Since this is the only thing we seem to be good at these days, let's talk about talking. No, let us complain about talking.

Here's a thread from two years back:
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=42683

The beginning of the end. Remember the panic? The flurry of threads demanding bans. Then the new Rule. Ban threads = permaban. Then the Crash, Database Error. How we fear That Name!

Now Russians have got it. But that doesn't matter. Their moderation is practically non-existant. It has no real bearing on discussion.
Discussion's the problem.

Looks like I hit this place as it was coming down.
We didn't lose interesting posts. We lost our interesting posters.
We'd have 10 page long threads where 3 colossal egos locked horns. And the topic would be about pooping. Those ten pages weren't about pooping. They were about egos. AND pooping.

They were about a handful of posters presenting bright intellectual baubles to each other. Nerds wooing nerds.

Am I speaking of our dear Fish Queen? Mother Hydra herself?
Gendy was certainly the flagship of the forum's fleet. But let us not forget all the others who collected cerebral trinkets for the Great Bitch. Each rushing to outdo the other in building their bower. Collecting shinies.
Now there's no one left to impress.

So what do we discuss. Black people. Muslims. The president. Ubiquitously throughout, the same inanities. Frustating, non?
And it's not like the posters who stayed have new things to offer. Doc is still having sex with dogs and telling us about it.

(Parenthetical aside: some of you may be asking, what do I contribute. Good question! A better question is, why are you such a loser? Concerned about your virtual hang out place? Nerd.)

I propose a project. Let us embark on something of memetic proportions. We have lots of brains here. Old people, too. Surely some of you know people who know people. We could start some sort of phenomenon. It's be the crowning achievement of sciforum glory.
Starting a meme. Like andre has a posse, or snakes on a plane, orrr... Chucks.
Yeah. Wouldn't that be fantastic?

I propose a project. Let us embark on something of memetic proportions. We have lots of brains here. Old people, too. Surely some of you know people who know people. We could start some sort of phenomenon. It's be the crowning achievement of sciforum glory.
Starting a meme. Like andre has a posse, or snakes on a plane, orrr... Chucks.
Yeah. Wouldn't that be fantastic?

You lost me when I got to this paragraph. I have no clue what you are talking about here.

Here's a thread from two years back:
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=42683



Oh that thread's bought back names from the past. Ah the good old days... Ahh the memories..

*Sharpens claws*.. :p

what does ego-talk have to do with sf government? anyway, i doubt very much these people simply renounced their intoxication for show-'n-tell-i-excel-so-go-to-hell. most likely they've discovered greener pastures with a more flamboyant and barbaric herd chewing on the nettle of defiance.

I mostly concur with Roman.

Usenet has been in ruin since September 1993, when, thanks to AOL, the usual annual assimilation of new users became a constant flow, inundating the network with asinine "OMG ME TOO" posts and spam. Some of the old veterans still hang around, but the vast majority have long left, turning to mailing lists and web forums to fulfill their otherwise abysmal social lives. What is left is a core of nostalgic old farts surrounded by an ocean of worthless newbs.

The disease is fatal. More than thirteen years have passed, and the situation on the oldest and largest conference system on the Internet has only gotten worse. The only workable answer has been decentralization, the equivalent of live organ donation. Usenet will continue to exist, but only as an empty shell of what it once was.

Has Sciforums' time come? Is the only answer now to separate the curd from the whey? Or has that already happened? Perhaps we find ourselves among the has-beens and the young and useless. The few good threads now don't get any attention; the same shitty song gets all the airplay. That's a lot like Usenet today.

Maybe this ship should have been abandoned long ago. If it was attempted now, it's likely that there wouldn't be enough of a user base to keep the lifeboats afloat for long. There's no leadership here, so forget about putting the life back into the forums; the new administration is as complacent as Porfiry was. The meme thing that Roman suggested doesn't make sense, because memes aren't real.

There is the story of the official forums of MacAddict magazine, whose tyrannical moderators provoked the formation of a counterculture, an anarchical anti-forum. That bizarro forum thrives today. But MacAddict was in its prime at the time; there was plenty of life to suck from it for the sake of incubating its antithesis. Maybe it is possible to do this anyway.

The old BBS computers of the 1980s have mostly died out, but a handful survive to this day. Most of these made it out alive by moving to a Unix platform and offerring shell access to members. They have a greater incentive than just a community to keep it afloat financially and socially. New users come for the utilities and stay for the people. The futures of these systems are secured. But this is a web forum; we don't have that kind of flexibility. This sort of change would be very difficult, and very different from the historical precedent.

