Monday, April 11, 2005

How are you phasing out your SDMB?

From the submission thread:

Hopefully not too introspective for the old snark board, but it's Sunday so: How are you phasing out your SDMB?

It's funny, I was thinking about what an anon said on sashimi about the board culture encouraging the "Jack of all trades, master of none" type and that experts who don't suffer fools are chased off. I have to admit to that jack-of-all-trades personality; IMO a forum that encourages heavy discussion of all things under the sun is going to attract that type. It just seems that current J-o-a-T types don't want to give focussed learning it's due.I think what really gets in some people's craw is when someone seems a true expert in one field but also has other varied hobbies and interests. Way to hog the show MUTHERFUCKA! Haw.

So lately I'm doing what I used to do before I discovered the Dope of old, lurking on expert sites - posting only if I think I have a useful non-expert POV, or a question I think experts would want to explain to an avid amateur.
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Also from the submission thread on a similar theme :
I see a lot of comments that talk about how the board has changed. And it has.

But I'm curious as to how people think it's changed. FWIW, I've been on it since the start, and some changes I see: the passage of time has allowed all sorts of social interactions to transpire that weren't in place when the board was young; also, MPSIMS and the Pit have become near pure wastes of good, hard workin' electrons.

posted by Anonymous @ 12:36 AM   16 tokes off a turd

16 Comments:

At 4/11/2005 12:47 AM, Anonymous Anonymous snarked:
I'm phasing out by focussing on sites specific to my interests. SDMB has become so generalist in application to topics that it doesn't satisfy my need to know in areas that I am unaware that I need to know.

That said, I will still check back in from time to time, particularly to Cecil's columns, to determine if there is anything I need to know.  
At 4/11/2005 2:23 AM, Anonymous Anonymous snarked:
I never was much for mpsims but the pit really has changed since I joined. It used to be really harsh, harsher even than the anon communities that exist today. Lame pittings were made fun of and people were honest when they said they were nervous about venturing in.

These days it's just a mpsims extension with "and since this is the pit, fuck" added to every OP.  
At 4/11/2005 2:29 AM, Anonymous Anonymous snarked:
And in the old days, it was incredibly common for the OP to be given a "rating" without a shitstorm erupting.  
At 4/11/2005 3:04 AM, Anonymous Anonymous snarked:
It's not so much the variety of questions that bothers me, although I wish they could be better organized instead of being lumped together in one place. What does bug me is that some people have no fear of posting "answers" that are outdated or off the mark because they can't be arsed to check their facts first, and then they proceed to argue when a true expert does come along to correct them. "Waaaaahh, it was taught that way in school to me 20 years ago so I'm gonna stick to it, waaaaaahhh you experts are just being arbitrary and elitist and I can say whatever I want 'cos it's still valid in my eyes, waaaaahhh..." And then these idiots get defenders! Post-modernism has come home to roost on the SDMB, and it sucks.

I never was much for mpsims but the pit really has changed since I joined. It used to be really harsh, harsher even than the anon communities that exist today.

I remember that too. I also remember when joke threads were allowed there, black/spicy/otherwise harsh humor. Can you imagine that combo with some of the delicate flowers that post in the pit now?  
At 4/11/2005 4:08 AM, Blogger secretdubai snarked:
I still post there, but it has massively changed over the past couple of years. Google has always been my first resort for finding stuff out anyway.

I just dropped by The Pit to try and work out why it doesn't seem to be as interesting as it used to be, and I think it's because it just looks like an angry Neighbourhood Watch. It's just... lame. It's like letters to a local paper from "Angry, Smallville" about the lack of parking spaces outside the local library.

There is content there, and ideas, but something is lacking. I think people are too scared/confused/apathetic to rock the boat any more.  
At 4/11/2005 6:26 AM, Anonymous Anonymous snarked:
If you want a good example of what went wrong in the Pit just go look at the last Scylla thread. The board has become infested with over sensitive whiny little crybabies.  
At 4/11/2005 10:16 AM, Anonymous Anonymous snarked:
You can't freakin' vent any more. Even if you have a legit vent, some moron will have to come in and tell you it was your fault or that you should just suck it up. Like the recent guy who pitted cancer after a family member was sick...some mouthbreather had to barge in and tell him his OP was stupid. WTF?

Way to fucking miss the point.The Pit's no fun cuz people don't jump on the OP's vent bandwagon.Waah.

secret dubai and anon above her hit it.  
At 4/11/2005 11:02 AM, Anonymous Anonymous snarked:
The pit used to be chock full of, "Fuck you, Username!"

Now it's full of Reeder trying to fuck Bush in the ass, and Scylla being a 13 yr old girl. Thank g-d I was circumcised on the 8th day.

Why are we only talking about the pit? The dual OP was about the entire SDMB.  
At 4/11/2005 11:04 AM, Anonymous Anonymous snarked:
The "cancer" OP and Inkleberry's current OP would never have been started in the Pit way back when. They would have been posted in MPSIMS or IMHO and only moved to the Pit once they were hijacked.

Nyctea's response to inkleberry would probably have drawn a "take it to the Pit" from the mods or nyctea might have - properly - started a Pit thread calling inkleberry a whiney bitch, but the tea and sympathy party wouldn't have had the Pit as its original venue.  
At 4/11/2005 11:15 AM, Anonymous Anonymous snarked:
GQ has become a sad place, with threads full of inaccurate answers allowed to continue for ages. It's not the place I'd go looking for facts anymore. Bring back Manny!

Cites no longer seem the norm in GD, either.

Let's face it, inly the fluff forums are still "what they used to be".  
At 4/11/2005 11:27 AM, Anonymous Anonymous snarked:
Can someone search for Opal's thread in which she was lamenting her house being a pig sty and CPS threatening to take Dom?

THAT's the classic example of what used to happen to people who used the Pit to appeal for sympathy.  
At 4/11/2005 11:38 AM, Anonymous Anonymous snarked:
sawitalialready, it is whiney little bitches like you that is ruining the SD. wah wah wah  
At 4/11/2005 12:19 PM, Anonymous Anonymous snarked:
If the OP doesn't flame a board member in their post, you shouldn't be flaming them in return.

If the OP isn't flaming SOMETHING, then it shouldn't be in the Pit in the first place. The whole point of the Pit is to contain the flaming and hijacking in one place. If MSPIMS and IMHO rules are now going to apply to the Pit, you might just as well get rid of the Pit right now.

It's ironic that the Pit was created so that threads in other forums wouldn't get hijacked by flaming. Now Pit threads are getting hijacked into feel good threads and debates without cites.  
At 4/11/2005 12:42 PM, Anonymous Anonymous snarked:
re: the Pit "sharing duty" with vents and flaming:

Current Pit front page listing has one thread even close to pitting a member. The hint is carefully retracted in the first lines of the OP:
I don't like Yoni
"Specifically, the term Yoni. Not griping at anyone specific here,"

ISTM flaming of members gets more rare and looked down on as we go forward.  
At 4/11/2005 12:51 PM, Anonymous Anonymous snarked:
And then we have :

Pitting the attitude, not necessarily Evil Captor.

WTF? If the attitude bothers you so much why NOT Pit EC?  
At 4/11/2005 1:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous snarked:
Why do so many people feel compelled to discuss these news stories in The Pit? Seems to me that when I started here, the Pit was used for flaming fellow Dopers, complaints about the jackassbooted mods and admins, and gripes about things that happened to Dopers personally. Now, tho, it fills up with political diatribes and comments of the popular horrible news of the week.

Can we get back to the legendary Pit of yore?

From NoClueBoy, here.  

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