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Greetings - Ben the Donkey - Jun 12, 2016

From another sciforums refugee. Well, not a refugee, per se... there was a boat handy and I was placed upon it, to be honest.

I'm The Marquis (most recently Retribution) from Sciforums, have been looking for another place to scribble and play for some time... not much around anymore, is there? A dying media, perhaps.

Anyway. I saw Secular Sanity and CC were signed up here and thought ok, that'll do me. So here I am, and we shall see.

Hi.


RE: Greetings - C C - Jun 12, 2016

Welcome O former noble one between duke and count, beast of burden, Willard's second favorite, and avenging agent. It's been a long time since somebody registered who was a real human or not a stealth spammer. While Ostronomos (aka Spellbound at sciforums) might appear recent, he actually joined last year under a different nym. He's merely sitting out a Sciforum ban here.

Basically there are only 5 people keeping the place alive on any kind of regular or semi-regular basis (including Stryder the owner). By "alive" I mean just preventing it from having the abandoned look of those forums where the most recent post was several weeks to a half year ago +.

Not that there aren't brief conversations taking place here, but they're akin to the kind of casual, relaxed talk that neighbors on a street have: "Good morning, Mr and Mrs Smith. That was some rain we got last night." "Sure was, Dorothy." Thus many of those who feel nostalgia for the kind of pretty fireworks exploding at Sciforums -- or just miss their daily dose of persecution -- usually get bored and depart to nary or almost nary be seen again.


RE: Greetings - stryder - Jun 12, 2016

Welcome aboard Ben.

Things move slightly slower here due to our member number being small and for the most part we tend to get along.

The site doesn't pretend to be a 100% true to the core science site, if it did we'd just end up with a host of constantly angry self-proclaimed freelance scientists being overly corrective about pretty much anything and everything. It's pretty casual, that's why you'll find some weird and wonderful things posted in some areas and it's all up for discussion.

In any event I hope you find the different pace relaxing and enjoy the change. Feel free to drop any suggestions in for any changes to the place should there need to be any.


RE: Greetings - stryder - Jun 12, 2016

CC, Elte, Yazata and MR have been really good at putting up topics here. I've often found myself wondering how they find all these topics, is it some mailinglist?, do they stumble upon it while take a tangent trying to find something else?

Currently I don't know, but it's definitely led to some interest finds.


RE: Greetings - Ben the Donkey - Jun 13, 2016

Thanks to both of you... I'm not sure yet myself whether I'll retain interest, we shall see how things go.

CC - I've had a little fun here already, having just spent the entire afternoon trying to track down any reference to Willard's second favourite... closest I could find was Shane Willard's War Horse vs Donkey speech? For which I was unable to find a transcript... (hint, if that was indeed the reference).
Of course, that comes with all due acknowledgement of the fact that I have the attention span of a fish, and go off on forays into realms both known and unknown on a regular basis. Stryder's note about being off on a tangent has particular relevance, in my case. Self deprecating chuckles on that point. I am a dilletante, I'm afraid. 

On the topic of sciforums... yes. I do enjoy all the fireworks, and often seek them out. I don't see that as a failing, per se... more of an acknowledgement that in order for a true community to progress, some sharpening and rethinking of tightly held ideas must occur, and that often will involve seeking less-than-convivial company. My observations have shown me that in the absence of the fireworks, people simply become bored and leave.
However in order for that sharpening to occur, the less than convivial company must also be of an intelligent nature, able to argue a point effectively without resorting to a moral position as a kind of Maginot Line. When the moral positioning prevents any exploration of the more interesting and wider topics (against the backdrop of smaller ones), I get frustrated... and when that positioning becomes the "official stance", you lose all those people who once put the "pretty" in the fireworks - sometimes forcibly. Those who were prepared to delve beneath the surface, so to speak.
I came back after a long hiatus only to find myself a lone voice in the desert, not necessarily annoyed at being told I was wrong, not annoyed at being called an idiot, but annoyed at the complete incapability of anyone left there who might have been able to tell me why.
tl;dr version - I lack forbearance, and was placed upon a boat headed for some other shore. 