At any rate, I don't see things improving without some kind of action on the part of the users here at Sciforums. This forum will eventually die, and its users will lose touch with each other. You, the average user, don't have any friends in the real world. You can't afford to let this pass. What say you?

The only Usenet place I have been around anytime in my life is sci.math. It's got a lot of great people on there. James Harris on the other hand.. eh.

As for BBS. Back in the DOS/WIndows 3.1 days when I was 12 or so.. I used to LOVE BBSing because it was the closest I could come to the Internet. I met a lot of great people on there and I have found lots of neat little "proggies" and such.

You lost me when I got to this paragraph. I have no clue what you are talking about here.

Same here

Roman: I propose a project. Let us embark on something of memetic proportions. [...]
Spuriousmonkey: You lost me when I got to this paragraph. I have no clue what you are talking about here.
Samcdkey: Same here. I think he got carried away with the memory of Gendanken but forgot to be more specific about the project.

Meme: A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.

And what could he be thinking of?

He wants us to start a meme. Whatever they are...

I wonder, did they moan about the good old days in the good old days?

"So, in the end it comes down to questions and solutions. Why is the quality of threads diminishing? Is it because of the teenyboppers? Or are the teenyboppers just more obvious because of the slump? I actually think that it's the latter. It just seems that things are slow right now and they will most likely pick up eventually. I'm sure this can't be the first slump that SciForums have gone through. And probably won't be the last."
Originally posted by invert_nexus, 24.11.04

Ah -- just the man I wanted to reply to!


redarmy11:


Oh, Pseud0 -- while you're being generous today on this week-end, what's the RGB or the HTML for the light grey bar that handles the avatar and stuff? Very much obliged. Thnx.I thought you were some kind of artist? Even I know how to find that out. Screenshot > Graphics program > Dropper tool.

Sheesh.

Our monitors are never calibrated exactly the same, especially between PCs and Macs. On a Mac, the gamma is 1.8; on a PC, 2.2, hence colors, saturation and brightness on a PC is harsher: my grey appears very differently to your grey but with the exact RGB formula you would see the exact same grey as the one being used in the bar -- regardless of how I see it on my monitor. I want to use the same shade of grey in my avatar. Happy?

Or rather, I did, once-upon-a-time, wanted to use the same grey for the background -- I hate GIFs.

Ah -- just the man I wanted to reply to!
Reply not accepted. Reason: wrong thread.

Please wait for a more suitable opportunity.

Idiot. The thread in question WAS LOCKED BEFORE I COULD SUBMIT A FUCKIN' REPLY.

Anyway, the fact that you're not happy with reason suits me just fine! :)

Just adjust the gamma.

Why make a big fuss?

Jesus Fucking Christ. It's #e9e9e9. Just view the page source and read the CSS.

You're the idiot who started the whole fuss. And even if I re-calibrated my monitor that still wouldn't guarantee you seeing the same colors BECAUSE YOUR STUPID MONITOR IS EQUALLY DIFFERENTLY CALIBRATED.

Sheesh.

Then create 2. 1 4 the PC. 1 4 the Mac.

Or: just view the page source and the CSS. :rolleyes:

Jesus Fucking Christ. It's #e9e9e9. Just view the page source and read the CSS.

I tried that once during the old site design but couldn't quite find myself around the code (I was less familiar with CSS then and there were many grays involved -- which one was right?) See, even now there's a slight difference:

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/9425/greysn6.jpg

It's a trick of contrast caused by the window color and drop shadow. The color has to be #e9e9e9.

Then create 2. 1 4 the PC. 1 4 the Mac.

Or: just view the page source and the CSS. :rolleyes:

It's a whole lot more complicated my dear unartistic Redarmy. My monitor is calibrated for print: my whites are not pure whites but mimic the yellow tint of paper. I will not, dear one, re-calibrate my monitor -- a painstaking procedure -- to suit your bloody benefit! :*rolleyes*:

ok, your loss. You're avatar looks crap.

It's a trick of contrast caused by the window color and drop shadow. The color has to be #e9e9e9.
well, perhaps. okay. BUT (!!!!) I first needed the recipe, right? And that's all I was asking. But no, this whole fuckin drama had to be enacted first. Sheesh. But thanx for the code, nice man.

ok, your loss. You're avatar looks crap.

Why, you little rodent!

It's a trick of contrast caused by the window color and drop shadow. The color has to be #e9e9e9.
Check out my avatar. How hard was that?

WOW HOW DID YOU DO THAT? ALSO WE HIJACKED THIS THREAD LOL

So, um, getting back to task here... what say you?

First, I say that I have a life and friends beyond this forum. I can afford to let this little luxury pass if that is to be its fate.

