Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello!
I am not wanting to create DRAMAH over this (much as I enjoy them). Just a discussion.
Two things, basically:
I my humble opinion, the amount of shit on this forum has crept up and up over the past year. Threads like this one from Curiosity about his broken PC got four sensible replies before it all descended into nonsense, or bits and bobs with people saying "hello" to each other - what the Hell?
For perhaps the best example, take a read through the "Manchester Meet" thread (or rather, don't, as we'll be finished discussing this by the time you've read it all). You get people trying to organise where they are going to stay or meet each other, spaced out with twenty posts of nothing. A moderator even asked people to stop and was roundly ignored.

We actually have a chat room if you want one. God knows if it still exists or not.

But yeah, anyway, you get the idea. And I'm aware that certain other moderators of other forum are asploding with all the ironing thy have to do


[edit]IMPORTANT Things have moved on, some people like it this way, some people don't. There are no changes to the current moderation policy. In fact, nothing has been changed at all. We're thinking about some guidelines for how to use the forum, but these are guidelines and not rules.

FIRST!









I am so, so sorry

I'm seeing you tonight, so you fucking will be (unless, of course, you mollify me with beer).

I'd be interested to hear what our lurkers have to say, as we do have a shocking number of them, and Beex is as much for them as it is for the 10,000+ posters.

Is it Dimrill?

Ah AHAH.

Sorry.

Grim, despite all the hoo-hah about democracy and elections in this place, this is still your forum. You administer it, you pay for it, so God knows, you can pretty much do what you like with it, but the posters on here are just humans. Different people use the forum in different ways. It seems the tipping point for you was the 'Morning!' posts. I saw that as a running joke from JC (what time will we see him today? etc) and nothing too invasive. If the jokes and flippancy went away, so would I. Not a huge threat for you, or a few others I imagine, but one (well, four!) less poster(s) that spend more than a few hours here a day.

So what I'm saying is. What's your vision for this place? What are other people's visions?

*fully expects 2 pages of posts before this submits*

I'm very guilty of this. If it's an issue I'll stop.

Should we have a banter thread rather than a chat room?

Seperate from B&B and keep B&B sacresanct? It could work.

But, y'know, whatever, dice.

Ditto

And, actually, the few times I've made an effort to start threads with a very big first post, it's annoyed me that it's turned into OT nonsense very quickly, so I'm a hypocrite, too.



I thought that's what BnB ended up being for? I'm not sure what the issue is with BnB being a nonsense thread. Especially if it keeps from having a milion and one new topics for every thought that enters someone's head. The important and interesting stuff does still get its own thread, it seems.

No it isn't. You'd know if it was.

I do.

People that donate money (or buy T-shirts, such as yourself) pay for more of it than I do. [edit]Although this month was an expensive one with all the domain renewals, so that's currently not true, hint hint buy a T-shirt hint

Yes, but I don't. This is important.

That's what I want to know, too.

Personally I thought that was a good thread. Not much more could be said to help on the topic, and there was a little running joke going on until the OP came back with more information. All good natured, and quite funny to read.

Anyway I'd be a hypocrite to moan about people chatting, so I'm not going to (unless in a mod capacity and it's clearly taking the piss or a complaint has been made, obv).

I'm DavPaz and I'm a serial responder.

I do tend to get caught up in silly stuff. But then, I do use the forum as an entertainment medium. One that I can enjoy whilst looking serious and busy at my desk, obv.

I agree with Grim.... Frankly, I don't mind the off-topic banter when it's funny (like Curio up there) but I think a lot of it lately has been flogging dead horses. Do we really need any more gay porn fake edits, for example? When was the last time anyone laughed at one of those? And I agree with both of the threads Grim... has cited as being examples of non-excellence; "my computer is broken, please help" and "let's arrange to meet in a city" are both topics that demand at least a modest amount of concentration. They didn't get it, and the threads suffered as a result, and these are not isolated incidents.

When I came back from the States I had zillions of unread posts. I planned to catch up loafing with my laptop for a few hours whilst recovering from jetlag. But I read half a dozen threads and found myself wading through dozens of posts that were basically not that interesting, and within half an hour I'd closed Beex and gone off to play on Tumblr and Twitter instead.

