The Problem With PD is This (serious thread, not stupid attempt at sarcasm):

[East Coast Hustle]

I wasn't very eloquent about trying to present this idea before, so instead of trying to cut through 20+ pages of idiocy to revive the first thread I started on the topic, I'm making this shiny new one. I'd really like everyone's feedback on this, provided it's thoughtful rather than some lame attempt at a snarky one-liner.

I think the problem is that for whatever reason, PD has become less a place where people trade ideas and thoughts about what's going on in the world around them, how their interactions with the world around them effect themselves and others, and how we might be able to harness and/or direct that and more about presenting everything from a personal and purely self-centered framework.

IOW, we used to bitch about our jobs/politicians/etc. and apply these gripes to a larger framework or use them to build to an overarching point about something besides ourselves, now we just bitch about our jobs/politicians/etc. BECAUSE of how it effects us. It's one thing to occasionally interject an interesting or amusing purely personal story into the dialogue. It reminds us that we're some bizarre permutation of a tribe and that we're here to help each other progress and build. But when that kind of dialogue overtakes everything else and becomes the FOCUS of the site, we've really literally become nothing more than "facebook for weirdos". The foundation of this site is the desire to understand the processes that rule our environment well enough to be able to use them for our own ends (even if we have wildly differing ends amongst ourtselves), not the desire to know what you and your boyfriend did last night or what petty personal tribulations you are going through on a daily basis. I apologize if that's not what some of you want out of PD.com, but you are free to discuss all of those things amongst yourselves via PM, or IRC, or, you know, some other forum that's meant for that sort of thing. I used to think that unfettered growth of this site was to be desired for its own sake, now I realize that was just ego talking for me and that really this place might be better off (in the context of it's original stated purpose) being smaller and leaner. I don't know what can be done to impose this, and I'm not certain that I should even attempt to impose anything here anymore, but I want everyone to be very clear about what my problem is, at the very least.

[Jasper]

CP'd from Dok Howl's thread, because it's my sincere thoughts.

Impossible, the majority of people here are hungry for new ideas, and would die (or worse) without them.  This is PD.  We rewrote and vastly improved the holy book of the craziest religion on earth with the BIP.  We indoctrinated Steven Colbert into the Illuminati.  People here are responsible for one of the shadowiest paramilitary organizations on the internet.

Basically, PD fucking rules.  Things like this are just the parts that don't kick ass.

I'm going to go post a new idea. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I think the problem is the Law of Eristic Escalation.

I think that the more heavily the content is policed (whether via social pressure or outright modding) the less people will invest or share ideas.

I think that the harder you try to "make" the board what you want it to be, the farther away from that ideal it will drift, until people start leaving. The only way to really make the board what you want it to be is to start threads that are about what you want to see happening.

Personally, I like the media jakes. I want to continue writing letters to editors. I'd like to see a whole lot of us follow through with writing to Playboy. Just who the hell are these "Discordians", anyway?

I'll start a thread.

[Richter]

I'm seeing patterns in what's happening.  Like when you spar with the same person for awhile, and you instinctively react to their favorite tricks before they pull them.  
Mixing things up and trying new tricks will help, but we fall back into the routines.  They're easy pitfalls to hit.

It's like relationship therapy or some shit.  Let's get romantic with our BS.  

[LMNO]

While I agree with ECH about using PD as a pool of ideas and resources, I'm afraid I haven't been that good at adhering to that. 

Looking back at the past 6 months, I think my two biggest contributions have been The Spider Project and the SME 30 Day series, one of which is simply re-telling other people's creative output, and the other being partially fictionalized stories about my day-to-day life.

I have to admit, the Aneristic Delusions subforum is one of my favorites, and I read it voraciously.  And I'm interested in new approaches to psychology and philosophy, even at the risk of it turning into spaggy mush.

The problem is that I both really like the site because of the new ideas and concepts it often presents, and at the same time don't have many new ideas and concepts to offer.

[East Coast Hustle]

CP'd from Dok Howl's thread, because it's my sincere thoughts.

Impossible, the majority of people here are hungry for new ideas, and would die (or worse) without them.  This is PD.  We rewrote and vastly improved the holy book of the craziest religion on earth with the BIP.  We indoctrinated Steven Colbert into the Illuminati.  People here are responsible for one of the shadowiest paramilitary organizations on the internet.

Basically, PD fucking rules.  Things like this are just the parts that don't kick ass.

I'm going to go post a new idea.  

I'd like to agree with you, but I'm no longer sure that your first premise is true. Also, though I'm as proud of everything that everyone on this site has accomplished as anyone is, we can't rest on our laurels. The input is much appreciated, though. One thing I'd really like to see ITT is feedback from the people that ordinarily stay out of these discussions. It seems to me that the people who tend to respond are the people who fall into the "original purpose" camp (terms being used very loosely to save me a bunch of typing), and though they're usually saying what I want to hear, "what I want to hear" is, in this case, not ALL of what I want to hear.

