There's really not much point to this, anymore.

[AFK]

Hmm, I dunno, traffic had already died off quite a bit before we had the last big dust-up about someone supposedly trying to hijack a project.  So I'm not completely convinced that was a main, or even minor, contributor to the decline in traffic. 

I personally just think it is a collective evolution of lives.  As we get older, generally speaking, we take on more responsibilities in meat-space.  That certainly eats into internet posting time.  I know that I have way more responsibilities today than I had just a year ago.  I still like this place for occasional shots of zaniness and weird.  But it is really hard for me to carve out time and headspace to put together content for this site. 

We can't expect people to dial back their IRL lives to pick the place back up.  So I think if anything, the place needs more new, young, blood.  I don't know how you go about getting that new blood in the current internet/info-mational superhighway age. 

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Hmm, I dunno, traffic had already died off quite a bit before we had the last big dust-up about someone supposedly trying to hijack a project.  So I'm not completely convinced that was a main, or even minor, contributor to the decline in traffic. 

I personally just think it is a collective evolution of lives.  As we get older, generally speaking, we take on more responsibilities in meat-space.  That certainly eats into internet posting time.  I know that I have way more responsibilities today than I had just a year ago.  I still like this place for occasional shots of zaniness and weird.  But it is really hard for me to carve out time and headspace to put together content for this site. 

We can't expect people to dial back their IRL lives to pick the place back up.  So I think if anything, the place needs more new, young, blood.  I don't know how you go about getting that new blood in the current internet/info-mational superhighway age.

Well, we have to bring a little more IRL weird here I imagine. Or those of us who can at least. Not everyone is satisfied with social media being their primary mode of existence.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I'm not even trying to debate monetizing here. Hell, there was a fight when WHN used the 'Uncomfortable Topics" thing as a thread header.

I am not in favor of anyone making money off of someone else's work. However, the best stuff that came from this site didn't make a fucking dime. BiP (yes, I just admitted it was good) and  Intermittens for two prime examples. Hell, we could make a real simple rule:

"All work posted on PD.com is free, it cannot be sold for profit."

Personally, that's why I use kopyleft on everything I post here. I don't give a shit if someone finds a way to make a buck by including my poems with someone's rants and someone elses stories. GOOD, that means some cabbage are apparently reading it and maybe, just maybe they will wake up for a second and notice the bars and walls around them (yes, second positive reference to the BiP, shut up). However, that's ME, not anyone else.


The BiP, from what I saw, wasn't written for profit or even with profit in mind... just written to poke some brains. Intermittens seems to have followed that same concept. As soon as 'profit' entered the picture, creative flow got jammed up with ego, money and self-defense on all sides.

Besides, if you write creative stuff that you want to retain full credit/rights to and potentially publish, you can always post it on your blog. The you can put a link here saying "I wrote about this on my blog" ... which gets us back to a couple current discussions.
(yes that last bit was supposed to be funny)

[Doktor Howl]

Let's not point specific fingers if we can right now.  I'd rather focus on the larger issue than personal flame wars.

This.

I think it's fairly simple.  If someone grabs someone else's project or swipes their work, there are a number of recourses available from which to choose¹:

1.  Banning
2.  Report to the culprit's ISP if applicable.
3.  Legal action. 
4.  Public scorn.

And there's no real need for comprehensive "rules".  If the author doesn't designate it as "kopyleft" or whatever, and there's no permission from the author posted publicly in the relevant thread, it's not kosher.  I mean, we're not talking about a lot of cash, here...But I do believe that we should all be showing each other at least enough respect to ask first.





¹  HAH!  No prepositions at the end of MY sentences, motherfuckers!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I think the basic respect thing really applies. There's no need to post something on your blog first, or to announce that it's not public domain. Basic respect (and the law) dictates that you own your work and you get to decide what happens to it. Including granting copyright if you feel like it.

And Rat; let's not confuse the issue with personal catfights. I am pretty sure you can tell the difference.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I think the basic respect thing really applies. There's no need to post something on your blog first, or to announce that it's not public domain. Basic respect (and the law) dictates that you own your work and you get to decide what happens to it. Including granting copyright if you feel like it.

And Rat; let's not confuse the issue with personal catfights. I am pretty sure you can tell the difference.

My point is that during the inception and development of the BiP and Intermittens posters weren't all that concerned about public domain vs who owned the work. It was a huge collaborative pile of awesome.

And I think the personal 'catfight' I mentioned above typified the change. I didn't mean it personally, it was an example of how concerned we as a whole seem to be about ownership.

Hell, even if we consider the last dustup over who owned what... what happened to that great content that Cram was going to start formatting? It's buried somewhere here... with no working search engine.

The BiP affected people. I personally KNOW people that changed their lifestyle and thought processes because they read it.

And that is the crux of the matter. What do we want PD to be? A place to post our personal creative content for a few friends, or a place where content can inspire total strangers? The best stuff to come out of PD, the stuff from its most productive periods, seems to fall in the latter category.

If its just a place to share our personal creative stuff with friends, then its probably going to continue to be like it is today. A few people, occasional awesome stuff and not much else.

For me personally, the PD changed my life... changed it 123.5% and I read it because the authors wanted to hit people in the head with an idea, rather than make sure they got the credit and money from the idea. For me personally, when I write about Discordianism, I feel like I'm 'paying it forward' (to use a tired meme). If I never make money from it, but some of it inspires some other poor schmuck... I'll consider it a success. PD used to feel more like that and I think the drop in creative content, may, partially, be due to a lot of discussion over rights and ownership and control.

