Is it just me or are there many fewer people participating in this forum these days?

I don't have stats (ModSquad - do you?) but anecdotally I think participation is down.

For example, I do not see Yoss or Burn or a few other former regulars. What's happening?

Burn has departed, of her own accord.

Look closer, Yoss is still around.

I've seen a lot slower periods around here than this most recent dip.

Yeah, agree with SMan. It's been alot deader at times. Seems to ebb and flow. I do miss Burn though.

Yeah, Patton thinks I'm Yoss. And he was asked to stop making references to that. I think that's why Yoss is taking a break.

The next reference will get him banned, as thinly veiled as he wishes to make it. I'm getting tired of this.

Here's the button. Press it.

Snoopy I can't pull up stats for day by day posts, but we do go through latent periods in here.

Ok, since my freedom of speech is being squashed, I guess my participation will wane now also.

Just a question from one of the new kids on the block... But, what does it matter WHO the Mods are??? I don't get what the big deal is??? Why the big secret???

Pandora,,,
Don't understand it myself but seems to be a precious thing to know. Sorry I like em all.

Sman
I feel over all people have just been really busy. I know my wife and I have been nut's with things around the house trying to get them done and over so we can enjoy the spring and summer with out working our butts off.

Just did some stat stuff

All are 1/1 - 5/09

posts
2007 - 30552
2008 - 12327

daily new topics
2007 - 219
2008 - 337


This was a quick and dirty check of forum stats.

Looks like posts are down but topics are up.

That's a good point. I wonder if it slows down each spring. People are outside alot more and busy doing yard work. Just a thought.

Who were Mods last year? No thinly veiled reference, a honest to goodness question.

Probably Yoss and webbie.

I MUST be missing something...

You're not the only one, brother.

Hmm might be a good point. Are people no longer as free to carry on a discussion these days? What other things are different that could be stifling free expression, or at least causing people to be more reserved?

My take on forum blues:

Most do not care who the Mods are. I imagine most have little interaction with the Mods or do not trigger a reaction from the Mods.
So, a mod probablly is not the reason posting gets slow. Frankly, there have been plenty of dust ups with varying mods over the years. Usually it is just one or two posters who get tangled up and have an issue. Thankfuly, I do not know the specifics to most dust ups. I like it that way.

There have been many ebbs and flows on this and other forums. I enjoy when there is a lack of drama, that is tedious in itself.

I suspect folks post when a topic interest them. When the weather is nice I would hope they would be outsiode more. I know I love the nice weather but am inside today due to the rain.

Sometimes a topic outlives it usefulness, gets to be circular and boring. Other times it is red hot and chugs right a long. Just depends.

Ebbs and flows.............

Flipper, Un and Rowdy, Banned, like them or not they did account for a lot of posts.

Ezombie and CD, well we all know what happened there.

Idiot must have found another forum where he can tell everybody how bad Bush is.

I don't know why Cfulmor stopped posting though.

lets not forget Looky Lou and City Park Dad.

Unbelieveable was banned? Somebody will have to fill me in on that story sometime.

Nah... it's not fun anymore. Too many people agree with me.

Ok, then let me fix that.

Idiot must have found another forum where he can p!ss off a bunch of Obama supporters.

City Park Dad moved to Connecticut and is doing well. I talk to him every now and then on IM.

So we have less to say about more stuff. Eventually we'll have nothing to say about everything. I think I'm almost there.

This may answer you SMan. She's too much trouble!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is Unbelieveable, on the your4states forum page. I found out during the time she was trying to get me to go after Dragon, Bent, You, Patton, let me see well you get it I hope. She'd not only send me and instant message through AOL, but also played it off to me through the instant message That she was indeed, Drevin, Because of who well Drevin writes. So on your4states she told me this is her... "4Justice" Well low and behold she's barred from their as well.

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4Justice



Joined: 16 Feb 2008
Posts: 4

Warnings: 0
Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 6:34 pm Post subject: Personal Attacks/Profanity

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[color=darkred][/color]Personal Attacks/Profanity should be stopped on public forums. I have been cursed and attacked from a woman repeatedly i find this behavior unexceptible. The woman who i am speaking of knows who she is. I am asking kindly please stop.

