...kevin taunting us with that We're Here, We're Here, We're Here thread in the GD forum?

Meanie

Here we go...

2the9s said:

Yeah, get ready

Oh, I've been ready!

Well then, what took you so long, punk?

You talkin' to me bitch?




grrrrr!
[This message was edited Wed Jul 3 18:46:24 PDT 2002 by 2the9s]

lmao..love this site.

2the9s said:

No, I'm talking to that OTHER bug-eyed bitch over there

Yeah, saw that thread of Kevins, now I had to rub the dust out of my eyes to see it.

Quit taunting us Kevin & get that damn GD up and running!

Is the GD finally...back...? It is about time.

luv4u said:

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Who gives a shit.

They made a decision to eliminate a certain direction on this site, and a lot of people who appreciated that direction fled as a result. Now it's back to being a very specialized site where people keep their comments related to Prince stuff (however creatively), and the sense of feeling free to engage the way in which we used to has been at best compromised, if not out and out snuffed out.

I'm not saying that their decision was right or wrong. It's their site, their direction, their choice, and their consequences. I will say, however, that the "moderation issues" of a few weeks ago has left me more interested in reading the news on this site, and less interested/comfortable in contributing.

Let them taunt and tease with the GD forum. I think I speak for a lot of people who feel the thrill is gone. Maybe a new wave of Pooks and IceNines and Cornermen will discover the new GD, they'll have a great time for a while, then they'll get their asses "moderated" and the online purple ant hill will be trampled once again. And so on and so on and shoobeedoobeedoobee.

Nice to see you hanging around again, Aaron. I missed your pissed-off, sexy self.

Although we don't pay $100 a year to join P.org. This is like what waiting for the next NPGMC cd to arrive. We don't know what we're getting and when we're going to get it...

Ya know, if there were a moderate fee to post on this site, you wouldn't get half the pointless bullshit.

teller said:

Probably not. Nor would you get people submitting news or talking about Prince. So then, what would be the point?

Aaron said:

Wanna bet? I haven't suggested fees because I know not everyone has the money, but it does make sense in terms of quality control You tend to make more efforts to be decent when you're actually paying for something The only problem is that I don't like the exclusivity that entails.

As for the GD reopening, well, whenever Ben, Matt and Kevin are ready. I would only caution them against trying to be very strict, because it's too much of a drastic change in terms of the community they have built. That community is accustomed to a certain leeway --- being too strict is not only perilous, it's hard work. I don't think they need to impose so much work to themselves for the behavior of a few. Wouldn't it be easier to just talk to the offending parties as frankly and bluntly as you can and delete them if they continue to reoffend? I only ask that they make their expectations clear...

Aerogram said:

... all of which is what we asked for 2-3 weeks ago.

Anxiety said:

"A lot"? It seems to me that people, even those who were very upset a few weeks ago, have stayed. I'm aware of only one prince.org user (Shaulser) leaving the site.



Only temporarily. From what I understand, the return of General Discussion is in the works... "it's just around the corner," so to speak.

As for the "direction" of this site, I think it's something of an accident and still a work in progress. Let me explain.

During the PPML days, every single post was screened in advance by the moderators. Stuff that had nothing to do with Prince was generally rejected without further ado.

Fast-forward to 1999. prince.org had only been operating for a few months when the infamous "fan lawsuits" were filed against Uptown and other website operators. In disgust, the Family shut down their news service, which had been the last comprehensive, independent source for Prince-related news. (Pierre Igot's Le Grind had become affiliated with and incorporated into Prince's love4oneanother.com.)

So, prince.org launched its news service, and shortly thereafter, Ben added a feature that allowed people to add their comments immediately below each news item. Over time, two trends became apparent:

1) people were using the news items in place of the PPML (presumably because they wanted their messages to appear instantly and didn't want to wait around for the next PPML digest to be released); and

2) people were turning the news items into a discussion board.