Enough of that, though. Thanks for the welcome, and if I have something to say you can rest assured I will. I'm not always Benjamin the Donkey, you know... it was a name I had on my mind after making some mental comparisons to Sciforums with Animal Farm.

Stryder - there were some thoughts of mine regarding how to make a successful forum in the above, but it would take a lot of refining and experimentation before you came to my true position on the subject. I do wonder, though, if it is not already too late in the face of other technologies more accommodating of the modern mind.... I even read an article the other day laying some blame on the invention of the Ipad for declining rates of sexual activity in affluent nations. 
Simplified and tongue in cheek, of course, but deserving of attention nonetheless.


RE: Greetings - C C - Jun 13, 2016

(Jun 13, 2016 01:19 PM)Ben the Donkey Wrote: CC - I've had a little fun here already, having just spent the entire afternoon trying to track down any reference to Willard's second favourite... closest I could find was Shane Willard's War Horse vs Donkey speech? For which I was unable to find a transcript... (hint, if that was indeed the reference).


Oh heck, sorry about that. Didn't mean to cause a wild goose chase with my vague, trivial association of two animal characters which belong to different genres. I blame it on a random impulse: Contrasting the Benjamin of that literary classic -- his mood of pessimistic futility about sociopolitical changes[*], with the retributive "take action" responses of the "Ben" in a forgotten 70s horror flick.

([*] His cynicism succinctly paralleled years later by that passage "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" in The Who song "Won't Get Fooled Again".)

Quote:On the topic of sciforums... yes. I do enjoy all the fireworks, and often seek them out. I don't see that as a failing, per se... more of an acknowledgement that in order for a true community to progress, some sharpening and rethinking of tightly held ideas must occur, and that often will involve seeking less-than-convivial company. My observations have shown me that in the absence of the fireworks, people simply become bored and leave.

Yep, a problem here (in that context) is that the four or five of us who still hang around are something amounting to friends, or have too much innocuous familiarity with each other. Also, MR has the backbone to submit most of the potential controversy-stimulating topics that may seem framed in either a personal stance or from a devil's advocate position. Which goes back to Yazata, Elte, and myself knowing too much about where MR is coming from for the kind of pyrotechnics to erupt that take place in Sciforums. In the underpopulated environment of this board, there's a kind of facetious blurriness mingled with freedom, a "just follow it to wherever it leads, even to the cliff's edge" attitude hanging over some of our discussions, as to how serious they're meant to be taken.

As a result, SciVillage has become a kind of substitute for a social media gathering where acquaintances chit-chat and drop items that the rest as well as passing lurkers might be interested in (in addition to, again, the routine of keeping the place from appearing abandoned). Which by no means is a preference that SciVillage remain that way -- it's just that until we finally get enough people here at the same time who are at passionate odds with each other, like at other places, not much can develop in that respect.

Also, Stryder perhaps wants the members to be inherently better at policing themselves so that a nanny-state of moderators never has to enter the picture. For SciVillage to be more "natively" civil and disciplined than SciForums, while still retaining liberty or a degree of tolerance. A kind of "fun fireworks" maybe, rather than the occasionally over-dramatic posturings and runaway streams of venom expressed by mods and members at SciForums.

By declaring the top science section to be casual rather than having the "workshop" wannabe desire of SciForum's ambiguous identity, any future pyrotechnics at SciVillage could largely be transpiring over issues applicable to the lower social section's categories. Which is to say, if a bevy of scientists happened to take up authoritative residence in the top half, their outcries for more stringent standards ("No more of these pop-science headlines and subjects!") wouldn't carry as much weight due to the aforementioned precondition which advertises itself upfront.

Quote:I came back after a long hiatus only to find myself a lone voice in the desert, not necessarily annoyed at being told I was wrong, not annoyed at being called an idiot, but annoyed at the complete incapability of anyone left there who might have been able to tell me why.