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4Justice



Joined: 16 Feb 2008
Posts: 4

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Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 7:42 pm Post subject:

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I had to change my name due to this. That's all i will say.

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I'd still like to know the E! True Hollywood Story behind Greedy/EZombie/Christine/Burn. I'm assuming the rumors are true only because Greedy and Burn both dropped off my raydar exactly after.


Something has run afoul....








Greedy, your wife is totally understanding. I'm sure.

Well, Heather, there's the situation you mention, and also the whole "thing" with Bent Corner...........it all just made me stop and think, that's all. When I lived in that area, I basically got along with most people in person. This "stuff" I noticed online (more at one other particular website than here or other local websites) took me by surprise because I had met so many people in person who I considered truly nice. Then, out of the blue, someone had an attack of religious intolerance at me online because I did not celebrate the winter holidays the same way that particular someone did. (once again, this was on another local website) Since I had a close friend who was dying at the time, I really hadn't noticed that the "Seasons Greetings/Merry Xmas" thing had actually been in the news, so I really thought it was stupid to post online about that.......in fact, I didn't know it was a big subject nationwide until Jay Leno cracked a joke about it. So when someone challenged me online, I responded, but found all the local "baggage" about it somewhat curious. I continued, on that particular website, to run into local people who insisted upon posting from an uneducated viewpoint. Was this viewpoint and perspective limited to religion and local customs? No. It was about almost everything. And some of these people were quite nasty, too. Not everyone.......and I know quite a few nice people personally from that area who post online, but the unjustifiable hostility and occasional threat (oddly enough, these threats came from people who profess a higher love for all )made me wonder who I was really communicating with. Most people on this site are very nice...........so I guess I can stop ranting. Maybe yours truly should learn not to feed trolls.

Another thing I find truly disappointing, and often disconcerting as well, is that the media seems to be able to control the opinions of most people anywhere without even so much as an effort to prove their statements. I try to communicate and comment about news stories and events that represent some very important things going on in our nation and very important decisions being made by our leaders and by our courts and am met with responses that have obviously been heavily influenced by the media and it's mass "perspective shaping"...........and once I have commented, it seems there is only "arguefying"............so what can I really discuss online? Everyone wants to believe what they are told to believe, and I have never been satisfied with that, but I cannot make anyone demand what I demand from media sources in terms of proof. So.........what can I really say online to anyone? I know......I can say "Happy Winter Solstice!".......but wrong time of year. Ok, everyone.......Happy Summer Solstice!

Life in cyberspace is a fun ride & a good hoot. I know I am equally at fault for flip flopping. On a given day I struggle as I can be boring, uninformed, or think my opinion is the most unbiased & educated. Then I get an ego check from a poster and all is well again. Thank you one and all.

We all have those traits, thinking we know the best response. I try to remind myself to lighten up, ignore the know it alls, learn from the informed, smile at the funny, and respect the new ideas that help me. It is hard, we all have ego and our world experiences that shape our take. Some are overly sensitive and some are laid back. Some are busy with family, work and family. So, what we read may be late at night or from different sources. The truth is in the middle, no one has the monopoly on being right. Variety is good. The internet is fluid, we change as we read more and sort through it. In the end, we ignore what we want to anyway.

On a good day, I try to enjoy it all. We all have good days and then days where we are intolerant. Or days when we are bored.

Right now I am bored but later it will get fun when I go bike riding with my kids, and see a fun movie. Happy Mums Day to all moms and step moms. Dad's day is around the corner in June.

Another thing that occured to me is this: things have not really slowed down........we just don't have the drama that we had a couple of months ago. The people who post now normally post because they actually have a bona fide comment about an actual subject that is either in the news or of interest for some other reason. After all the silly drama we had, that may be hard to get used to.

I agree, ss. But there will always be forum visitors that just come for the schadenfreude and without it, the place becomes boring. I know I'm not immune to it on occasion.

Don't worry, Sman. There's an election coming up. Lots of lunatics will be posting everywhere about it and lots of people will be acting more neurotic than usual.

Anyone who didn't realize Greedy was a pig just from his regular posts wasn't paying attention.