Now I'm happy to admit that forums evolve, and maybe this one has simply shifted away from what I want to read and become something else. That's a natural process and I'm not the boss of Beex; it's not up to me to censor or structure content, and you can't herd cats anyway.

But: Grim...'s post has struck a chord with me and I don't want him to stand alone on this possibly contentious issue.

Just for clarity and to test my ninja quoting skills

I'm touched you think of me as God. (Yes, it's still around.)

Hmmm.

Well, I agree with DavPaz (gasp), to a degree - this place is entertainment, with a bit of informativeness, and as such is going to be a bit all over the place. If anyone wanted a strictly structured, on-topic, substantive-posts-only experience wouldn't they just sign up to a medieval literature discussion mailing list or go back to WoS?

On the other hand I agree with DocG - when I've been away from this place for a week, I come back and don't even bother catching up with what's happened, as there's just far too much.

I also don't find much of the stuff here interesting or funny, but then that's partly because half of it is in-jokes I don't get, and partly because it isn't funny (and everyone is guilty of this to a degree). I tend not to read that stuff.

But then, does that matter?

Can we have something between the two? Do we need it?

I dunno. It's the same argument that was had over at WoS and then here not long after it started, hilariously enough, and a forum can't be all things to all people.

Yes, I think so.

Don't know.

That would require rules, though, and for those rules to be enforced, and that tends to create tension and unpleasantness, as we've seen.

Less rules, more "consideration", maybe.

And we have plenty of rules that aren't spoken about.

Will still require enforcement for those not toeing the party line, there. Not disagreeing it's a good thing, just pointing out it may cause problems.



Oooh, like what? Other than those in the "rules" thread, I mean.

Hmm, I just did a highly scientific test of looking through the first page of threads and then looking through the threads on page 96, honestly I can't really see a great deal of difference.

I mean this with the greatest respect as I do it myself all the time but I think sometimes people choose to let things irritate them more than perhaps is strictly rational.

I agree with Mr Chris. There, I said it!

I also noticed the effect of feeling like an outsider if you've been away for even a day or two, due to some of the pretty obscure in-jokes which develop, which aren't funny in themselves and are only so due to repetition. It is a bit off-putting, and feels like a waste of time (because, let's face it, it is). So I also skip B&B in terms of catching up.

But I don't see what's wrong with that as long as it doesn't spread all over the forum. If you start clamping down on people for nattering, they're going to visit less. Result: a very quiet forum indeed.

If you want more interesting threads about interesting things, then start those threads. We do have some very good, thoughtful threads here on occasion. And there's no reason we can't have both - and if you think a spill over of guff has occurred into your more serious thread, then by all means call upon the mod team to sort it out. And complain if you're not getting a result.

I don't bother catching up with b&b either. There are injokes i still dont get after 2 years, but meh

This is very true. For one thing, we have the core forumites who are here a lot and hence can post and reply to everything (I do most of my posting at work and use my free time to do other things). There's also the fact that the 'core' is very familiar with its members and hence we have the sort of silly banter that you get with groups like this, including in-jokes and other stuff well past their 'warm up and smother in salad cream' date.

It's not something unique to this forum but this forum does seem to have a fairly bad case of it. While wild tangents and strange humour WITHOUT lots of slagging and flame wars is what sets this place apart, it is a bit out of hand.

The Manchester thread, for example, all but put me off actually going as finding out where people are going, where people are staying etc is completely impossible and I have Bik to thank for telling me about things like Genghis Khan's and such. Even so, I'm still not sure what all the plans are.

And because I don't read everything, I missed out on apparently great stuff like BurtTank.

One final thought from me and then I have to go and write a letter to an ex-colleague who is now on the other side of a contract negotiation and I have to make her look and in front of her new employers with lots of cheap point-scoring and correcting her spelling.

People here get on pretty well - there's a fairly lively off-forum community, with Live and Meets and such like. Would that be as likely without the fairly free rein that people get to chat, here? Isn't banter sort of the social glue in life?

However, there's probably an optimum level for that.


Right, I'm going to let my post-count simmer for a bit.

Forum drama for a Wednesday. Yay!

I did write a long post about what was wrong with the forum, but most of it boiled down to banning about 3 people.

In short, if you feel the need to quack all day about stuff that nobody cares about apart from you, fuck off to Digital Spy or get a twitter feed.

