Thank you, OCR, for staying awesome

[The Coop]

How could a single forum keep people from joining a site (be it PPR, UnMod, whatever)? It's not like it sought you out in the middle of the night and kidnapped you, only to tape your eyes open and force you into watching loops of the various "shock" images or abortion arguments.

...

You had to donate to the site to get that ride

[Flare4War]

The post quality on OCR is better than anywhere I've ever seen for all types of posting. PPR can be very interesting and thought provoking, you just have to click into it knowing that people are going to call you out if you say something idiotic. Yes, it has its moments of ridiculousness.

Whenever threads like this come up I'm always compelled to mention that part of the reason the forums on OCR are so great is because we have good moderators who allow people to express themselves and really come across as an individual not a little blip of text. If you get looking around you'll find that isn't the case most other places. The moderators are incredible oppressive and it basically makes the forum boring or outright stupid.

So yeah. Keep on keepin' on OCR.

[Geoffrey Taucer]

Hear hear!

[LuketheXjesse]

I'm not gonna say any names, but Tensei's meanness is always justified.

Oh hey I said a name OLOLOLOLOL

[Rozovian]

The post quality on OCR is better than anywhere I've ever seen

for I'll types of posting.

Couldn't resist.

[Flare4War]

Couldn't resist.

Ain't that always the way..

[Kizyr]

How could a single forum keep people from joining a site (be it PPR, UnMod, whatever)? It's not like it sought you out in the middle of the night and kidnapped you, only to tape your eyes open and force you into watching loops of the various "shock" images or abortion arguments.

Unless you're involved in the site already, you won't be aware of the level of distinction between the different forums in one community. (At LunarNET's forums, for instance, the distinction between each forum is rather arbitrary and just helps organization. At other places, you get chewed out for posting in the wrong forum.) So, if your initial experience is coming across a few bigoted threads in one section (Unmod, PPR, 'anything-goes', /b/, 'free as in destitute', etc.), you won't have any indication whether or not it's the norm for the site or its forums as a whole.

It's not that it prevents you from posting, but it removes any incentive or desire to start posting when that's the impression you get. KF

[Abadoss]

He's kinda right though. Unmod had its upsides and its downsides, but as the site grew, the bad started outweighing the good. Meh, I guess if we'd been smarter back then, Unmod would have changed and avoided deletion, but meh, internet drama is not worth getting angry about.

I never said he was wrong.

Unless you're involved in the site already, you won't be aware of the level of distinction between the different forums in one community. (At LunarNET's forums, for instance, the distinction between each forum is rather arbitrary and just helps organization. At other places, you get chewed out for posting in the wrong forum.) So, if your initial experience is coming across a few bigoted threads in one section (Unmod, PPR, 'anything-goes', /b/, 'free as in destitute', etc.), you won't have any indication whether or not it's the norm for the site or its forums as a whole.

It's not that it prevents you from posting, but it removes any incentive or desire to start posting when that's the impression you get. KF

The weird thing with all this talk of UnMod keeping people away... you had to be signed up on the forums in order to actually SEE UnMod... at least from what I remember... It's all kind of hazy like...

[Gollgagh]

By the time I registered, that's true but apparently early unmod was viewable by all.

So that may have been somewhat applicable during the "golden age" of unmod but not necessarily later.

[The Coop]

Unless you're involved in the site already, you won't be aware of the level of distinction between the different forums in one community. (At LunarNET's forums, for instance, the distinction between each forum is rather arbitrary and just helps organization. At other places, you get chewed out for posting in the wrong forum.) So, if your initial experience is coming across a few bigoted threads in one section (Unmod, PPR, 'anything-goes', /b/, 'free as in destitute', etc.), you won't have any indication whether or not it's the norm for the site or its forums as a whole.

The somewhat prickish question that comes to my mind is, "Who's fault is that?"

Even back before I officially joined OCR, browsing the forums told me that each one was different. Gen Dis was about games, movies, music, etc. and was more moderated, UnMod was semi-controlled (fun) chaotic nonsense, the WIP forum was generally helpful advice on making remixes... and this was seen by me back in 2002 when I was a complete forum newbie.

