Posted this argument elsewhere. I’d like to know what others think of it. (I’m quite willing to accept that it’s a crock for various reasons.)
In the past, lots of prolific posters have left, and from what I’m told, traffic has gone up and up. The tone has changed over time… particularly in IP. But never have large numbers left at once. Assuming that happens, what next?
There are many hundreds of foreigners in Taiwan who choose not to participate in f.com because they see it as an aggressive, snippy, insular, cliquey forum. If there’s a mass migration, I assume that the majority who move will be long-timers with personal relationships they’d like to maintain: the clique. If that’s accurate, a mass migration could do wonders for this site, if the most prolific posters crowding out participation, things could really perk up.
I think there’s plenty of opportunity for the sites to evolve in slightly different, complementary ways.
I think that’s a very different situation from what happened with Taiwan Ho, which started with nothing and picked up, it seems, mostly folks with a foot in each camp, and f.com posters in forced exile… which really provided no basis for growth.
Ok, I already see a few holes, but can someone else tell me what’s wrong with the above reasoning?
[quote=“Charlie Phillips”][quote=“Mr He”]I beg to differ.
Spreading the forces over 2 forums may mean that the parts together become less than the sum of everybody’s work was before. If anything, you guys should have merged the Ho!, Forumosa and whatever else there was of forums, leading to one place only.
Divided we fall, united we stand.[/quote]
QFT. An internet community requires critical mass to be successful. There aren’t as many expats as there used to be. I hope you can sort out your differences and work together for the benefit of all. Think of all the poor noobs-to-be that will have to check two forums. More likely a new forum will end up like the Ho with a handful of posts per month.[/quote]
Gotta disagree with you there, fellas. Each forum has its own tenor, its own tone. Though my beloved Ho! may not have the traffic that this place sees, it’s extraordinarily welcoming to anyone who cares to come by. Jake is more than fair towards all posters who come there, and you can rest assured that as a new poster you will be treated just as well as any of us old farts who hang about there. Forumosa will continue on with it’s own grouping of personality types, and that’s great. Taiwanease will have cross-posters and people will flit between two or all three of the sites. How exactly is this a bad thing? If people want to connect, get information on a range of topics, or visit with their online friends, how is having three sites to go to weakening the level of conversation here?
If indeed there are fewer foreigners in Taiwan than there used to be, I say: 1) Good - more work for those of us who stick around, and 2) What the hell difference does it make that there are few foreigners about? Are we supposed to be some sort of lobby or something? What exactly does “Spreading the forces over 2 forums may mean that the parts together become less than the sum of everybody’s work was before.” mean in the first place? “Spreading the forces?” last time I checked, we were diaspora of weirdos, mistfits, expatriate workers, gelded Scandinavians and clueless college grads looking to find sour cream and whinge about the traffic. Even if there are fewer of us about, why should we all be herded into one forum? This place is on the internet, for chrissakes - you can’t work your browser and check out what the other forums have to say?
Believe me - there are enough people out there with internet connections and a desire to reach out to one another to support a whole three forum sites dedicated to living in Taiwan. It’s not a zero-sum game. Nearly every regular poster on TaiwanHo comes over here as well, and as you can see, posters and mods are straddling both this site and Taiwanease. I suspect that, over time, the different sites may cater to crowds with different interests, but how exactly is more choice a bad thing?
[quote=“Jaboney”]Posted this argument elsewhere. I’d like to know what others think of it. (I’m quite willing to accept that it’s a crock for various reasons.)
In the past, lots of prolific posters have left, and from what I’m told, traffic has gone up and up. The tone has changed over time… particularly in IP. But never have large numbers left at once. Assuming that happens, what next?
There are many hundreds of foreigners in Taiwan who choose not to participate in f.com because they see it as an aggressive, snippy, insular, cliquey forum. If there’s a mass migration, I assume that the majority who move will be long-timers with personal relationships they’d like to maintain: the clique. If that’s accurate, a mass migration could do wonders for this site, if the most prolific posters crowding out participation, things could really perk up.
I think there’s plenty of opportunity for the sites to evolve in slightly different, complementary ways.
I think that’s a very different situation from what happened with Taiwan Ho, which started with nothing and picked up, it seems, mostly folks with a foot in each camp, and f.com posters in forced exile… which really provided no basis for growth.
Ok, I already see a few holes, but can someone else tell me what’s wrong with the above reasoning?[/quote]
Looks like we cross-posted, jaboney.
OK, I agree with you on most of the points there, Jaboney - especially the snippy cliquey bits. However, the characterizaiton that TaiwanHo was made up of forumosans in forced exile doesn’t really ring true. Posters such as Sulavaca, Dr. McCoy, Finley, and myself were never banned or (as far as I know) ever suspended, or have ever had any problems over here.