Philosophically I agree with you baum. This forum has become a monument to redundancy and stagnation. I, however, have no intention of being anything other than an observer to whatever destiny awaits us.

That's some good soap.

This forum has, apparently, always been a monument to redundancy and stagnation, as my quote from invert_nexus on the previous page demonstrates.

Meanwhile, getting back to avatars: superluminal's isn't quite right, the grey square is still visible.

Meanwhile, getting back to memes: I don't think you can consciously set out to create a meme. They have to spontaneously evolve.

Meanwhile, getting back to avatars: superluminal's isn't quite right, the grey square is still visible.
Odd. I can't see it.

Change your gamma.

I tried explaining Meanwhile that but he didn't understand.

No change... adjusting gamma in the video card settings (ATI Radeon X600) under Display properties (WinXP) doesn't distinguish the avatar from the background for me.

I'm perfectly aware what a meme is. I don't see how creating a meme will help sciforums.

Britney spears is a meme.
Racism is a meme.
redneckism is a meme.

Sciforums is filled with memes as it is. Starting a new one isn't gone do much good. Not all memes are good. Memes can drag sciforums down just as easily (look at the current state) as it could lift it.

A meme is mostly successful when it is popular. Popular memes are the ones propagated by a large group of people.

'god bless America'
'Racism'
'Britney spears'
'i'm lovin' it'
'a/s/l'
'we must fight terrorists with terror'

All of the above are idiotic. (administrators, please do not read the following)All of the above will make sciforums more popular.

Roman proposes we invent something like:

andre has a posse, or snakes on a plane, orrr... Chucks

I don't even recongnize these as memes. It's gobbledegook to me. Is having the new chucks going to save sciforums?

I would now point to exhibit no.1

www.b3ta.com

It's quality has never diminished over the years. Maybe it just has gotten better.

Why?

I'm not sure. For one it has a dedicated userbase. The basis of the forum is simple and attractive to many and hasn't changed over the years: 'we love the web'.

In sciforums the basis might once have been science but not anymore. It's not the only forum out there based on science, but the essence of sciforums was that it was based on less tight moderation.

Currently sciforums is based on having a community with loose moderation. Apparently this has had an impact on the quality. The attractiveness to a certain userbase has caused a switch to another userbase one.

Ironically there is no easy solution if this is true. Strict moderation will not bring the first state of sciforums back. It was based on loose moderation. Injecting science will not bring sciforums back. The userbase has changed. There is no interest in science. That would be like injecting your sperm into a cow and expecting the birth of a monkey. Sciforums was not perse about science as such. It was just that a certain set of people was attracted to the forum based on certain qualitities.

Indeed, maybe the best way of proceeding would be to start all over again. It wouldn't be a threat to this forum, since the userbase would be different.

I always thought of SciF as being loosely based as well. But I doubt that the original atmospherics can be reproduced -- to do so would also have to entail the real world: a nascent web community at the time based on the old style bulletin boards if I'm not mistaken but a nascent community of above-average intelligence and enthusiasm who at the time could figure their way around that new and techi-weird thing -- the in-ter-net. So basically it was the nerds and the freaks way back then, no?

So now that the web is mainstreamed, we, uh, get this.

So the criterion for a new forum shouldn't be what was but be based on what is. For example, when the new admin/moderator locked a thread after Redarmy practically insulted me for not knowing -- so he thought -- a simple eyedrop procedure in Photoshop, and the admin/moderator didn't bother before locking up to A) first post the HTML code of the grey that I kindly requested (thereby avoiding the whole proceeding drama later on), or B), at least allow me to have my say first... wouldn't that attitude not be reflective of the current atmospherics at SciF, treated as "normal": petty mindedness?

Let me add this to the discussion:

A new forum should be based on what kind of forum you want. It's probably much easier to build up a forum than to change one.

Sciforums has become split up in several homes:

WEP:
Public toilet for Americans discussing internal matters vs the rest of the world.
Audience - republicans/rightwing extremists vs the rest of the world. It's pretty much pointless to post anything there.
Main methodology: Ostrich technique and flaming.

Biological science forums:
public toilet for racists and teenage problems.
Audience - racists and teenages vs the rest of the world.
Main methodology: statistics

Religion forums:
How to bash religion and atheism.
Audience: religious nuts and skeptics.
Main methodology: flaming.

Pseudoscience:
The weird meets the bored.
Audience: freaks and those who find freaks entertaining.
Main methodology: crazy shit, sarcasm, and skeptism

Rest:
whatever
Audience: whoever
Main methodology: Whatever


I will try to highlight an important problem with this phenomenon:
You will see that some proponents of some forums never really leave their little nest. Republicans stick to WEP sometimes venturing as far as history, or ethics. But only if some key words are triggered such as 'gun control'.

