I’ve got socks older than you have been at this board sweetheart. Deal with that.
All my socks are older than that. Is that bad?
I have a sweatshirt that I bought in 1993.
Look, I lost track, what exactly are we doing in this thread?
Ban him!
Am I the only one who can see nothing on this board that I’d want to post on facebook? “Look friends, a conversation between anonymous people you don’t know.” Cecil’s column is different. I’d link to that and have people read or not as they wish.
And that’s fine. I disagree, but then we’re probably just hanging out at different boards. 
But let’s remember one thing: this place is going to change. The “feel” or “culture” of it, whatever, has since I’ve been here. And that’s inevitable. That happens. It has nothing to do with Facebook sharing, or avatars, or whatever. People come and go, topics and rules change, etc. (I’d say that the new Pit rules played a bigger role than any cosmetic look would)
Resisting it isn’t going to do any good. It’s not going to change the quality, necessarily.
Of course change is inevitable. But the direction of that change is not some force of nature we (*) are helpless to influence. How we advertise the board, who we welcome, and who we shun all impacts the board’s culture. We actually can shape the future culture of this board, and that’s what these discussions around avatars, share buttons, Google indexing, etc tend to be about.
(*) We here meaning the overall SDMB community. Obviously admins have outsized influence here.
True. But to say that a few cosmetic changes will negatively impact the board is, to my mind, absurd.
Well…
Never mind. WAY too easy. 
Really? Interesting.
That’s a load off of my mind.
Should the board’s culture be static, or should it evolve over time? An earlier poster said that they didn’t mind the promotion the SDMB got through the “if LOTR was written by someone else” thread, because it attracted “our kind of people” or something like that. Really? How does the site really grow if the end result is just going to be even more of the same Tolkien fan-wankery? Many message board members move on to some other community or distraction after a while. How will they be replaced if nobody knows about the site?
What I see here on the SDMB almost mirrors the culture of academia. As in academia, there’s great resistance to change. So many members seem to liken themselves to eccentric beard-stroking professors, who see this place as a general interest message board, but a virtual panoptic symposium. Dopers argue endlessly over minutae in a way that reinforces the validity of Sayre’s Law: “Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.” While there is a need to back up an argument with facts, some demand cites for the obvious, as if they were wannabee referees of peer reviewed journals. The SDMB is just message board catering to a more mature and intellectually curious crowd than most, not some mahogany-lined professor’s lounge at an Ivy. Get over yourselves.
Do you really think intelligent people would find themselves more attracted to message boards that don’t have avatars than those that do? Do you really think that the odd Facebook like is going to attract the unwashed masses? The popular belief that members who would have found the SDMB through a Google search or other third party are somehow less intelligent to those that discovered it through the Straight Dope column or the books is an insult to the many active, productive members that stumbled upon this place, or sought such a message board out.
Ha ha – 
So I just looked down the page and THERE IS THE DREADED FACEBOOK BUTTON!!
I’m typing this to warn everyone, then I’m throwing my mouse across the room, changing my name, and moving to a small earthen home in an unpronounceable third world country. Without electricity.
If anyone wants to talk me down from the ledge, better hurry.
Now that they’re there, anyone know how to hide them? I’m not using them, so won’t mind regaining the screen real estate. Not looking for anything dramatic (they’re there, but not overly intrusively), but an AdBlock-like ad-on would be nice/convenient.
I don’t know why the board can’t have a button to hide them. Like if you’re on the main board page, you can hit the double up carets next to Side Conversations and hide those forums. Could we get a function like that to hide the social buttons?
That would only require a tiny bit of code to do, but considering the fact that the buttons are already way near the bottom (past the entire thread and the ad), I doubt TPTB would waste the time to implement something like that.
It’s not an option in this version of vB. It’s either on or off.
I’m really noticing the difference with those buttons already.
I can’t point to any specific posts, threads or posters, but I just have this sensation that the SDMB has changed. It’s tough to put my finger on, kind of like every time I go into a different forum, maybe these new people suddenly jump out, it’s like just seeing someone’s shadow once in a awhile, never actually running into the person.
For me, my spider-sense is tingling off the charts and I’m going to be pretty careful about posting here from now on.
They’re exactly where you don’t want to look, where you never want to look. The corner of your eye.
Also, don’t blink. They’re multifaceted like that.
:rolleyes: just :rolleyes:
Okay, one of us has been whooshed. For RaftPeople’s sake, I hope it’s you.