Missions, Goals, Objectives

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Fuck's sake.

Nigel, you sound ridiculous.

Why, because he's never done that before?

[bds]

No.

Because I'm sick and fucking tired of reading pages and pages of accusations, bitching and just general fucking asshattery on this site. And not just from you, either. Jesus fucking Christ, do we really need more drama?

Actually, y'know what, fuck it. Forget I ever said anything. I don't want to add to the pile of steaming horse shit.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

You know what? Fuck it, I'll go.

[bds]

Oh, for fuck's sake.

[bds]

Sorry for bringing drama into this thread, btw.

And for whatever the fuck just happened.

[East Coast Hustle]

anyway, back to the topic...

I've been thinking that we could tie some of the GASM projects and other sort of DIY stuff we've got going on in with Radio Free Discordia.

It has recently come to my attention that there are people who listen to RFD who aren't active members of this site or connected to any part of our presence on the internet, so throwing the occasional "advertisement" for an IRL project into the RFD feed might inspire both more new members here and more active IRL participation in some projects.

[bds]

That's an excellent idea. Even if it's just a second or two "Coming Soon: EggGASM." or whatever, I think it would definitely help add the both projects here, and to RFD, as a radio station.

[rong]

I've been thinking about this thread quite a bit.  I agree there is a lot of potential here.  Maybe that's just my pack rat mentality – I can't seem to throw anything away until I've agonized over what I could possibly use it for.  Not that I'm personally trying to use the members of this forum but, as Cram said,

On a more concrete level, I'd like to see us propagate a prank which makes serious news.

This would kick so much ass. 

But it seems to me in order for this to happen – the forum structure needs to change.  If anything is going to happen, we really need to know what can we do and what will we do. 

I have a few ideas I'd like to share, but first I would like it to be known that I think these changes (should they be implemented) should only be applied to the O:MF section.  I, for one, really like all the bullshit posts and drama here and I certainly think it has its place.

It seems to me that the hive mind element of this place is under utilized.  I like the idea of incorporating feedback loops – if done right it should be possible to make the forum more "self-aware."  I won't even pretend to be an expert on AI and I think it's quite likely that what I'm about to propose has been tried before (everything I invent has been out there for years)

The way I usually browse this forum and I'm assuming most users do the same is to simply click the "Show unread posts since last visit" link and see what's been going on since the last time I was logged in.  This means the forum gets presented to me chronologically, based on whatever has been most recently posted. 

What if there was a "Show most Active Mindfucks" link?  Something that would take into account how many views a thread has had.  That would show what the forum was most interested in – even if nobody is posting.  I agree that it's important for newbs to be hazed and keep the bullshit down – but keeping the bullshit down by discouraging posting means there could be projects that people are interested in but aren't posting anything cuz they are either afraid to, or simply don't have anything to add.

Or, what if there was a "Show most popular Mindfucks" link?  If we could allow people to vote "Likes this" to a thread – that would let a thread rise to the top, without having to be posted in or bumped.

Another thought I had was to have threads that are two columns – all new posts would go into the right hand side column and the more valuable or relevant posts could get voted over to the left hand side.  This would be a way to filter out bullshit without discouraging posting.

I was also thinking that this hive mind must have a personality.  Would there be a way to set up a poll so the whole board could take, say, a Meyers-Briggs personality test.  Everyone votes for their particular answers and the results would be compiled into one meta-personality.  Might help us figure out where our efforts would work best.

I am by no means a proficient programmer (Fortran 77 anyone?) so I don't know how difficult (or possible) any or all of these changes would be to implement. 

I do think the important thing is to incorporate feedback in forms other than posting and bumping threads.

[Cramulus]

I think there might be forum software that allows for tagging threads.

like we could tag certain posts "prank" and then have a button like "view unread prank posts"

we could come up with several tags, for the stuff on the forum people generally want to follow - pranks, rants, mindfucks, gasms, games, etc. More specific and customizable than subforums.

that would be very handy for assembling stuff or pointing newbies to good reading.

[Verbal Mike]

anyway, back to the topic...

I've been thinking that we could tie some of the GASM projects and other sort of DIY stuff we've got going on in with Radio Free Discordia.

It has recently come to my attention that there are people who listen to RFD who aren't active members of this site or connected to any part of our presence on the internet, so throwing the occasional "advertisement" for an IRL project into the RFD feed might inspire both more new members here and more active IRL participation in some projects.

Kickass idea. It can be made even more appealing to the curious by, instead of overtly advertising, saying shit like "WE NEED YOU to help us uncover a mystery: WHAT THE FUCK IS COLBERTGASM? Is a shady cult really controlling America's top television asshats? IF YOU HAVE A CLUE send us info about COLBERTGASM to <EMAIL ADDRESS>. The first five to submit a clue will get a SPECIAL MENTION and FIVE SONGS OF THEIR CHOICE at the TIME OF THEIR CHOICE right here on RADIO FREE DISCORDIA."