That's why you have to check things out. See what goes where, how things are run... basically "lurk moer!". It's the best way to find out if it's someplace you want to visit, and works far better than just going with a knee-jerk reaction and turning away before you even give the community a shot. After all, if you walked out after the first bits of "The 5th Element" because of how it initially makes the movie seem, you'd miss out on how entertaining it gets later. Right? So, why treat forums any differently? Give them a shot and stick around. Like the movie, they may get better as you see more.

Of course, that analogy only works if you liked that movie, but you get my point

[EC2151]

The forum I administrate now is a place I had lurked for many many months before I finally worked up the courage to join.

That is the case with about all of the forums I joined.

Though I only lurked here for perhaps a few weeks years ago, but all i remember are some vague arguments about video-games and a user named atmuh.

I DID try to join a long time ago (2007ish), but I never was sent a confirmation email, and all my emails to the admins/moderators of the forum were left unresponded to. ;_;

Though my luck with joining forums seems to run that course; for fuck's sake sometimes i never get any confirmation emails for anything.

So yeah, lurking is pretty cool bro; you should all try it sometime

[Monobrow]

Unmod and some of the threads in PPR are what kept me from posting for several years. Mostly ignoring PPR has really helped {^^}. KF

Honestly I never liked this kind of attitude. Gen Disc was the place for you to go if you didn't like the other two forums, but if you didn't get the feel for that place either, you still would have been SOL IMO, because forums are posted in by people who have the same tendencies just about everywhere you go. When you are new, you need to get a feel for the new place you are going to, regardless of where... Just like in real life. UnMod was one of those rare places where you really could say what you wanted no matter what, unless it was illegal... And I appreciated that, because it was interesting, and I learned to lighten up a lot because of it, and strangely enough, I learned to be more accepting of people different than myself.

Some people got out of line, on both sides of the issue, and let's just leave it at that... But for me, it was a good place for me at the time of my life where not much else was happening... And Unmod kept me going to OCR much more than I would have if it was not there.

The internet is a place where you can see how/what other people think without much consequence, except for that within your own mind. If you feel like you need to force-censor what sites you visit, that's all well and good... But to complain about it, IMO is when people just don't own up to their own sensitivities. You were not forced to post there, or to post your well-thought-out arguments that have cycled for years in PPR... If someone MADE you post there, that would be different. Some people valued that place in ways you didn't understand because you chose to not be a part of it. IMO you missed out Just sayin'

[Kizyr]

Funny enough, I agree a lot with TheCoop, Monobrow, and Abadoss.

The somewhat prickish question that comes to my mind is, "Who's fault is that?"

Even back before I officially joined OCR, browsing the forums told me that each one was different. Gen Dis was about games, movies, music, etc. and was more moderated, UnMod was semi-controlled (fun) chaotic nonsense, the WIP forum was generally helpful advice on making remixes... and this was seen by me back in 2002 when I was a complete forum newbie.

Well, I did describe having lurked on here for maybe a year or two before starting to post regularly, to figure out how the forums were situated. Naturally, no one forced me to read PPR/UnMod (can't remember if it was gone yet when I came back), so it wasn't a real chore to simply (largely) ignore the thread since any goings-on there were disconnected from the rest of the board.

The real distinction is how much the Community/Gen Discussion/PPR (or UnMod) boards are connected or independent of the others. Once I figured that, it felt more comfortable posting here.

Honestly I never liked this kind of attitude. Gen Disc was the place for you to go if you didn't like the other two forums, but if you didn't get the feel for that place either, you still would have been SOL IMO, because forums are posted in by people who have the same tendencies just about everywhere you go. When you are new, you need to get a feel for the new place you are going to, regardless of where... Just like in real life. UnMod was one of those rare places where you really could say what you wanted no matter what, unless it was illegal... And I appreciated that, because it was interesting, and I learned to lighten up a lot because of it, and strangely enough, I learned to be more accepting of people different than myself.

That's fine, but I didn't miss out on anything by disregarding some of the forums. UnMod wasn't my style any more than a forum about baseball would've been my style.

It is still true that once I started ignoring some of the forums, I felt more comfortable posting in the remainder of them. But sorry that I worded that flippantly; I didn't mean to imply that others should be the same as me. KF