As for the second trend, in addition to comments about news items, people would "hijack" news threads to discuss whatever they pleased. We also got plenty of nonsense posts (e.g., the infamous "I like pizza"), flaming, and discussion about whether or not individual items deserved being posted as "news" (my personal pet peeve during my tenure as news editor).

When Ben started soliciting suggestions for prince.org v2.0, I expressed the above concerns to him. I think the current discussion board format was intended to improve upon the chaos that was the old prince.org news service. For example, the moderation tools allow garbage posts such as "I like pizza" to be quickly deleted. Threads can be locked if a flame war spins out of control. Compliments/concerns/complaints about prince.org can be addressed in the prince.org Site Discussion Forum. And the General Discussion forum allowed people to discuss random topics without having to "hijack" Prince-related discussion.

Okay, I know that was kinda long-winded, but the point is that we pretty much got where we are by accident, and we're still trying to figure out the best way to do things. I don't think we want to change the "direction" of the site--we're merely making some adjustments.

Personally, I have no problem with a "General Discussion" forum, but let me add these two caveats:

1) Let's remember why we're here. The one thing we all have in common is some interest in Prince.

2) Stuff such as the okayplayer.com "war," posts trying to stir up racial hatred, and blatantly abusive personal attacks don't belong here, and I hope they never will.

matt said:

It's interesting you call it an accident. When the Org opened its news section for comments, did you guys honestly believe that people would stay on topic and there would be none of this social, ot posting that is a part of so many fan sites? The sites that have discussions that stay on topic have them because their moderators aggressively discouraged social posting, by deleting posts and accounts.

This is no accident, Matt. It wasn't intended, but it's hard to believe no one thought it could be one of the possible results. And when it started happening, the moderators did not step in to set the tone and the rules... not efficiently anyway. In fact, you guys took part in some of the fun, adding your two cents on threads that had been "hijacked" -- especially when it was done with humor. For instance, I threadjacked some news thread to create the first Orgies and named you Best person or something like that, and you replied with thanks. Who could blame people for thinking it was perfectly ok to threadjack in that way?

I lurked on this site for months before joining it and read all the craziness. It's interesting to realize that on the old Org, the majority of flame wars were at first very much on-topic. I remember seeing lots of naysayer and asskisser flaming and thought this was accepted, especially since there were lots of interesting points made by both sides and it greatly contributed to my understanding of Prince.

Now... is it possible that heated discussions that were Prince-related were tolerated (despite all the name calling) because of their information value? Some of the most knowledgeable people laced their posts with plenty of disrespectful terms. When I started posting, I got smacked for being not so well informed and I smacked back because I didn't like being told in that fashion. I mean, if it was ok to be called an ignorant idiot, I figured it was alright that I call the person an anal-retentive jerk. Most of us have done something like that at one point or another, and it seemed to be the norm once a discussion reached a certain degree of contempt.

I've always tried to avoid name-calling as much as possible, but I never shrunk away from being openly critical and challenging certain opinions. To me, that is the whole point of a discussion board, accidental or not. You post something publicly, and people react with their own views, some positive, some not... Some are offended by the more negative reactions and call them divisive or too controversial. They want "positivity", but I'd personally prefer being name-called to death than having to put up with the debate-chilling niceties of the + Sign Squad who doesn't even realize or acknowledge that repression can have a smiling face.

I'm reassured that you don't envision a drastic change in direction. Some proposals would be the equivalent of using a guillotine to cure an headache.

"Just around the corner" = WHEN?!?!?

Aerogram said:

Call me naive, but the thought really never crossed my mind. We were already using the same comment function on other parts of the site (e.g., commentaries by Ben and Kevin), and for the most part, people stayed on topic. So, I guess I just assumed that the news comments would be the same.

In hindsight (which is always 20/20), I'm not terribly surprised at what happened. Successful online forums tend to develop a social aspect to them--for example, look at alt.music.prince. (And I know that some folks post to the .org because they don't like the "culture" of AMP.)



