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sobriquet

An inner sanctum subforum?

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I was thinking about the whole issue of people craving the old vibe of the forum and having to put up with newbies and banter that in my opinion is all happening in the off topic areas and not polluting the informational subforums anyhow.

Nevertheless maybe the existence of the different vibe (which I put down to the stagnation and failure of EBA and thus the increased recruitment here) can be stemmed by creating a subforum here which is for the inner sanctum.

Those people who are the solid backbone of this community, who have either through time on the forum, posts on the forum, or value in some other sense sets them apart from the crowd. The 'old timers' and keepers of the culture of the place might have a section only for them to hang out.

This might even create an incentive for newbies to gain access through good behaviour and respect of the culture established. New people could be brought into the inner section by invitation and secondment from existing members of it.

I think it may achieve the 'old vibe' and also create incentives for newer members.

What say everyone else?

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I would not be offended if the older members had an area to themselves, doesnt effect me

Edited by tepa

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lol!

How about instead of a tower where older members can look down on the newbies, everyone just plays nice so we don't even have to worry about such stuff.

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Shit, I didn't know I'd joined the Mason's!

:P:lol:

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creating a subforum for long standing members is a total self-indulgent wank. it reminds me of murple's forum where all new members had to write in convincing him why he should let them join. pass me the kleenex please.

i agree that the vibe of the forums has changed for the worse, and agree with torsten's comments several months ago that he prefers a slow and steady growth of the community instead of a large jump in membership.

so the vibe has changed, quit lamenting over the "good old" days.

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i agree, there is no need to build an ivory tower. it will do nothing but give amunition to anti-censorship movement. and ofcourse it will segrigate which is never the solution. only thing that is needed is a little respect for ALL members, new and old. not a big ask.

there is alot more than an internet forum here, when people say community its not always about the forums. some people dont seam to understand the majority of long-term members have accually traveled around and met each other, communitcate outside this medium as well as in it and all too often love and protect each other inside the community. that doesnt make the forum any less valuable to us but rather more so.

when it comes to the 'old vibe' has nothing to do with times have changes, its about the hostility that some new members have brought. the 'old vibe' was around for about 4 years or so and only recently changed. things are slowly returning back to the way they were and will be back in at least 6 months or so but only because now certain restraint have been put in place. and to be honest, when i was 6 months old here i would probably have been put into the probationary members list. in time i learnt how things work and realised how wrong i was thinking i was being singled out and picked on. i never caved into anyone else beliefs nor have i changed who i am or become a conformist. i simply learnt howthings work here, listen to what i was told and realised people wernt having a go at me but rather trying to help me. all it takes is time, respect and wanting to create an ideal environment.

you dont walk into somones house and start to redecorate. when they tell you how things work in their house you dont go and try to change it, and if they make a descision you dont challange it.

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creating a subforum for long standing members is a total self-indulgent wank.

LOL, I agree. The only time I'd consider a two tier system is for legal reasons, ie if there was a pressing need for the survival of the community.

AS for not lamenting the good old days, I disagree. Why not hold onto a model that worked well and is definitely possible to return to?! Even if we don't make it all the way, simply having it as an example to strive for is certainly better than striving for the example of many other forums.

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I would not be offended if the older members had an area to themselves, doesnt effect me

Same here. I think that one has to acknowledge the dedication these fellows have put in over the course of many years of their lives. They have participated through thick and thin and have created the backbone and place for all the content posted here.

It's not about ivory towers or a superiority thing. The fact that people frame it up that way says more about the way they are thinking rather than what I suggested it for. The special forum would be a place where the core hand picked members have an ideal environment knowing that everyone knew the culture or vibe if you like of the place and could perpetuate it.

I see and think of it more like an engine room as well as a place of comfort. A place that would fuel and motor the place and insure that old timers have the comforting vibe they deservingly cherish.

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It's not about ivory towers or a superiority thing. The fact that people frame it up that way says more about the way they are thinking rather than what I suggested it for.

So THATS how you put words into other peoples mouths, thanks for the example. And sorry but that is what your suggestion gets at, segregation, creating what would be described as a low/upper class member. the fact i bring it up shows im aware of how you work.

you choose the one who you see as agreeing with you, then place your negative interpritation on how others think to try and get your own way through manipulation and tugging at common paranoid doubts, you have done this in other threads. please dont assume because some people will turn a blind eye to it that they dont notice at all.

reguardless of how you try to word it, the idea of an inner sanctum is segregation of old and new members, or from a society stand point, upper/lower classes. its not about some members being more deserving of others like you are trying to make it.