[Dimocritus]

I think the problem is that the assumed existence of a problem with PD perpetuated itself into a real problem. There's Stuff, there's Fluff. Even if the only people here were highly productive, that would be the case. When it's turned into a stuff vs. fluff thing is when it turns into a downhill ride. Then people on both sides go out of their way to "defeat" their presumed (often falsely) opponents, while those who would like to remain on the stuff/fluff middle ground get hammered with countless amounts of threadkacks in topics they were interested in, and possibly would have participated in. I agree, people should want to be more involved in a constructive way. I don't, however, agree that this is a serious problem that needs anything other than a little time (see: not "drastic measures") and every one should chill out.

WHAT BOTHERS YOU, MAL? YOU DON'T SOUND WELL.

        "I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe."

        WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THAT, IF IT IS WHAT YOU WANT TO DO?

        "But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it."

        OH. WELL, THEN STOP.

[East Coast Hustle]

Argh. You're totally misinterpreting the problem as I see it. The problem is not "stuff vs. fluff".

It's one thing to occasionally interject an interesting or amusing purely personal story into the dialogue. It reminds us that we're some bizarre permutation of a tribe and that we're here to help each other progress and build. But when that kind of dialogue overtakes everything else and becomes the FOCUS of the site, we've really literally become nothing more than "facebook for weirdos".

[That One Guy]

I know I haven't been around much in the last handful of months (mostly due to IRL issues), but I can definitely feel what ECH is saying with this.

I have a somewhat different perspective on this since I've only been hopping on occasionally (once every couple weeks for a long stretch) and have only recently been coming back every day to take a look-see around the boards, mostly the political subforum and Apple Talk. What I see is the same posts from the same people saying the same things in the same way, and trying to frame it as a new exchange of ideas, rather than as a rehash of the same argument/discussion/debate/shit-flinging that's been going on for months.

While there are some new posts (the Spiders thing, the Richter/Dok Howl back-and-forths to name a couple that stood out to me) with some new presentations and ways of approaching the daily whatever, I've felt that the boards have been more and more mired in a seemingly rote exchange where I can almost exactly predict what any given poster will be saying before I even read what the post actually is.

That isn't fun for me, so I have been drifting away from here. Which is too bad in many ways - the Memorial Day meet-up a while back was GREAT and the NYC spag invasion of Boston was super fucking fun ... because we weren't just regurgitating the same shit that we always spew (and I'm definitely not saying I'm not guilty of this - the fact that I saw myself falling into this pattern was definitely another factor that influenced my distancing from PD) but we were out in the real world DOING SHIT, together with like-minded freaks and weirdos who also wanted to DO SHIT. I wouldn't have done the shit we did (which was fucking great - HIMEOBS'ing Boston, POSTERGASMing Providence) or met the great people I met if it wasn't for this site and the exchanges that have taken place here.

I've had a lot of personal stuff happen in the last six months or so. Might other people here find it interesting? I don't know - maybe. However, I have no need to tell strangers about my personal shit, so I don't. If others want to I have no intention of stopping them, but I also have no intention of reading it. So I don't. When that kind of content or style of discussion (IE always bringing the "me/my" perspective into a discussion or topic rather than keeping a broader view) doesn't dominate the boards, it's no problem to find a wide variety of topics to have interesting discussions. When it does, seemingly making any discussion devolve into personal anecdotes substituting for broader, underlying reasons for a given issue, I lose interest and spend my time elsewhere.

Which is a shame, since I've definitely had many great discussions get going, like the 5GW stuff and the BIP. Then there are the endless rehashes of libertarianism (being tossed in where it doesn't apply, then derailing a thread that was starting to pick up steam) or drugs, the mere mention of which is guaranteed to destroy the topic being discussed. It seems like every individual is too locked into their own experiences and is allowing that to color every and any discussion on the boards here, where even a year ago it seemed like, while everyone's base frame of thought was known people were able to debate the larger picture without succumbing to anecdotes/opinions as evidence. I was starting to do that, so I kept my distance in hopes that it would shift a bit, instead of getting worse as it has seemed to be doing. I originally stuck around here because the boards were a bunch of people willing and able to at least TRY to be above the primate-style shit flinging, and I feel like the boards have lost the ability to keep that style in the last year or so.

Oh well, just my thoughts on the matter as someone who's been around here a while that hasn't been deeply involved in the day-to-day arguments/discussions/threads. As always, YMMV.

[Cramulus]

There's some great energy here, but I can't help but feel it's a little incongruent with the shape of things.

Believe it or not, ECH, I've taken a lot of cues from you about what this board is "supposed to be". I am 100% into the notion of PD as a refining factory for projects pranks and big ideas. I hope I don't need to elaborate on that. A lot of the dissonance we're experiencing has to do with not sharing a unified vision of this board. But I think at this point we have to accept that this unified vision is out of the question.

What's the mission, anyway?

