What are we missing...?

[Jan]

The only real way to "improve" a forum such as this, would be to HEAVILY moderate the flow of comments.

From what I've noticed, everyone has a pretty good vibe with every member on here. So there isn't much "negative" drama going around, per se. (negative and drama, is there any such thing as positive drama?) So there isn't heavy moderating when it comes to compliment postings.

If someone wants to "clean up" each and every thread, I'm sure they would want to be compensated for such work. As it is extremely tedious.

A lot of threads get dead fast, noticing that only at page 3, there are threads that haven't been posted in, for a good two months.

A lot of other forums are heavily moderated, and threads that are on page 3, have only been "dead" for 3 days to a week.

Just putting my $.02, for what it's worth.

Also, community sites like geocities or yahoo groups, are pretty much obsolete. Now that there are forums like these.

 

[Zemke Fan]

YES, I missed this point LD...

Isn't the accumulation of knowledge a lifelong journey?

It most definitely IS a lifelong journey. That's why I have little patience for the instant-toaster-strudel brand of "journalism" that's evident everywhere on the world wide wonderment. Gimme a break! You can't be an expert on A-2 flight jackets if you haven't held a bunch in your hands! You can't be an expert on dress patterns from the Golden Era if you haven't bought, sold, traded, and sewn from them!

There are MANY people that belong to this forum who ARE authorities on what they blog about. But, rather than writing blog entries, why aren't they writing books or magazine articles? If you're a mid-century modern furniture expert, give us a price guide! Give us a self-published book! But for godsakes spare me the endless frickin photos of your cats! (I love cats, BTW.) And if I see one more narcissistic "Look at What I Wore Today!" blog I swear I'm going postal! BUT those same threads here on the lounge are endearing (mostly).

 

[Zemke Fan]

Since not a single solitary soul gets paid here...

The only real way to "improve" a forum such as this, would be to HEAVILY moderate the flow of comments.

That's just not gonna happen (even IF it were the right thing to do). Again, I'm not being critical of The Lounge. I'm a Lounge Lovin' Lizard (in a 70s Leisure suit, but that's a topic for another day). I'm just missing something and I can't quite put my finger on it!

AND WELCOME, JAN. Thank's for you two cents worth. Keep those pennies rolling our way!!

 

[Beaubeau]

I think that magazines have a place, but magazine publishing economics is a VERY arcane and convoluted discipline that's currently as topsy-turvey as the newest ride at a Six Flags theme park.

Take the men's magazines I read -- Esquire and GQ -- for example. Because of their astronomical ad rates only luxury brand makers with their incredible markups can afford to advertise. So the editorial, too, gets skewed towards that extreme high end. $500 flannel shirts? $5,300 suits? Come on. Get real. Where are the publications for the rest of us?

Esquire, GQ, and Vogue advertise themselves as inspirational magazines, as in you're supposed to try and replicate the look without spending all the dough they did. It's bullpucky, but you know. The argument over price point of things in the magazine is nothing new to Women's Fashion magazines.

Well, those print advertising is dying slow painful deaths (Have you seen Vogue's circulation numbers?), and what will take it's place is a mixture of smaller, lighter more local magazines, zines, and chapbooks that would cover things on a much lighter budget, and a few broad things like Newsweek, Life, or The NY Times. There would be more cross interaction between Internet and Print materials (a trend going on now), but ultimately we'd be doing very specified things with our magazines: Fashions in 1930 and Assorted lifestyle, All About Car Brakes, Threadbanger, Make, Craft etc.

Then it would come back around to $5,300 suits somehow, because I'm a horrible cynic.

 

[Paisley]

...people who don't know anything preaching authoritatively to those who don't even suspect anything...

There's not a little of this in print media as well, sad to say. However, I've seen bloggers without money or clout, just brains and 'net connection, challenge some of these messages. It can take some persistent searching and good luck to find them.

As for people with nothing in particular to say, I don't find it irritating so much as I just don't get it. As for cat sites, I do like icanhascheezburger.

 

[Tomasso]

This seems like an interesting thread.



First thing tomorrow morning....................

 

[Foofoogal]

give us a price guide

It is late but I am going to try to make a bit of sense out of the ? here.

