Salut

Why do we have to create anything? We didn't before. You're over-compensating or something. If you're adult about things, just post something and never mind the stupid counts, thumbs, votes, rep, blah blah blah. They're completely irrelevant anyway.

You get lots of responses to your comments so you should feel welcome.

I don't feel any more or less welcome than I did on the old A2K. I just think it's boring. Where's Gus? Chai? Shewolfnm? eoe? I miss those threads with one-liners and back-and-forthings. Those threads that start out innocuously, get inane yet have sharp ripostes.

I guess I just don't understand why you think we NEED to create a welcoming environment. There are lots of lovely people here who will respond to an interesting post and that would make people feel welcome. The problem I see is that there haven't been many of them.

And I also don't get what's the big push to get more members. What's up with that? Why should it matter how many there are??? <confused emoticon>

yeah, where IS Chai anyway?

I know, but I'm not telling.....









psst........


she's in Alcapulco with the wolfgirl and capybera man.

****! Why wasn't I invited?

You were messing around with a bunch of guys out in the woods.

Well, it matters to me! I love seeing new faces and new topic ideas. If there
are only 20 to 30 people writing here, it gets a bit too incestuous for me.

I realize that one cannot please everyone, but quite a fair amount of people
have complained about the same things with the new board. Are we all
complainers and in reminiscence of the good old times? I think not!

Because you got voted down? (Just kidding)

I have been thinking about what you said and others are saying and I finally was able to narrow down what is really bugging me.

There is no difference between voting down a perfectly good thread that you aren't interested in for whatever reason and intentionally voting down an offensive thread. That violates my personal sense of propriety and justice. It is my problem and not anybody elses though.

But that's it. And my official request--again--is the ability to move threads out of the way for management purposes without having to attach any kind of negativity to that process. If everybody moves the same uninteresting or offensive or obnoxious or meaningless thread out of the way then it disappears for everybody and the numbnut who started it gets no attention or responses and therefore little or no satisfaction. But those threads that lots of folks enjoy will continue to show nice bright green positive ratings.

Surely there's a way to do that. Or not. It's just my two cents worth anyway.

Those threads are still around... Dlowan and P'dawg and Stilly and more have been acting up to no-good avail, sorry no links.
Me, sort of like nimh, I've seen flumes of behavior over time. When a2k gets wittily raucous it can't be beat; that comes and goes with, what, some kind of wind in the willows.
Me, I'm tired of all the whining. (That's also a periodic opinion.)
Which could mean I'm about to get raucous.

Oh yeah, then bring it on, osso!!

I am not whining! Never have and never will, I am stating my opinion, and
I sure as heck don't want to end up with a handful of people here, because
the rest left.

Have you never asked yourself why there are 500 to 700 guests at a2k (at the
moment its 569) and they don't write a darn thing? Why do you think they're
only looking and not writing?

I'll also add a bitch that no one, no one, is less techie than me. I have not even managed to attach my printer here in Abq (something like 18 steps to trouble shoot and still no go. I'm waiting for the right mood to try it again. And then I'll give it a go with the scanner, sitting to my right.

I have no clue why people think it is hard to find categories - the old categories are on the left of the page. You can put in your own word in the Search Tags little window, also to the left, and probably come up with a list of appropriate threads - and that will work better as time goes by and more new and past threads are tagged. Or put in your words at the google.com related to a2k link at the top of the page - this is very useful, and, uh, right there.

Meantime there is near rage about the change, after a very long lead in of announcements about the change. I can only roll my non-techie eyes at all the people leaving while speaking bitterly.

and here's another one stuck as a quilt patch ... when are you going to stir things up again?

~~~~

Not sure who was here the night the PTB tried another website as the source of the assigned avatars - there were a whole whack of kinda crazy faces - it was a lot more fun than these really bland quilt patches. It's hard to get steamed up by anything a quilt patch says. Quilt patches are just too sweet.

No, CJane, because of lot of those guests are bots, as they always have been or perhaps people interested in web site design.

What I am doing is tagging old threads so that they come up higher on google re specific interests (well, I dunno, that's the idea, and I'm learning as I go along) and that will bring, presumably or potentially, folks who are interested in whatever esoterica we get into here. All of us were new at some point.

CJ, I wasn't after you about whining. Talking about a thicket of whining climate.

I was just kidding with you, osso

Ok, then, I'll not wimper.

Those proportions are nothing new, IIRC you could see the same thing on the old site.

Lots are bots. Google spiders and the like.

Lots of others are Googlers. Followed a key word search here, found what they were looking for, or as often as not, didnt, and left. Compare: how many times do you look, for example, at an online news article? How many times do you feel the need to leave a comment? Once in fifty times, once in 100 times?

That's the same proportions you find here. They just clicked a Google link looking for some random info, which they might or might not be interested in for more than 2 minutes. 99% of visitors to any site dont come looking to invest in a community.

I dunno. I've tried to encourage comments on websites in the past (work stuff), and you could get 1,000 people looking at a page or downloading a paper or report without anybody writing something. It seems to be the nature of things.

I personally don't care if there's a negativity attached to the process (sometimes the majority aren't interested in somebody's weed problem, right?), but you're quite right - it's unnecessary and implies something that some of us are not implying. Your idea is a good one. Maybe a drag and drop kind of thing for each user. I like this idea.

Edit:
Oh, and this site doesn't bother me at all. It would have made the transition easier if they'd been able to put a link to the prototype so people could get used to it gradually, but, as I said, I find it fine... navigating is easy, and the new options are great. I just find the tenor her different - kind of blah. And if, as someone suggested (osso? CJ?) that this is just a cyclical thing, then that's great.

Yes, not owning one, I simply can't muster up any interest at all in somebody's Rainsoft water softener problem. But there have been so many of those kinds of threads that they must be serving the questions/needs of quite a few members. And that makes them valuable. Just not to me.

Well maybe if there are enough good positive suggestions for improvement, somebody will figure out a way to implement them,

I hate the quilt patches, it's like this forum is being controlled by the Amish. Come on Chai, maybe we don't see you because you're just another green square. Pick a starlet or washed up celebrity, an old Jello ad or Jesus in a diaper. How about a cowboy smoking a ciggy or an old farmer with a pitchfork? Anything to give a face to the wit.

I'm mixed on that sort of neutral moving thing. I can see full well that people quail at the hurt of it, the thumbs, when they posted..
I'm sort of used to it (anyone remember my architecture land use threads? Some were just links but many weren't only that, with little interest - but on the other hand, there was some interest. Let's say a possible niche.) - that's the way of it. Some of a2k's potential, to me, has to do with development of interest areas, almost none of which grow in a vacuum. Connections between interest areas are really feasible with this kind of site organization. And... I figure appreciation of this aspect will grow.

Maybe. I've honestly tried a serious attitude adjustment here and I have truly tried to see the rationale behind it all. But I still WANT to vote down the offensive thread, but simply move everybody else to the side without attaching any more negativity to that than the fact that I don't want to follow it. It just feels wrong voting down somebody's personal thread or a subject that is probably of interest to many. A thread with a big green number on it is bound to look more interesting to a newbie than one with a zero. Nobody is going to open every thread.

I do see your point, Fox.
I can see some slippery slopes in the picking of one type of vote vs the other, or categories of votes, and misvoting on purpose... but, again, I do see your point. Luckily, I'm too camfloozled to figure some ultimate design out.