Guilty as charged. Yes, some of the stuff (such as your Orgies) were fun, and since we didn't have the moderation tools that we have now, there wasn't much I could do about threadjacking besides deleting a news item entirely.



Critical discussion is good. I do hope that .org'ers will stick to attacking ideas and not people, but I certainly don't want this site to be a place where "positivity" is enforced.



Some folks seem to be under the impression that we're trying to kill the social aspect of this site and turn it into a place for nothing but discussion of Prince and his works. That's not the case at all. Indeed, after my experiences at the Celebration, I value social interaction among .org'ers even more than I did before.

matt said:

I'm not saying "all". I'm not saying "most". But yes, Matt. A lot of people just don't show their faces around here that much anymore. This isn't to say there's not still a large amount of active Orgers, and this isn't to say a lot of new people haven't joined since the celebration. I'm not making a comment on the "wavering popularity of the Org", nor am I making an argument for that. But yeah, Matt. A lot of people have fled.

Of course, I guess it depends on how you define "fled"...not to get all Clinton-esque on you or anything

If you define "fled" by way of folks actually asking you to delete their accounts, a la Schausler, then okay, I obviously don't have the access to the site to gauge such a response, and I would also venture to guess that very few people would take such drastic measures to express their dissent with your moderation practices. Fair 'nuff.

If I defined "fled" as people who used to post regularly and now don't, then I think you could probably very easily chart a decline in a whole wave of people just by having a look around. Now, even if this DID make some kind of dent in the Org community, I think the overall popularity of this site as a fan news source makes this trend pretty moot to the overall appeal of the Org, and in my estimation, only has a real effect on what has been the steadily growing sense of community of the Org, which came to a head with V2 and the GD forum. Maybe the wave of people who have backed off from posting on the Org were the people you were looking to get rid of. And that kind of manipulation of your "community" is well within your right to do, as you've mentioned repeatedly. On the other hand, it's well within the rights of many of us to be turned off by the DIRECTION in which you've taken the site.

And yes, Matt, it's a DIRECTION. You don't make decisions and call them "accidents". You make decisions and you take responsibility for them. If I told you something extremely unpleasant right now, and you got angry with me for doing so, would it be okay if I said, "gee Matt, what I just said was an accident, lighten up." Of course not. I'd have to take responsibility for saying something to you that you didn't like. Maybe I was well within my rights for saying what I said, but I'd have to at least acknowledge my decision for doing so, and your reaction to it.



Let's look a little deeper, Matt. Just for a moment. The one thing we all have in common on this site is an interest in Prince, but that's just ONE aspect of each of us (I should hope), and the brilliance of this site at its best is that it has been able to take that common interest (Prince) and use it as a springboard for a great variety of people to learn about all the other things that we have to offer as human beings. Hence, the "Online Fan COMMUNITY" that you boast at the top of the screen. Or so I assume. Maybe what I consider "community" and how you define that word are dramatically different. And again, that's your right. If you want to define "community" as "a small, ring-like muscle located between the butt cheeks", then hey, it's your party - knock yerselves out.

Basically, you can't have it both ways. Either this is a straight-up fan news site with rules and regulations discouraging off-topic discussion (or maybe discussion should be disallowed?), or it's a bona fide COMMUNITY which uses one common interest to bring individuals together, with all the foolishness and dialogs and digressions a diverse community implies.

You should check out a book called "Cyberville" - it was written by a woman who built her own online community, and she writes at length about the challenges she encountered as a moderator and as the builder of a bustling house of cards, which she ultimately had the power to knock to the ground. She deals a lot with the ethics and responsibility of creating such an environment, and she does so with a very level-headed, humorous, well-spoken approach.