This thread is very relevant to me and my business currently. I have helped moderate a forum in Auctionbytes called "the haul" since 2003. Basically people haul in a vintage item and others including myself help identify it. It has very recently had an overhaul with what I believe will help it overall.
It truly scares me the misinformation as an antiques dealer that is out there now seen as gospel truth.
Why do I have the price guide in Quotes? Because even price guides have various realities to them.

IMHO this place has changed dramatically since I came here also. Sometimes in life change has to happen. Noone will ever be an expert on everything vintage. Ever?

It is a catch 22 the way I see it. One can chat about the stuff here or not.

I do genealogy or used to a lot anyway. Pretty much had to stop as the more people got involved with the family trees and such a ton of misinformation came forth.
Wading thru the stuff in many things on the internet and more coming every day the human mind just flat cannot keep up with it. Possibly the FL will one day go back to simplicity somehow.

I will be where LizzieMaine is till or unless I get kicked off. I find her refreshing and highly intelligent. I cannot figure out why she has not been snatched up by a museum or something with what she knows. Smithsonian or something.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Because when I'm writing a feature-length article (1,500 - 3,000 words) I'm writing and rewriting it right up until the deadline. I'm a perfectionist when it comes to stuff that appears under my byline. Or, put another way, I favor quality over quantity. (Boy, you wouldn't know it by this thread, would you?)

Well said. I would much rather read an authoritative article by someone who's taken the time and the effort to do original, verifiable research in primary sources than some two-bit Wikipedia rehash thrown together just for the sake of having something to throw up on a site.

There is, indeed, authoritative, quality work on the internet, in spite of all the pinheaddery that threatens to crowd it out. Unfortunately, every good article by someone who knows their stuff will end up being plagiarized, distorted, misquoted, butchered, and wikified by a million monkeys with a million keyboards. Some might call it the "democratization of knowledge," but it sure sounds like Idiocracy to me.

As far as cat sites go, I find them more insightful and intelligent than 90 percent of the "alternative media" sites out there. My cat would certainly agree.

 

[Brad Bowers]

I started a blog because my research is scattered all over the Lounge, and even I don't know where it all ended up. At least with a blog, I can keep it all together in one place. It gives me a chance to organize my thoughts, as well. I'd like to do a journal article, but 99% of the folks here wouldn't have access to it, whereas with the blog, everyone can read it.

Brad

 

[Puzzicato]

I'm just thinking that I'm missing something from my online experience. Something that I'd probably be willing to spend a few bucks a month on if I just knew what it was...

Are you maybe asking too much of your internet experience? I am a member of several different forums and have a couple of blogs. Each fills a different need. I don't know that any tool could be as omnipotent as that.

I am a terrible one for doing the two word "nice hat" sort of answer to posts, and one way to prevent that of course is to have a minimum number of characters per post. And then reprimand those who pad it out with *****lol lol lol lol lol

 

[Mr Vim]

This is just an idea, but the forum could have a rating of posts say the following

a: informative
b: general comment
c: valuable advice

one of these is selected before the user posts their response and then at the top of the thread you can choose if you want to view:

a: all
b: informative
c: general comment
d: valuable/experienced advice

to keep people from labeling"that rocks!" as any thing other than a general comment you have some sort of strike out program.

This is all speculation, I have no idea how designing these forums happens anymore than a caveman knows car insurance, but if this design were used, it would solve the problem of trying to skim through an entire thread.

 

[Paisley]

Some things never change

Unfortunately, every good article by someone who knows their stuff will end up being plagiarized, distorted, misquoted, butchered, and wikified by a million monkeys with a million keyboards. Some might call it the "democratization of knowledge," but it sure sounds like Idiocracy to me.

"A hundred authors compile to get their bread, and twenty fools extract, criticize, apologize, and satirize these compilations to get bread also, because they have no profession." -Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary under Authors, 1764

 

[The Lonely Navigator]

Marc: IMO, as fora grow, they eventually reach and pass an invisible "tipping point." Problem is, no one knows for sure where that point is until long after it has been crossed. By then, it's too late: the fora become increasingly watered-down ... less a community than a large rest stop. I'm not saying that the Fedora Lounge has passed its tipping point yet, but I'm not ruling it out, either.