Otherwise, I agree with you, and I completely fail to see how having more places to go online and blabber away could be anything other than good.
Going over to TaiwanHo is like visiting a corner bar. It should be named Jake’s. You can sit down, watch some sports and talk to the other regulars. If Jake’s not around, you can go behind the bar and pour yourself a pint. Jake trusts you to put your cash on the bar. There aren’t many folks around, and you’re all adults, after all, so why get uptight about it.
Forumosa is a college dorm where every September a new crop of kids comes in, and the same freshmen conversations start over and over again. The RAs have know each other for years, and every now and then they like to remind the new kids that their music is shit, and lacks the integrity of bands they listened to back in the day. These RAs generally don’t try to push out the new kids, and in fact they may try to help to the new kids adjust, but they turn a blind eye to fifth-year hangers-on that refuse to leave the dorms and wander around looking to take out their frustrations on the new kids. Why do the RAs tolerate this? Partly because they think it’s amusing, partly because the fifth-years sell them pot, or partly because the fifth years represent some sort of permanence that they can latch on to as all these different kids come and go.
[quote=“Jaboney”]
If I were to go anywhere else to discuss life, politics, and all things musical, Callahan’s Cross Time Saloon might be my first choice. It was fictional, has metastized into reality, and sounds like a great place. But, since I’m here, it seems best to spend time with the neighbours.
Sooo… how do you improve upon free political discussion within well-defined and reasonable rules? I dunno. But I think listening longer and posting slower would be two steps in the right direction. Paying more attention to what’s right and good, and less to who’s wrong would help too.
[spoiler]“That’s right, jadies and lentilmen: they whipped up their own Callahan’s Place, out of thin air! It’s called alt.callahans…”
(a roar of astonishment and confusion and glee and outrage and disbelief…which finally morphs into a long rolling wave of laughter… followed by another…and another)
“Now, I know what many of you want to hear about. You want me to tell you all the countless little ways their Callahan’s Place is different from the one you lot used to drink in, and from Mary’s Place here. And there are a lot of differences, and maybe we can talk about them another time. But the things I want to tell you first – the most important things – are the ways their Callahan’s Place is like yours.”
“Do they make rotten puns there?” Doc Webster calls.
“Do dey make music dere?” Fast Eddie asks.
“Do they drink there?” Long-Drink bellows.
“Do they smash their glasses in the fireplace?” Tommy Janssen asks, and the rumble of the crowd indicates that he has come closest so far to a good question.
“None of that is really important,” Jake Stonebender says, meeting Spider’s eye. “What about the important stuff, Spider? Did they get that right?”
The room falls silent.
Slowly, enjoying the suspense, Spider lets his poker face relax into a crooked smile.
“As far as I can tell, they did, Jake. At alt.callahans [color=#0040FF]they believe that shared pain is diminished, and that shared joy is increased, just like here. They believe that a snoopy question merits a mild concussion. They help the ones that hurt and make merry with the ones that don’t.[/color]”
(stunned silence in Mary’s Place)
"They care about one another, there, 24-7. They don’t make any magical claims, but they seem to have compassion by the carload, and they value kindness over hipness. And they use a system of communication that’s startlingly like the telepathy you folks are shooting for here. [color=#0040FF]Oh, there’s a social disease rampant in their world with a horrid symptom called ‘flaming’ – but they suffer far less from it than just about anywhere else in their ficton. First-time visitors are not called the ‘n-word’ there, for instance, as is customary elsewhere. Just like here, alt.callahans seems to be a place where it’s All Right To Be Bright, where it’s All Right To Be Dull, where it’s all right to be any damn thing at all except a pain in the ass.[/color] You know the Invisible Protective Shield around this place? The magic force field that keeps out the bikers and dealers and predators and drinking alcoholics and kids looking to raise hell? Well, they’ve got one too, called a Sysop.
“And yes, they make exceedingly rotten puns there. And some splendid music. And they tell toxic jokes. Don’t tell anybody, but I’ve already pinched a couple.”
Doc Webster clears his throat. “Uh…how big a joint are we talking about, Spiderman?”
Spider grins. “Nobody knows. This USENET ficton is a truly weird universe, a snake’s orgy of nodes and channels and webs and threads, and as far as I know there is no truly accurate census, and alt.callahans runs all through it like kudzu…and branches off from there to another ficton called – you won’t believe this one! – The Web. But the best guess I heard was, well in excess of 61,000 people are regular patrons. It’s said to be in the top one percent of bars there, by size, and furthermore to be damn near the only one in the top two percent that doesn’t have topless bottomless waitresses and a live donkey show. This Callahan’s Place probably couldn’t be destroyed by fifty nukes, all going off at once.”[/quote][/spoiler]
Since you asked for comments: i see nothing wrong with your speculation about what is possibile now. Look at the number of registered users (especially recently registered users) and see how few of them have been posting until now - things could well develop along the lines you suggest.