The forum isn't "dying". It's actually very active is you look at the posts. There just isn't impersonators, and whiners here now and it just seems like it's dying.
I think it's nice

You really think you can know that much about someone by what they post here?

Maybe you cant "REALLY" know someone but I'd say Snoop was pretty much on the mark with this guess

And YES the forum is dying a slow and painful death

Yes but why?

I continue to post on a regular basis. (Some would say right there is your answer.)

I see some others who do also.

I also see new members who have joined.

Hopefully I wont get banned for this one but you asked. I think everything started going downhill when Webbie was replaced! at least with her you knew who to go to for answers if you had a problem or question and even if you didn't like her answer you knew you were getting a straight answer. Its like the mom and pop store that gets bought out by a national chain. You lose some of the charm and are innundated with rules and regs that are sometimes enforced and sometimes not. And find yourself dealing with nameless, faceless enforcement figures.

I dont want to seem like I am dumping this all on the current admins,paperpushers, or modsquad because I have also sensed a lot of tension and bitterness between posters that have contributed to my opinion. Like I said for good or bad it just "aint what it used to be".

And as far as we have 3 times as many topics and half the number of posts call me stupid but that seems like a problem to me. either these topics are boring and nobody feels the need to comment on them or there are just too many and people arent bothering with them. either way i think the number of total posts dropping even with the addition of many new members speaks for itself

Or it could be that we peoples got over our desire to wash, rinse, repeat for 52 pages on the same old topics like abortion, Bush, and religion. I think more topics and less of the same long, repetative threads are good things.

Well said.

Change is uncomfortable, no matter in what environment.

The change in the administration has been, in my opinion, extremely uncomfortable.

Why was the administration changed? Do the admin. serve for a term and how is it determined who the admins. are?




phew, did you get all of that ?

I wish I knew the rest of the story. Where's Paul Harvey?

Webbie, prior admin, took a new job within HM. Enter Paperpusher and TMiller (the silent one).

Yossarian, needed a break after being a Mod for numerous years. Enter ModSquad.

More to it than that I think.

Possibly but that is the way it was presented to the General Membership Population.

I liked it better when the Mods (whomever they may or may not be), interacted and played with us.

Now I feel like the mean old teacher is standing in the back of the room just waiting to smack me with the ruler.

I miss Yoss and Webbie.

Yea, I noticed a more 'rules based' and You Can't do that here approach lately..esp to the poor shoutbox posters..

I was a Mod at one time. All of the regulars were. Talk about putting the lunatics in charge of the asylum!

I'm guessing that Yoss lasted longer than most before he got his wings clipped. I can't say I was in love with Webbie, but at least she communicated and tried to play fair - and she had a much more hands-off approach in general, it seems.

These days it seems that far fewer people are bothering to start new threads. We used to discuss all sorts of things that were in the news, but these days it seems as though nobody is bothering. I post a thread specifically about the earthquake in china and some dolt think he needs to turn it into a generic thread about the last 3 month's worth of natural disasters that nobody else ever bothered to post about. And then I get criticised for demanding that he stay on topic.

This place has become lame in the EXTREME.

I can only speak for myself, but my INTEREST in this forum is dying.

Why?

Because I find it difficult to look forward to visiting a site where certain members are intolerant, judgemental assholes.

YES I SAID ASSHOLES!

If I must be banned or censored for my language, so be it.

Please don't ban Jelsey. She probably speaks what so many others think.

Word!

I'm sure I'm not the only person who is less-than-thrilled to contribute to threads when you might get something like this in response:




Threads meander off-topic all the time, just like topics in natural face-to-face conversation between larger groups of people. There's certainly no cause to be mean about it (whatever happened to The Golden Rule?) This comes across as a form of bullying to me, which is especially ironic since we have a bullying thread going on right now...

Kinda sucks that ever since I signed up for this forum, there have always been a few folks like this. I was hoping for more friendly interaction, but to each his own. I'd never been part of a forum before, is this just par for the course? If so, well, that saddens me. I know some people like the conflict. It's just not my cup of tea, though.

JMO. I preferred Flipper's complaining to this, frankly.