As an ex-mod of a very large spiritual forum (it is as large as this place)...I know where Fred is coming from with doing moderating, etc. I experienced the same when I was once a moderator.

I have to fully agree with Marc on the above. I've seen it now happen to the spiritual forum I once helped moderate. I had deactivated my account and left because things just weren't as 'personal' anymore because it got too big and things got lost, and people couldn't have a more personal discussion on things...it just got all 'blah'. I'm not the only one who feels this way either on the subject.

That said...

I really don't know what else to say.[huh]

Sorry Fred...

 

[LizzieMaine]

"A hundred authors compile to get their bread, and twenty fools extract, criticize, apologize, and satirize these compilations to get bread also, because they have no profession." -Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary under Authors, 1764

I dare say the Internet has greatly changed that ratio -- these days, it's maybe a hundred authors to twenty million fools. Twenty billion, if you count "Comments" sections.

 

[Fletch]

Back when everyone expected to be ground into the dirt by life every now and then, it used to be that you could get your knowledge any way you liked, but few would respect it unless they knew it came at a price.

I sometimes think we ought to have national beatdown camps for smart people, where they are ritually humiliated for the greater good of those around them. Maybe then their contributions would be more widely respected, both because they would be more likely to proceed from something valued and concrete, and because they no longer bore the stigma of being "soft" that separates people with ideas from people with lives today.

It's possible that modern life is not just too cruel in some ways, but not cruel enough in others. Maybe more of us just need to find a way to unforgive ourselves.

 

[Mav]

I've seen it now happen to the spiritual forum I once helped moderate.

Woof. That is an extremely difficult genre to mod- talk about self- appointed experts. A nod to your patience, sir.

 

[Fletch]

Maybe if beatdowns of a verbal sort were allowed on fora - only for the sake of the common interest, of course - people would learn that expressing certain opinions in certain contexts (such as outside of one's own experience) is not acceptable. It would require the loosening of moderation on fora like FL, of course. But it could become a model for behavior in RL contexts.

Case in point: say someone is talking about his military experience. Now you may not have served (I have not), but you ought to know the common wisdom that a veteran does not owe a nonveteran any great credence on military matters - and that going against that common wisdom is liable to result in a beatdown. IRL, it might well be physical, which the forum experience at least precludes.

One other thing: the information experience is balkanized to an amazing degree, but that still doesn't make it okay to become an expert by building threads between communities that don't talk to each other, or exhanging info they don't share. They don't share because they don't care. And they don't care because they don't have the energy, money or time. All you're doing is ratcheting up the level of irrelevancy and increasing the signal/noise ratio in favor of noise. Trust me; I've tried it myself, and no one much appreciates it.

 

[Foofoogal]

It's possible that modern life is not just too cruel in some ways, but not cruel enough in others.

fftopic:
I once had a guy tell me proudly he had never had anything bad happen to him. He was not young either. Frankly he scared the Hell out of me. :eusa_doh:

Thank you Fletch for reminding me. :eusa_clap

Back when everyone expected to be ground into the dirt by life every now and then, it used to be that you could get your knowledge any way you liked, but few would respect it unless they knew it came at a price.

Brilliant.

 

[Mav]

Maybe if beatdowns of a verbal sort were allowed on fora - only for the sake of the common interest, of course - people would learn that expressing certain opinions in certain contexts (such as outside of one's own experience) is not acceptable.

This works, to an extent, but it has to be restricted to a limited board, and it still results in "hurt feelings" and the cancellation of accounts, voluntarily and involuntarily. Trust me; been there. If you want an example, have the bartenders here set up "politics" and "religion" boards, and see how fast old internet buddies become enemies. I've even seen ugly arguments break out over BBQ recipies on "cooking" boards.
Humans are idiots.

 

[Fletch]

If only there were some way to keep "ugly arguments" from even becoming "arguments." To make them one-sided. Ie: person 1 administers beatdown, person 2 attempts no self-defense and slinks off to nurse wounds. Sadly, I don't know any such way, except to make sure no one gets on your forum who disagrees with a certain set of principles, and that would stifle a lot of fora.

Maybe people should just learn when not to stand up for themselves. Or even for others.