[Doktor Howl]

PD used to feel more like that and I think the drop in creative content, may, partially, be due to a lot of discussion over rights and ownership and control.

Balls.  The decline began 6 months before the blow up.

And you are free to post whatever you write, and let people do whatever they want with it.  The only question here is whether or not people have enough respect for each other to respect their wishes as to what is or is not done with things they right.  IOW, your choice to use Kopyleft does not imply an obligation for other people to do the same.  Nor does a person's beliefs about Kopyleft give them an ethical right to lift other peoples' work.

Some people don't give a shit about what happens with their work.  Some - myself included - do, on principle.  Some, like Nigel, have plans to use their work elsewhere.

Again, it comes down to whether or not a person feels that the people they are dealing with are actually people, with the right to keep their own work...or give it away, as they see fit.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

In the inception and development nobody was concerned about who owned what, because nobody tried to assert ownership of anything until after the fact, which is exactly what caused the problem.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

PD used to feel more like that and I think the drop in creative content, may, partially, be due to a lot of discussion over rights and ownership and control.

Balls.  The decline began 6 months before the blow up.

That wasn't the first fight on the topic... just the most recent. Remember Intermittens? Lots and lots of creativity, then a fight over money and then... it died.

And you are free to post whatever you write, and let people do whatever they want with it.  The only question here is whether or not people have enough respect for each other to respect their wishes as to what is or is not done with things they right.  IOW, your choice to use Kopyleft does not imply an obligation for other people to do the same.  Nor does a person's beliefs about Kopyleft give them an ethical right to lift other peoples' work.

I agree 100%. It should be a simple understanding that you don't take someone elses work, claim it as your own and make money from it. My point was that the arguments/debates/etc over that issue seems to have killed some of the creativity. What works for me may not work for you or Nigel. But 20 pages of people yelling back and forth isn't gonna inspire much confidence in a poster putting their content here.

Again, it comes down to whether or not a person feels that the people they are dealing with are actually people, with the right to keep their own work...or give it away, as they see fit.

Yes. I have never stolen someone elses work... ever. I have high school english teachers that would rise from the grave and cover me with red marker if I tried.

During the development of the BiP and Intermittens though... that wasn't an issue. The authors, yourself included were writing for a purpose and as long as the byline had your name... I don't recall any big fights on the topic.

Some of the fights that started though... weren't about people stealing other peoples work. The first Intermittens fight (IIRC) was about someone wanting to do a published version and recoup the costs of paper publishing. The fight with Cram was over who had the right to start putting together a formatted version of some content. The argument with WHN was over a topic title.

I'm not saying anyone is to blame for this... but I think the specter of $ and the lack of mutual respect may well have done some serious damage to the creative content. And as far as I'm concerned this goes equally for anyone swiping content. For the people that prefer some control, they don't want to post here... for the people that want maximum distribution of ideas, they don't want to touch anything that someone else posts.

I DON'T THINK YOU ARE WRONG. We're looking at both sides of a single coin.

[Doktor Howl]

PD used to feel more like that and I think the drop in creative content, may, partially, be due to a lot of discussion over rights and ownership and control.

Balls.  The decline began 6 months before the blow up.

That wasn't the first fight on the topic... just the most recent. Remember Intermittens? Lots and lots of creativity, then a fight over money and then... it died.

The fight was over the first intermittens.  How many intermittens were there?

During the development of the BiP and Intermittens though... that wasn't an issue. The authors, yourself included were writing for a purpose and as long as the byline had your name... I don't recall any big fights on the topic.

Not until someone decided that A) Intermittens 1 was their work, and B) Decided to use it for profit, without even asking the actual authors.

Some of the fights that started though... weren't about people stealing other peoples work. The first Intermittens fight (IIRC) was about someone wanting to do a published version and recoup the costs of paper publishing.

I think you mean "for beer money".

I'm not saying anyone is to blame for this... but I think the specter of $ and the lack of mutual respect may well have done some serious damage to the creative content.

The lack of mutual respect?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Some of the fights that started though... weren't about people stealing other peoples work. The first Intermittens fight (IIRC) was about someone wanting to do a published version and recoup the costs of paper publishing.

For beer money. And that was a particular person, who, not coincidentally, people later objected to. It's not as if all these issues are unrelated.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Ah, well then I'm wrong and the problem is Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg, you've screwed us all!

[Doktor Howl]

Yeah, hey, I'm done with this discussion.  Life's too short to argue the same thing TEN times, with people who have already decided what happened, facts be damned.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Ah, well then I'm wrong and the problem is Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg, you've screwed us all!

You're half right.

The thing is, you continue to misrepresent the actual conflicts, and insist on blaming the creative people who didn't want to have their shit misappropriated to serve someone else's ego. Keep rewriting history, little rockstar!

This is not a new issue. It's been going on for years. Cain and Roger were both bitching about it when I forst got here. Shit on the producers for too long, what happens?

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Ah, well then I'm wrong and the problem is Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg, you've screwed us all!

You're half right.

The thing is, you continue to misrepresent the actual conflicts, and insist on blaming the creative people who didn't want to have their shit misappropriated to serve someone else's ego. Keep rewriting history, little rockstar!

This is not a new issue. It's been going on for years. Cain and Roger were both bitching about it when I forst got here. Shit on the producers for too long, what happens?

OK. Since the problem seems to have left the site, I'm sure creative content will return shortly and this lull is short term.