In other words, make it look to outsiders like we are looking for information about these things, causing them to look them up (and the GASMs are all easily googlable). The email address given can and probably should be dead, causing the curious to seek out other ways to discuss the stuff, hopefully leading some of them over here...

Just a thought.

[Cramulus]

When I took this place over, the idea was that PD.com would be the place where we could "organize" (I use the term loosely) and bend our collective will towards collaborative projects both online and IRL. People who wanted to do nothing but chat idly and talk about what they just ate/listened to/stuck up their ass could do that at EB&G.

That's not to mean that nobody should ever engage in idle chatter at PD.com (obviously) but the idle chatter seems to have attained a kudzu-like quality. If people are uncomfortable with the idea of discordians organizing and getting "serious", they're free to go elsewhere. EB&G would be my first suggestion. They're also free to stay and make meaningful contributions or not, but I will react harshly to anyone who suggests that PD.com should not be the type of forum where we have some larger "big picture" goals and objectives.

FTR, I wish the above sentiment was in one of the newbie stickies.

[LMNO]

Wait, RFD is officially on the air?  When did this roll out?

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

All of these sound like good ideas on forum tools and lots of nice words... but if any of our (PD.com's) successes have taught us anything... its that ACTION, before organization and before nice cool tools actually works.

The First Intermittens was not organized (and it was that horrific Word Layout (sorry Cram!)). Once done, though, there was something people would see/touch and act on.

It seems to me, that BiP was similar, as were most of the GASMS.

We have several threads that are full of ideas and inspiration that WE SHOULD do something and we CAN do something and there are cool tools for doing something...

I've helped build a number of websites and this kinda reminds me of one of the most common errors. People spend a lot of time figuring out which CMS tool they want to use and which templates and which fonts and which images and which features and which functions... and they spend days and weeks agonizing over 'the best' solution. However, once their chosen solution is all picked out, it sits empty because they forgot that CONTENT was actually the most important part of their site.

We seem to have a lot of buzz here in the nest... but if we aren't out collecting pollen, all the buzz in the world won't make honey. 

[LMNO]

Suggestion:

Anyone with a post that sounds like, "You know what we should do?  A bunch of us should get together and ____" should just GET ON WITH IT.

Start your idea yourself.  Get the ball rolling before telling anyone about it.  Then, as you're cobbling a bunch of shit together, make general and specific announcements, like "Ok, I've got this thing, but I need some Q," and you throw the thing up for consideration.  If it's a good idea/project, people will gravitate to it and add on. 

A sure fire way to get nothing done is to talk about planning.  The first step should always be getting it to exist. 

[Cramulus]

You guys make it sound like any project we discuss first is doomed to failure! It can be frustrating "talking about talking", but it really is the best way to tune up our collective engine -- as long as the discussion is productive and gives us some ideas for better ways to collaborate.

How it works now (kinda):
The most common projects we've undertaken, typically writing projects, have generally grown from a single editor capitalizing on already available resources. It seems to be possible to canvas PD for submissions, as long as the submissions are kind of short and the idea is fun.

The moderately complicated projects we've undertaken have usually grown from a smaller network of people with their own internal dynamic. They grow their idea in private, then take it to the forum. I agree that the higher degrees of organization may not be possible in a group setting, but that doesn't mean it's impossible...

Two examples come to mind - the party at limbo peak (which required a lot of backstage coordination between 000 and I), and the A Fapcab Called Desire thread, a WOMP cabal art project. (Believe it or not, FAPCAB required two or three weeks of coordination at WOMP HQ)

Intermittens 1 also happened in layers... after I made the first PDF, Telarus hopped on board to do the layout. This, in its purest form, is how a GASM works.

let's get a bit more concrete though - It's only useful to talk about how this place functions if it helps us make the machine more efficient


So let's bring the tangent to the Fat Eris Cookbook



We talked about how BIP/Intermittens followed the "easy pick-up" formula - how there were a lot of resources already available, and it only took one or two moderately organized editors to pick up the pages and throw them into a book. Although PD posters can't be relied on to write long essays or treatises at the drop of a hat, we can count on some small to midlength submissions from a lot of people, medium length from a few people. And there are already a lot of resources available in the recepie subforum, so a lot of the book will come together very quickly once we conceptualize it properly.

How it's working now:
So the Fat Eris cookbook is one thread right now, and it contains both the discussion about the book and submissions for the book. The Pariah has taken it upon himself to collect the entries in a single document. This makes him the de facto editor. He will likely listen to the suggestions made in the thread, but as the guy with the .doc, he's the decider.

Is this an efficient model?

could we make it more efficient somehow?

what about distribution? -- we can easily distribute it to the forum, but what about after that? How do we connect this idea with us being egotistical blowhards who like to see our thoughts in print?


(not rhetorical questions  )