these boards are doomed if we don't bring back thread categories

me too

bell_labs for president

bell_labs for presidetn

O WAIT HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT PRESIDETN IS IF YOU CAN'T MAKE A GOOD SEARCH FOR IT?

i think what bell_labs is trying to say is reinstate gershy as archivist-in-chief.

what's that saying, 'those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'

I too would like thread categories back, they were really useful, especially on ILE. I suspect it's something that wasn't really thought about when the new code was being written - the problem is that people used to categorise threads as they started them (or not as the case may be).

Presumably that categorisation vanished when the threads were imported to the new boards? Which means that thread categories would be next to useless without someone to volunteer to categorise thousands of threads. If someone could do that then personally I think it would be fucking great but don't all jump at once.

Then again, a big job like that might help people get through the dark days where the boards inexorably grind into mediocrity because we can't call people paedos or constantly bang on about boring gossip from a year ago.

(They were less useful on ILM because everything just got dumped in 'Everybodys Talking About Pop Music' or 'Lists Lists Lists', but incredibly useful for finding things quickly when you couldn't remember and exact thread title)

Also THERE IS NO CRACKDOWN ON THREAD REVIVES. There's a crackdown on reviving threads purely to highlight one post with the subtext "hey this poster, what about them eh? What a weirdo" or other such semi-political point-making.

Why any new poster would give a shit about Killy or Luna at all is beyond me really. Part of what this is all about is encouraging new posters to actually talk about stuff and discourage the kind of approach than involves following and commenting on the boards as if they're an ongoing soap opera, which just encourages creepiness.

THERE IS NO CRACKDOWN ON THREAD REVIVES

true- there is only a crackdown on individual targeted posters.

new posters talking about stuff are routinely ridiculed, and pretty much always have been, because most of that stuff has been covered, rehashed and finally turned into a confusing meme.

i just think there are lessons to be learned. i mean, i know that i figured out that i would possibly be seriously clowned and have my pics posted everywhere if i posted a lot to wdyll threads from the killy incident. maybe there are some naive guys who might learn something from the luna thing. not to bring up these posters but i just think that some things aren't necessarily common sense to new posters.

while on ilx, the creepy behavior can be monitored, nobody is stopping anyone from creating a YTMND or putting on another blog or board and people should remember that there are people out there on the internet who have no value for your privacy. it's just a fact of the internet. totally sanitizing it from this board gives people a false sense of security. creeps exist.

Of course there are lessons to be learnt - but reviving a thread to italicise a Luna post from three years ago is hardly the best way of teaching that lesson. In any case, the motive behind most of this shit is not "how can we protect innocent young internet dudes" it's more "haha isn't this funny?"

Creeps exist, everyone agrees that, and I'm certainly not in favour of banning everyone I think is creepy, but I'm also opposed to creating an environment where they can pretty much get away with being as creepy as they want. If someone is creepy enough to YTMND or something, they're just as likely to do that if they're allowed to post here as if they aren't.

I mean, as far as I can tell the LouJag YTMND, for example, was not pulled by a banned poster.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the issue of whether or not there should be thread categories, incidentally. I don't really understand why you conflated the issues in the first place.

Why any new poster would give a shit about Killy or Luna at all is beyond me really. Part of what this is all about is encouraging new posters to actually talk about stuff and discourage the kind of approach than involves following and commenting on the boards as if they're an ongoing soap opera, which just encourages creepiness.

-- Matt DC, Sunday, June 8, 2008 2:47 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

lol even i don't know who killy is.

yeah i guess it's just a couple of different things that i've been thinking about. it's really only tangentially related.

... maybe i shd revive some threads lol

new posters talking about stuff are routinely ridiculed, and pretty much always have been

Not really true unless you have a very elastic definition of 'routine'. The vast majority of new posters slip in pretty much unnoticed unless they are a troll, or go about trying to make a big splash, or have a posting quirk or such a larger-than-life persona that it's difficult not to notice them.