Edited by author 06-17-2007 11:20 PM
I appreciate the fdbk,
raven in
/m29 — that sounds like a pretty useable BBS! :) Same with the BBS you frequent,
TJ in
/m27.
oddmommy /m28 -- glad to have you here! :) Ya, I also truly love the FDL community — it's such great food for the soul — and I feel it could be even better (on the software side) than it is now, even augmented by FaceBook (FB). Certainly the community that Jane, Christy, Pach, TRex Siun, Suzanne and the other crew (wish I could remember all their names) *blush* have built here is a wonderful place on the 'net to hang out. I've learned so much from their "base posts" and from the comments of all of us 'FirePups.
_re_ raven in
/m30 and
oddmommy /m28, I agree that the mods have to feel like they're "herding cats" each with their own priorities. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they feel "snowed in" with their normal blogging responsibities, and that may result in "hard-and-fast rules" that sometimes feel adversarial but I'm sure are not intended as such. Therefore, I always approach them and the subject of changes to FDL with due respect. It's their creation, so they get to pick!
(: Occasionally though, one of the cats – like me – yowls for attention... :) Consider that this particular conversation has extended over several days, which is impossible within the current FDL blog model, and (as far as I can determine) quite difficult within FB.
M Levi(a.k.a. realworld) in
/m25 — thanks for the feedback and the excellent ideas.
- I sortakinda like the notion of "persistent chats." I've used BBSes that allowed their RT chats' content to be converted into a BBS thread. If we adopted this notion, it would mean a change in the "sociology" of the Gabbly chat for FDL. There, we're pretty freewheeling, topic-drifting by convention, and occasionally (horrors!) quite profane! So if the conversion of our Gabbly chats into permanent threads became the norm, it might detract from the current "Let-'er-RIP!" style that FDL Gabblers have come to know and love. Such a thing could perhaps be created (with effort). Or, we'd have to find a BBS that supported this kind of thing, and in either case add its maintenance to the new workload that moderating a BBS will place on the FDL Mods. So, on balance, I'd have to not support that notion. I'd stay with Gabbly as it is (and hope that it remains on the 'net in more-or-less its present form).
- Document Libraries: sure, why not? I've used and created BBSes that encourage collections of docs and/or pointers. N.B., when you said "Cooperatively developing long writeups," I thought "Wiki model." Could be fun, as long as we don't expect that the Wiki would be a good place for the type of interactive, time-independent discussion supported by a "true BBS." There are free Wiki services out there that could be used.
- Social Bookmarking: I don't know nearly enough about this, not having used such a system yet. But your proposal sure sounds like it could add some value to FDL.
So then,
M Levi(a.k.a. realworld), thanks for participating, and natch you're more than welcome to comment on my comments here! :)
What I would support by way of extensions to FDL, aside from the BBS that I'm mostly concentrating on here, would be the additional services I brought up over here:
[1]. To wit,
- The 'PupMap, here: [2] (660 'Pups signed up)
- The FDL "Gabbly Chat" (non-persistent) here: [3] and
- The 'PupCalendar here: [4]. Full explanations of these three services are available here: [1].
These first three are already up and running, the first two without any further maintenance, and the third, the 'PupCalendar. needs only care and feeding with upcoming events in order to remain of value to FirePups.
Next, from M Levi(a.k.a. realworld)'s valuable comments in /m26,
... - Document Libraries, and
- Social Bookmarking, as defined by someone who understands it better than I do. :)
TJ in
/m26 and
/m27 —
(your comments in quoted indented italics, my responses outdented:) "I would support having a bulletin board with a topic for each new blog post, as well as ongoing topics and a social area. I regularly use a couple of bulletine boards and have ongoing friendships with the folks."
Absolutely true for me too,
TJ. I've been a member of such electronic communities for awhile, long before the Web. I've made good friends with other ppl in those communities, some of whom I still get together with despite being long-gone from the companies where we met. Even more fun were the "BBS Parties" where anyone within driving distance showed up to meet their BBS-Buddies F2F.
"However, it doesn't seem that FDL wants to support this effort now. I wonder if one of the top level people would be willing to post a link to a poll to check the general level of interest."
Well, imho the "powers that be" (PTB) must be interested in supporting some sort of extension to the blog model that has served FDL so well in the past... but at the moment they're encouraging us to use FB for that purpose, which is "kludgy" for the large community created by their hard work and attractive intellects.
Someone (dunno who) in the PTB surveyed the field of "social networking" tools and decided on FaceBook — or simply went for it because of habits-of-use in making connections between people with discloseable names in various affiliate groups. This might well be because FB seems to be a good tool to use when connecting communities... But as I say, imho it doesn't work
within communities — communities which are traditionally open, zealously concerned about and resistive of the disclosure of their real identities. We also need tools that have relatively sophisticated formatting and preview capabilities... the list goes on. I can easily understand the utility of FB connections between like-minded people from different blogging communities, people who are not loath to disclose their real identities etc.
Therefore, I, myself, think that FB is the wrong tool to get to where we need to be, though FB
is a handy-dandy, "one-stop shopping," single-login area that can be used to approximate what's needed. However, I would suggest that asking FB to do what we need is like shopping for tires in a supermarket. You might get some tasty or even tangentially useful stuff, but you ain't gonna get what will work on your car.
You said you'd be interested in a Poll, TJ. Great idea! Turns out we can do it ourselves! Everyone, please visit and vote in this 'PupPoll. (No login is required; you only get to vote once. Before you can register your vote, you'll have to read and enter some distorted text, via a system called CAPCHA, to "prove you're a human and not a robot.") If you have any comments on your vote, please put them in this discussion."Also, Dan, the 13 requirements seem to be making things pretty complex. But I'm posting this in the middle of the Giuliani 12 commandment thread, so my viewpoint may be jaded."
707! Well, all I can say in my own defense is that I'm an ex-academic and I sometimes tend to be too detail-oriented. But I hope that separately stating each of suggested properties of a "good BBS" eases the evaluation process for someone... and I sure hope you finished Giuliani's commandments without barfing too much... I liked that last comment a lot! Thanks, all, for participating!