Edited by Amulte

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doesn't matter for what purpose a separate forum is set up, it will eventually be regarded as the ivory tower by at least some of the community. there have been many suggestions for similar things and generally the overwhelming feeling is that this is not a good move. And I agree.

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doesn't matter for what purpose a separate forum is set up, it will eventually be regarded as the ivory tower by at least some of the community. there have been many suggestions for similar things and generally the overwhelming feeling is that this is not a good move. And I agree.

That's assuming everyone knew about it and it was publicly visible. It is possible to actually have invisible sub-forums which only those who have access know about. They are simply non-existent for anyone else. It wouldn't even need to be announced but rather implemented behind the scenes at some point.

No one need know except those who do. Torsten, you have the absolute discretion and authority to institute it and no one could argue about it either.

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Torsten, you have the absolute discretion and authority to institute it and no one could argue about it either.

Thank you for confirming that. The answer is still no. It goes against what I believe and it is a view widely shared.

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Thank you for confirming that. The answer is still no. It goes against what I believe and it is a view widely shared.

And thank you for participating and proving my 'reductio ad absurdum' which I tried to demonstrate in this thread. I apologise to those to whom my slightly overexagerrated turns of phrase, wasn't obvious enough to; but their negativity and responses were valuable also.

I did this as an exercise to show the old vibe cravers that creating a 'safe haven' or 'ideal environment' by hand picking members into a somewhat incestuous and homogenous group is not really what people want or desire. New members and novel ideas are required to keep a community fresh. That change is inevitable and must be accepted. That change can be good and freshen things up. That craving some smaller forum that's now in the past is absurd.

:)

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I think you are mistaking smaller for better [and some others may have done so too]. It is not the size that matters, but the ratio. No matter what our influx rate was it was always in a healthy ratio - until recently. As the influx rate has settled already it is really just a matter of getting over that bump. In the past we have done so without problems, but this time the bump was higher and the adjustment period was longer.

I think you are too busy manipulating situations to understand the desire of this membership - or even the history of this forum. What you set out to prove in this thread was not relevant as it was based on a misunderstanding by you. It did however show more people how you engineer situations :wink:.

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I think you are mistaking smaller for better [and some others may have done so too]. It is not the size that matters, but the ratio. No matter what our influx rate was it was always in a healthy ratio - until recently. As the influx rate has settled already it is really just a matter of getting over that bump. In the past we have done so without problems, but this time the bump was higher and the adjustment period was longer.

I think you are too busy manipulating situations to understand the desire of this membership - or even the history of this forum. What you set out to prove in this thread was not relevant as it was based on a misunderstanding by you. It did however show more people how you engineer situations :wink:.

LOL. I think you may have hit upon a novel term - "Forum engineer" - I would not be surprised in the least if in the future (and we must acknowledge that all of this forum stuff is still very much in its infancy) there were such people; though the real world counterpart might be a sociologist, psychologist or human resources expert.

I'm none of those things, and appreciate that you have more knowledge about the long term dynamics and cycles of a forum; but I do enjoy the dynamics of forums and discovering the subtle interactions and personalities at play. Information and content is one thing, people are another. Life online wouldn't be as interesting otherwise. :lol:

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LOL. I think you may have hit upon a novel term - "Forum engineer"

I think they exist already. On one side you have the admins and mods who engineer for the positive. On the opposite side you have trolls who enginner for the negative. But there is a third group which are those who enginner for their own entertainment regardless of whether this has a negative or positive effect on the forum they are engineering. They probably think they are harmless or even contributing positively, but I wonder whether many of those who are being engineered feel the same way. Surely, in an open, positive and friendly forum people don't actually expect or wish to be eginnered. So, isn't even such supposedly neutral engineering detrimental? And isn't taking pride in such activity a little misguided? Just hypothetically speaking of course :wink:

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I think they exist already. On one side you have the admins and mods who engineer for the positive. On the opposite side you have trolls who enginner for the negative. But there is a third group which are those who enginner for their own entertainment regardless of whether this has a negative or positive effect on the forum they are engineering. They probably think they are harmless or even contributing positively, but I wonder whether many of those who are being engineered feel the same way. Surely, in an open, positive and friendly forum people don't actually expect or wish to be eginnered. So, isn't even such supposedly neutral engineering detrimental? And isn't taking pride in such activity a little misguided? Just hypothetically speaking of course :wink:

Torsten I don't agree that only the mods and admins are the ones capable of positive 'engineering' ( not a term I used myself, nor do I claim it as I said before I'm none of those things mentioned). I don't think anyone has a monopoly on good ideas, and the only way to learn more is to put things forward for discussion.