Perhaps the consequences of SciForums's phases of the recent past are an accidental omen of the looming "daycare society" of the millennial generation. But most likely all the science fiction dystopias over the decades which exaggerated(?) the horrors of micro-managed cultures have subconsciously programmed me to be apprehensive and hyper-aware of such (including dredging up metaphors like that). Wink


RE: Greetings - krash661 - Jun 17, 2016

(Jun 12, 2016 07:19 AM)Ben the Donkey Wrote: From another sciforums refugee. Well, not a refugee, per se... there was a boat handy and I was placed upon it, to be honest.

I'm The Marquis (most recently Retribution) from Sciforums, have been looking for another place to scribble and play for some time... not much around anymore, is there? A dying media, perhaps.

Anyway. I saw Secular Sanity and CC were signed up here and thought ok, that'll do me. So here I am, and we shall see.

Hi.

do not take " our engagement " personally from sciforums. personally, I love stryder's site, we just need to evolve it and generate foot traffic and then push scifroums out--which can be done easily since they are destroying themselves within a two year time frame anyways. there is a wall street phrase that simply states, " a company, a team, a department, a website, or whatever, is only as good as the individual(s) whom are running it. "


RE: Greetings - Ben the Donkey - Jun 18, 2016

(Jun 17, 2016 06:46 PM)krash661 Wrote: do not take " our engagement " personally from sciforums. personally, I love stryder's site, we just need to evolve it and generate foot traffic and then push scifroums out--which can be done easily since they are destroying themselves within a two year time frame anyways. there is a wall street phrase that simply states, " a company, a team, a department, a website, or whatever, is only as good as the individual(s) whom are running it. "
I'm doing a lot of reading here actually... love the content posted. Not too much actual discussion but sometimes there's a bit... very casual, like stryder said.
I haven't taken anything said on a forum personally for a lot of years now Smile

Sciforums will last for years, yet. They're not getting new members like they used to though. Which is hardly surprising... I said somewhere on there that it must offer something other forums don't, which it did once and does no longer. Dates back to about 2006 when it was bought out and the more "energetic" smart folks either left or were harassed off the forum. Hardly more than a chatroom now.

There's no need for Stryder to compete though, as you said Sciforums is killing itself. This sites a little different, I'm enjoying it. Have been meaning to post more but RL intervenes..
This site has actually become one of my go-to's for interesting news content.... far better than online "news" sites which appear to believe Kim Kardashian is news; at least here I don't have to filter for the interesting stuff.


RE: Greetings - Ben the Donkey - Jun 19, 2016

Also, I spend several minutes looking at CC's avatar every time she changes it. 

There, I said it.

(Quick note - I had seen "Ben" years ago, CC, but had indeed forgotten it. Didn't even remember Willard. Still took me nearly a week to track down the reference - You win, 1 point awarded for creativity and obscure reference challenges.)


RE: Greetings - Secular Sanity - Jun 25, 2016

(Jun 12, 2016 11:32 AM)C C Wrote: Willard's second favorite, and avenging agent.

Wow!  I never would have thought of that one.  The last scene even comes fully equipped with a cute little Michael Jackson song.  That’s hilarious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrOGJR3Uzyo

Quote:Thus many of those who feel nostalgia for the kind of pretty fireworks exploding at Sciforums -- or just miss their daily dose of persecution -- usually get bored and depart to nary or almost nary be seen again.

Damn, CC, your mind is like a puzzle.  I like it.  You’re very interesting, but don’t confuse challenge with persecution.  That’s the Christian thing to do.

Nostalgia? More like recidivism. "We were all just prisoners there of our own device."

BTW, CC, what were the Eagles referring to with "spirit"?  The spirit band, perhaps?  

(Jun 13, 2016 01:19 PM)Ben the Donkey Wrote:  I am a dilletante, I'm afraid. 

Dilettante?  Nah.  That’s funny, though.  You simply underestimate yourself and assume that others are as competent.

Systematically testing the fences always creates a little spark, right?