I think so, too. The new BBS will develop its own tone and the tone of this one will likely change somewhat. And the corner pub may also be there for years to come.
(I very much suspect that i am not the only one who conveniently uses different BBSs to express different parts of their personality or experiment with different personas. In any case, there is something that i think happens in online commuties exactly as in real life communities: some people get somewhat stuck in a certain behaviour pattern that relates to the reputation they have built up in their community, and when they move into a different community they feel free to behave in different ways and create a different reputation.)
EDIT (later addition): Here is recent example of the kinds of threads that seem to illustrate Jaboney’s point: Stuck
Another (less recent) example i could cite were the (now disappeared) threads started by the Lithuanian rainbow woman.
I don’t feel anybody contributing to the thread i am linking to here as an example has said anything inappropriate as such, yet i think posters like the OP won’t come back, because young people who sign up to this BBS in the hope to get some advice concerning what they see as a problem they are facing (even assuming for a moment that “we” don’t share their perspective) don’t need a bunch of older people getting in their face and telling them to shape up (they’ve already heard that, that’s why they’re reaching out this way for advice). A question i’d like to see discussed on this BBS is whether “we” care about young people and other newcomers coming on board or whether “we” prefer this to be an in-crowd BBS?
[quote=“Jaboney”]Posted this argument elsewhere. I’d like to know what others think of it. (I’m quite willing to accept that it’s a crock for various reasons.)
In the past, lots of prolific posters have left, and from what I’m told, traffic has gone up and up. The tone has changed over time… particularly in IP. But never have large numbers left at once. Assuming that happens, what next? [/quote]
I’m not sure that traffic going up and up and prolific posters leaving are really cause and effect.
I’m not sure I agree with all of this. In my circle of friends I’m the only one of that group that is a participant on Forumosa. The others don’t participate simply because internet discussion groups aren’t their thing. I also don’t buy into the argument polific posters crowd out participation, quite the opposite it tends to encourage it. After all if this were true wouldn’t Ho be a natural destination for these crowded out folks? Pretty hard to take part in a conversation on a thread where the last post was in 2008.
[quote] I think there’s plenty of opportunity for the sites to evolve in slightly different, complementary ways.
I think that’s a very different situation from what happened with Taiwan Ho, which started with nothing and picked up, it seems, mostly folks with a foot in each camp, and f.com posters in forced exile… which really provided no basis for growth.
Ok, I already see a few holes, but can someone else tell me what’s wrong with the above reasoning?[/quote]
I saw the question posed about the difference between Fcom and Ho. I think the more relavent question is what will the new site offer that is substantially different from what the current sites have to offer.
To Yuli’s point it might be fun to try out a new persona on the new site.
[quote]A question i’d like to see discussed on this BBS is whether “we” care about young people and other newcomers coming on board or whether “we” prefer this to be an in-crowd BBS?
[/quote]
I know where I stand on that! There again, there are probably HUNDREDS of new posters who I’ve welcomed on here and only a few dozens at most who have been such total arseholes that they deserve nothing but ridicule. Peole seldom remember that, though. They remember the put-downs of some arrogant little twat VERY well, though. Its entertainment.
[quote=“sandman”][quote]A question I’d like to see discussed on this BBS is whether “we” care about young people and other newcomers coming on board or whether “we” prefer this to be an in-crowd BBS?
[/quote]
I know where I stand on that! There again, there are probably HUNDREDS of new posters who I’ve welcomed on here and only a few dozens at most who have been such total arseholes that they deserve nothing but ridicule. Peole seldom remember that, though. They remember the put-downs of some arrogant little twat VERY well, though. Its entertainment.[/quote]
I think I’m a living example of being welcomed in. Sure, initially there was ridicule, but I dunno, I was accepted somehow into the fold.
in the head??? Like you??? And if you by any chance are insinuating what you are insinuating…STFU![/quote]
See! That sharp tongue and lightining wit had a lot to do with you being accepted into the fold pretty quickly. Many newbs are just too thin skinned at times.
I agree with much of what you wrote.
Look at the number of registered users (especially recently registered users) and see how few of them have been posting until now - things could well develop along the lines you suggest.
In any case, there is something that i think happens in online commuties exactly as in real life communities: some people get somewhat stuck in a certain behaviour pattern that relates to the reputation they have built up in their community, and when they move into a different community they feel free to behave in different ways and create a different reputation.)
There again, there are probably HUNDREDS of new posters who I’ve welcomed on here and only a few dozens at most who have been such total arseholes that they deserve nothing but ridicule. Peole seldom remember that, though. They remember the put-downs of some arrogant little twat VERY well, though. Its entertainment.