I lean towards the Aristotelian view that everything is potentially open to be questioned. That there should be no taboo to questioning and inquiry.

And like Aristotle I believe that it is the sign of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without necessarily accepting it. It's all about furthering our selves and our understanding of things. Without questioning and examining the premises for something then one would be accepting ignorance.

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Torsten I don't agree that only the mods and admins are the ones capable of positive 'engineering'

Did I say that? No, I didn't. And you know that I didn't.

Surely trolls aren't the only ones having a negative effect, and I didn't list all other options on that side either. I wasn't aware you required a full and exclusive list of all positive and negative forces in a forum. I thought major examples are sufficient.

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Did I say that? No, I didn't. And you know that I didn't.

Surely trolls aren't the only ones having a negative effect, and I didn't list all other options on that side either. I wasn't aware you required a full and exclusive list of all positive and negative forces in a forum. I thought major examples are sufficient.

I think you meant an exhaustive list. No I don't need an exhaustive list but the way it was framed made it appear like a dichotomy, with a neutral territory in between.

But when you say "surely trolls aren't the only ones having a negative effect"; you are in effect saying that all trolling is negative which I don't agree with either. I think sometimes the right type of trolling activity (note that I didn't say troll, but rather activity) can bring positive effects in that it can break through the doldrums of groupthink.

Main entry: GROUPTHINK: the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility.

I detest negative trolls as much as the next person. You'll know from my defence of the forum against 'mexicali' and 'onemind' that I have the interests of the forum at heart, but not all trolling activity is negative. It's not as clear cut as that at all. To villify real human beings for trying to stir up some action is not fair in my opinion. It's like the gay movement back in the 1980's with the mardi gras in Sydney. They had to do what they did to change things. It's very easy to condemn people to a minority group or label them as something and then villify them.

I was trying to emphasise that there is no clear cut dichotomy, and my mistake in the presentation of that sentence did not make that entirely clear.

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Tis already in existence and I visit the "inner sanctum" occasionally.

not sumthin you will find here anyways username. :P

Inner%20Sanctum%20B.jpg

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sobr...oh common mate you have some really good information and experiences and I have enjoyed keeping tabs on many of them.

You obvoiously are intellegent and inquisitive enough to pursue and prove you own investigations/theories.

But this one is just masturbation with a big box of tissues.

sorry

AJ

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Just wondering what the early days of the forum where like as opposed to now. The boards seem ok to me but then I guess theres is a reason for older members to feel annoyed.

I also thought everything was OK. Perfect even. The informational content is and always has been fantastic in the 'serious' forums and there was some excellent banter in the community chill (off topic) areas which really are a take it or leave it thing as far as I am concerned. They're off topic for a reason and it seems so easy to me to just ignore what doesn't involve or interest you; and not take things in negative ways. Try to see the positive in everything.

PS: I got one of those AAA Arc-Lights and they are fantastic. My most cherished personal item for the past 4 weeks at least :)

Edited by ~username

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doesn't matter for what purpose a separate forum is set up, it will eventually be regarded as the ivory tower by at least some of the community. there have been many suggestions for similar things and generally the overwhelming feeling is that this is not a good move. And I agree.

I think we can safely conclude that the concept of creating an "ivory tower" seems to be detested by all, as does it seems the concept of segregation. Creating classes amongst members is rightly deemed uncool. But how intellectually honest are the people saying these things?

Namely, the ready embracing of the concept of the class of moderated members... where are the anti-segregation mob now?

No to ivory tower, yes to dungeon. :blink:

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Well, we don't agree that some members are better than others in a way that warrants an 'inner sanctum', however I personally agree that yeah some members are worse enough that they warrant a sin bin.

Is that all?

If the whole exercise of this thread was simply an attempt to prove this 'point', then I thank you for wasting my time.

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