You guys aren't expected to be social science geniuses here. I'm not one, either. Clearly. But if you're gonna bring the GD forum back, and if you have any pride or enthusiasm at all over the burst in the Org's online community, I think you necessarily put yourself in a position of responsibility for nourishing that community, and paying attention to the collective creature that it evolves into.

If your focus is basically to show us all what a cool site you guys can put together, and how good you guys are at keeping up to date on Prince-related news, then you have our applause. Keep it up. But leave the community building to people who love and respect the concept of community.

Despite all this blathering, I think you guys rock. The fact that you'll even LET me rant like this...and then respond with something close to a level head...well, that's rare. I think you guys are still scratching your heads over this site, figuring out what you guys have gotten yourselves into. I think there are aspects to this experience that you guys never took into account. And that's cool. That's life. That's learning. And I have every confidence that whatever shit you don't have together, you very soon will. Keep it up.

matt said:[quote]"Guilty as charged. Yes, some of the stuff (such as your Orgies) were fun, and since we didn't have the moderation tools that we have now, there wasn't much I could do about threadjacking besides deleting a news item entirely."


Didn't you have the ability to lock the thread? Anyway I really think that would have been a mistake, because this is just one such occasion where a moderator encouraged and participated in some social threadjacking. You guys saw this community grow with your own eyes, and while I'm sure you were very frustrated at times, your participation and the later creation of the GD forum suggest you basically embraced it.

"Critical discussion is good. I do hope that .org'ers will stick to attacking ideas and not people, but I certainly don't want this site to be a place where "positivity" is enforced."


Well, you were attacked personally, and you defended yourself very fairly and politely, but some consider even replying to those messages to be flame-warish because you are ideally supposed to ignore it, and not keep the strife alive. But as we both know, it doesn't necessarily work that way. If someone calls you a liar or something vile that you are not, it's pretty difficult to refrain from explaining why that is untrue.

Ultimately, it looks inevitable that a community will develop to the point where its denizens become the topic. The positive manifestation of that is the Devote-a-thread type of topic. Some actually go to great length to become "personalities" on the Org. So it's not surprising people react to people... If they react positively, then it must be human to have some negative reactions in there, otherwise it's not much of a community. The way in which we choose to do so is what can be questionable. Going around like a certain recent orger just to say "so and so will pay", repeatedly.. That is an extreme that should be discouraged.

It's not an all or nothing situation, really. There's lots of grey area to explore, as far as a new set-up here on the Org with the new GD forum. If matt, ben and kevin will come up with some guidelines for us to follow, that would be good enough in my opinion. Although the study of the past generally is helpful for preventing problems in the future, in this case I think all it does is take us round in circles. That was then, this is now. Let's set some guidelines and then try to follow them. And bring back the GD forum!

Aerogram said:

thats why i have been screaming for an Off-Topic forum..Get rid of the GD...In its place, right below the prince.org discussion group throw in an off-topic forum...dont allow those topics to show up as a "hot topic" or as a "new thread" on this sites homepage and you solve all the problems...

now, i recommended this way back in 4/30/02, prior to all the blow up in the GD..I sent an email to Ben warning him how things would end up..and they pretty much did as I had predicted...

oh well...

SkletonKee said:

General Topic and Off topic are synonymous, so I don't think a name change is necessary, but it's a good idea to disqualify these threads for the "hot topic" and "new topic" feature. It will encourage fans to create posts that fits the site primary purpose : Prince, Related Artists, Concerts, Gatherings, etc. With 72 % of all replies, the GD forum was overshadowing all other forums, and clearly a bit of an incentive is needed.

Skeleton, Aero...to quote Prince quoting a Budweiser commercial..."I LOVE YOU, MAN!!!"

Shutting up now,
Anx

hey! you guys threadjacked a perfectly good flame-war between 2the9s and I to go on and on about discussing the state of this online community. dammit!

Aaron said:

Wake up, you were losing anyway!

2the9s said:

Nuh uh, loser And your butt stinks

What-ever!

Just someone wake me up when the forum is re-opened.