If you want PD to be a certain way, you've gotta describe it to us. There should be a mission statement somewhere which says, "This is PD, this is what you can expect, this is what it's for." For example, the notion that PD is not supposed to be an "everybody's invited" discordian clubhouse. Or the "fluff" which seems to be the pet peeve of the month. If you don't want this to be "facebook for weirdoes" (whatever you think THAT means), you need to explain what behaviors are incongruent with your vision.  People around here are quite willing to run with an idea as long as you don't come off like a snob.


Who is Driving the Short Bus?

And the second part is: you're not really driving this community. None of the mods are. You guys built it this way. So when it goes in a direction you don't like, (ie fluff threads or whatever) you're not in a position to "fix" it. I'm reminded of Kopyleft. To some extent, you have to accept that this thing has a life of its own, a cycle of its own, and that you don't have the authority to do anything about it. Whatever's wrong with the board, I don't think it's gonna be fixed by you and the other mods saying "Please stop this doubleplus ungood behavior." It's going to be fixed by doing what you want and then hoping people follow. In my experience, that's the major shaping force present on this board.

The "Let's take the balls somewhere else, somewhere that hasn't been corrupted yet" vibe that pops up occasionally, I think it's destined for failure. When somebody says it, without describing a specific site, a specific project that we'll move to, I just get the sense that they're all Sour Grapes about the state of the board and would rather move to a new house than clean up the kitchen. It's like when Roger got pissed off and tried to punish us by deleting his content from the board. It's not constructive, it's escapism.


Fluffernutter Sandwich

I also think that the fluff / non fluff dichotomy is missing the point. As we've established, sometimes it's okay to post about your life drama, sometimes it's too much. The problem isn't that personal anecdotes are bad and loftier discussions are good. It's that the threads in general are of low quality and not fun to read.

This applies to "content" threads too. From where I'm sitting, it's also that it's no fun to discuss certain topics with people here anymore. Intelligent discussions get reduced to emotional judgmental hysteria in a matter of pages. I already talked about this at length here.


Multiple Communities within This Community

People come here with a variety of motivations, and we can't change that. I think it's better to accept that Suu comes here for different reasons than Sepia, and they're not in competition, and neither of them are doing it wrong.

I think there's a fallacy in people's minds that if there is fluff on the board, it comes at the cost of "content". There absolutely can be both. If you're trying to raise the Quality of the board, let's focus on Quality, not which categories of posts are good or bad.

If people want the board to be of higher Quality, and I think that's the mission, they should endeavor to make all of their posts better. Before you post in a thread, you should ask if you are adding to it in some way. If you just want to "express your dislike" for the thread or the ideas in it, it's better to ignore it, and let other people go on with the conversation they were enjoying.

This is best summed by by this excellent WOMP by Payne, Circa 2007:

[Dimocritus]

Argh. You're totally misinterpreting the problem as I see it. The problem is not "stuff vs. fluff".

It's one thing to occasionally interject an interesting or amusing purely personal story into the dialogue. It reminds us that we're some bizarre permutation of a tribe and that we're here to help each other progress and build. But when that kind of dialogue overtakes everything else and becomes the FOCUS of the site, we've really literally become nothing more than "facebook for weirdos".

Right. Your point, please correct me if I am mistaken, is that there is a lack of focus, or maybe too much focus on something that was never the intended focus of this particular board. If that is the point you are trying to make, then how is anything like this, or any other thread made about it, or any other thread jacked because of it, getting things back into focus? Maybe this thought process you're going through (which I, again, don't totally disagree with) should be done in a place where you can get the feedback you want (maybe a PM questionnaire) with out people assuming they are being attacked. Or, it seems to me you already have a course of action plotted, so why not just do it? This isn't a "with us against us" thing, and I'm sure you'll be able to find people that will support what your doing, as well as support PD. Maybe either or, but whatever.

Dimo-
What the hell does he know...

[East Coast Hustle]

Cram, did you read my OP?

because it honestly seems as though you didn't. I'll say this AGAIN: the Fluff/non-fluff dichotomy is NOT WHAT I PERCEIVE THE PROBLEM TO BE.

[Cramulus]

did you even read my post? I also said the fluff / non fluff dichotomy is NOT WHAT I PERCEIVE THE PROBLEM TO BE, even though it's something everybody's been talking about. I brought up the fluff thing to segue into the Quality part, which is what I perceive the real issue to be.

[Cain]

As far as I can see, Cram is asking for clarification of exactly what you'd like to see, and exactly what you'd like to discourage, ECH.  A clear view of what is wanted, and how it would work (even if only in theory) would seem like a good idea, or else people are going to make decisions based on their own prejudices and whatever trigger words set them off.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I hate to say "be the change you want to see" but I kind of think that in this case, that is what it boils down to.

For me, that change might be simply to back off the forum for a while. I have a lot of writing to do and I'm putting too many words into posts that mean nothing and go nowhere.

Also, getting vindictively modded isn't doing a whole lot for my morale or my attitude.