having to walk across the place to find the phone and make sure you’ve got coins or a phonecard for it is going to put off most people except the ones who are absolutely sure that what’s going on is genuinely worth sharing.
One of things I like about this place is that it doesn’t feel like an integral part of The Rest Of The Internet. That’s a large part of why I’m here; if you take that away then as a place to hang out online it loses a lot of its appeal- like discovering the local lounge bar has become a Goth Nightclub, for example.
Do you know how the Internet works at all? Because if this is the analogy you’re coming up with, the answer is clearly NO!
Can I just clarify that I have no idea what Martini is going on about, and that I couldnt give a fig who is or isnt linked to our special conversations.
I just prefer webpages without all this extraneous crap. I am a member so I dont have to see ads. There is little difference at the bottom of my page between some ads and these bookmarks I dont want to see. So whats the point in paying for membership again?
Of course I know how the Internet works, in a general sense. Everyone here does. Have you got a better analogy?
Oh, the irony of people claiming we don’t know how the Internet works. I’m not going to touch on the stuff I haven’t said, but ::picard facepalm::
No, apparently you don’t understand how it works. Go read Facebook’s privacy policy. It very well does apply. Anything you send to Facebook is associated with your account, and the information can and will be sold at some point. There is a big difference between BigT saying something and John Marshal from Hicksville* saying something. Facebook needs information from you–that’s why the hand out these free buttons. They aren’t just going to give their crap away for free.
There’s a reason why Facebook is constantly in the news about its privacy. Its entire purpose is to sell information while pretending to be a social site. Way too many people (apparently including you) are unaware of that fact, and we do not want to make it easier for them to unwittingly share information they would rather not.
Oh, and Facebook was brought up specifically because someone in this thread wanted the feature, and, if we didn’t argue the negatives, Ed might have put up. (And, yes, I can type that with a straight face.)
*Nowhere near my real name or town.
How did the mods find time to do this when they couldn’t catch Osama? They made pitiful excuses and they were secretly selling us out.
I really don’t care. 
Oh my God. A Facebook share button does not “send SDMB content to Facebook.” And if you are so terrified that somehow clicking a Facebook share button will broadcast your full name and address all over the Internet then don’t click it. There is no possible way that someone could reveal YOUR personal information by posting a link to THEIR Facebook account.
The next time someone spouts off about how this is the smart people board, I am going to laugh myself into a hernia and then send them a link to this thread.
Of course.
You’ve got a webpage (let’s call it the SDMB). You’ve got another webpage (let’s call it Facebook). The SDMB is a popular webpage and Facebook is super popular webpage. Ergo, a lot of people use both.
Before, it took five mouse clicks and a few keystrokes to share a link on Facebook. Now it takes two. Two is less than five and some change. Therefore, it is better.
Wait… that’s not an analogy. That’s how a Facebook share button actually works. How is that killing your intertubes?
As with avatars. This really reminds me of the anti-avatar threads; the SDMB is a Special Snowflake, the sanctity of which must not be sullied by the likes of small images that accompany a post to further reinforce the identity of its author After all, nothing draws the mouth-breathing unwashed masses and Cornell grads to a message board like avatars. :rolleyes:
EDIT: beaten by Guin.
You guys didn’t seem to have a problem with the boost in traffic and membership when this thread got some publicity.
This is a general interest message board, not some elite academic listserv. People here blather on far more about zits, bacon, bowel movements and reality television than esoteric topics such as quantum mechanics or French philosophers. It’s a board that has been declining in relevance and importance over the past decade. Its owner wants to try something to breathe some life back into it, and maybe attract some new blood. Get over yourselves.
Yeah, a Digg button but none for Reddit?
It’s the default set of social bookmarks for a version of vBulletin that’s a few years old.
One further point.
I usually browse by clicking on the “latest post” button, then scrolling back up the last five or six replies that had been posted since I last checked the thread.
Now when I scroll back up the page, the software bumps my view right back to the bottom again as the stupid bookmarks load. So I have to scroll up the page twice. Or pause for a quiet reflection every time I load a page.
Something Awful has this with ads loading, and it gets annoying as fuck very quickly. Thanks for bringing this annoyance over here.
And you know what. You can all stuff your fucking rolls-eyes smilies.
Help! I looked at that link, and now I’m a llama. (Damn, someone beat me to it.)
There is, however, a Facebook button on the Straight Dope main page and columns.
Having a Facebook button on the page does not send anything to Facebook. If someone clicks the Facebook button, then Facebook may collect info about that link and associate it with their Facebook profile.
But that’s your real name? That doesn’t sound particularly bright for someone trying to keep a low profile.
It applies to Facebook. Not to anything here.
Do you not think there is already a link to the SDMB somewhere on Facebook? Because that’s the only way this concern makes any sense. Linking to something on Facebook does not make it part of Facebook. Facebook has no control of the SDMB, nor any of its content beyond what is already available publicly to every human and/or entity on this planet.
And those of us who are on Facebook understand and accept this, and those of us not on Facebook will not be affected in any way, aside from a possible increase in SDMB userbase. And if that’s your argument, I have nine years on you, and frankly, you don’t get to make that argument to me.
Yes. Facebook is. We are not on Facebook right now.
I am perfectly well aware on Facebook’s privacy issues. I am also perfectly well aware that Facebook’s privacy policy does not apply to people without Facebook accounts, even if there is a tiny “F” in a box at the bottom corner of the page.
BigT, I’m confused. If I post an SDMB link on Facebook, what specific information do you think is going to be accessed by Facebook, stored, and sold at some point?
Whatever it is, it is already freely accessible to anyone with an internet connection. So it doesn’t matter. Facebook already knows this place is here. If they wanted to… whatever BigT thinks they want to do with it, they would have already.
I do. My analogy would be A BULLETIN BOARD, which is posted conspicuously and publicly, for everyone to see, post to, and interact with others on, even those who haven’t always posted on it before and never will.
Facebook doesn’t give out any information that YOU don’t give them in the first place. :rolleyes:
bites tongue
Heh.