This means that these people are just here to discuss politics. Their interest is politics. Their interest is NOT intellectual debate. Their interest is not broad.

This is only one example. You see it in other groups too.

The result is a dumbing down. It is similar to having a 'american politics' forum as a independent entity. It attracts a certain kind of people.

Maybe this was slighty different in the old days. The main reason to visit sciforums was an interest in science.

Needless to see this is not a black&white phenomenon. It is entirely happening on the grayscale, allthough the gray is highly desaturated now.

The only Usenet place I have been around anytime in my life is sci.math. It's got a lot of great people on there. James Harris on the other hand.. eh.

As for BBS. Back in the DOS/WIndows 3.1 days when I was 12 or so.. I used to LOVE BBSing because it was the closest I could come to the Internet. I met a lot of great people on there and I have found lots of neat little "proggies" and such.

man...how the time flies, eh?

man...how the time flies, eh?

Yes. I actually miss those days. It was such an exciting time. There was always something new to discover and do.

Today... everything seems the same to me. Sure, a few new things here and there, but like in the past.

I about pissed my pants when I started my own BBS when I was 14. I even found a way to make it have GUI like AOL. Back then I though AOL was cool. Today I burn their CDs for heat.

Wow, this thread re-railed itself after a discussion about gamma. I'm impressed.

I think the quality of forums would go up if everyone followed Steve Pavlina's advice: don't live on them.

Meanwhile, getting back to memes: I don't think you can consciously set out to create a meme. They have to spontaneously evolve.

If you can engineer genes, why not memes?
The first thing to do is start a phenomenon.


I'm perfectly aware what a meme is. I don't see how creating a meme will help sciforums.

Britney spears is a meme.
Racism is a meme.
redneckism is a meme.

Sciforums is filled with memes as it is. Starting a new one isn't gone do much good. Not all memes are good. Memes can drag sciforums down just as easily (look at the current state) as it could lift it.

A meme is mostly successful when it is popular. Popular memes are the ones propagated by a large group of people.

'god bless America'
'Racism'
'Britney spears'
'i'm lovin' it'
'a/s/l'
'we must fight terrorists with terror'

All of the above are idiotic. (administrators, please do not read the following)All of the above will make sciforums more popular.

Roman proposes we invent something like:


I don't even recongnize these as memes. It's gobbledegook to me. Is having the new chucks going to save sciforums?

A meme is a unit of cultural information that can be tranferred from one individual to another. You're Dutch. I guess no one has yet to transfer that unit of cultural info to you. Or perhaps you lack the proper recepticons to accept the unit of cultural info.

And you're focusing on end results. Who cares what meme we create? It's the process man, the process! But will the process entail?

http://www.anezkahandmade.com/catalog/images/cat-header-soap.jpg

That's some good soap.
Thanks, Pete. Check out romans soap ^^^^^^^^^^^

ok, meme idea #1: Roman gets together with all of his mentally subnormal friends every weekend. They get stupidly drunk and do lots of crazy stuff, like setting their pants on fire and so on. They video it and post the results on YouTube, with a link back to the forums. We call the nascent series 'Roman's Crazy Shit', and it will become the next Jackass.

The brilliant thing about this idea is that it needs almost no extra effort on anyone's part since - unless Roman is a sad, bespectacled, pathological liar - this is what he and his friends do every weekend anyway.

OK, now someone take this and make it more scientific.

Don't you mean pseudoscientific? (Don't answer that.)

ok, meme idea #1: Roman gets together with all of his mentally subnormal friends every weekend. They get stupidly drunk and do lots of crazy stuff, like setting their pants on fire and so on. They video it and post the results on YouTube, with a link back to the forums. We call the nascent series 'Roman's Crazy Shit', and it will become the next Jackass.

The brilliant thing about this idea is that it needs almost no extra effort on anyone's part since - unless Roman is a sad, bespectacled, pathological liar - this is what he and his friends do every weekend anyway.

OK, now someone take this and make it more scientific.

I told all my friends to visit sciforums and see the new jackass being born. Give us a link to the thread with Roman's antics please. I can't find it. I need to forward it or we lose our new userbase.

Ask Roman.

I'm lost. What whould a meme do?

Are you proposing that we effectively construct our own culture? If so, how would that help us?

Let's start a culture based on moaning and bitching...

no wait...we already have that.

Hmmm, I'll let you know when those vids get on youtube. I doubt they'll be up for long, as they're decidedly pornographic.