+ if your post count per day is higher than your IQ, please refer to the above.

+ Remember kids, you can block individual members in your forum control panel.

Wait stop, don't block me, I...... [no carrier]

My ears are burning.

Ah, but the threads aren't what's different, what is in them is. I personally like having a lot of threads, they make reading (and not reading, importantly) what you want to easier, the search function works better and it encourages people to stay on topic.
Beex does seem to run in waves - when it first started people went nuts with the freedom and gabbered about anything and everything, but that quickly died down. Then we had the rise of 'post of the week', which made people post "funny" comments 90% of the time, and that quickly got old (props to Dudley for finishing that one off). But it seems we're sneaking back up again.
I don't want to alienate anybody, or make people think they're not welcome. Like I said, this is simply a discussion.


Yes, I think you might be right. Maybe I should try and stop reading everything - or maybe I should just relax

I've noticed that in the last week threads that I have had some interest in have descended into Roger Irrelevant competitions that have meant I've hardly looked at anything properly for a fair few days. Having to wade through mountains of detritus to get to the good stuff makes it even less likely that I'll even open a thread, let alone contribute.

But then again I am well old.

I think you may have made that promise before, chap.

I've been to every single (dedicated) one

[edit]Except the Cardiff one

I've only ever had to use that on one person, else I would've had to eat my own ears.

By and large, I tend to keep myself to the games topics, anyway.

It's well known that any attempt to enforce posting in certain places (the topic dimlies, the dark times of the B&B shutdown) were met with the strongest resistance, so I don't think that's particularly viable. I do think it's a shame that gems get lost in the blather of B&B, and that sometimes other threads get bogged down. Still - I don't think it's surprising in a thread about a meet that runs for six months.

I guess it's just a case of posters being a little more restrained and thoughtful - think about whether something would be a worthwhile topic if posted outside B&B, because others will invariably miss it if it goes in there.

Having said that, I really miss the really good discussions that we still occasionally get (That body scanners conversation, for example, was excellent) - they seem to get fewer and farther between.

Hello from lurk-land, opinions as requested.

The noise ratio does seem to have gone up a bit lately, always seems to the same dozen or so people posting but certainly more pointless posts of late. Seems like the 'bits&bobs' stream of consciousness spreads out to every topic nowadays.

Don't think introducing more chat areas or the like will help, if people are feeling trivial they will be wherever they post, maybe just the occasional prod like this thread will help keep things in the right direction.


Why lurk in the first place...not sure really, it passes the time at work and is more consistently amusing than the BBC News page.
Maybe part of the attraction is being part of an interesting family without having to actually participate! Same kind of voyeurism that attracts people to watch soaps I guess; except this is, usually, not filled with the same levels of hate and misery.

Keep vaguely intending to become more active and respond to more, but never seem to. Must try harder C-.

In terms of actual 'use' the movie and music threads are great for getting ideas and the ones I actively seek out*. Otherwise i just look at whats at the top of the page.

*I never seem to be able to find things via forum searches, the amount of time I've spent looking for the heavy metal thread time and time again is depressing. Related to which I can't seem to find the t-shirt/donate money page, or the curry recipes one, I suck at searching.

I came here after following the exodus, initially games related but that's probably one of the things I'm least interested in nowadays, only games I play lately are Cooking Mama or unlocking new dresses on Barbie Island Princess (I rule at coconut bouncing).


errr anything else you want to know from the lurker perspective?...

Wot Grim said. Sorting the wheat from the chaff is getting a bit much. And I'm losing track of what is a sockpuppet account and what isn't.

Also: Buy a 360.

I look at maybe 30% of the threads here, most of which I skim because they're full of nonsense I don't find funny. Maybe I find 30% of the posts in threads I actually look at relevant and/or interesting and/or amusing.

But, you know, that 30% of the 30% is ace - and I rather suspect my 30% of 30% is different from anyone else's.

There's a sticky post at the top of the page with links to interesting threads like those ones in it. The search works better if you tell it to go for 'topic titles only'. There's a donate link in the page footer, and t-shirts are at http://www.beexcellenttoeachother.com/store

And ta for posting, Mr. Looking-over-your-shoulder

It doesn't quite help with thread titles (taking the Metal one as the example here) like ‘Metaaaal! – Metul and metulurs, rejoice!’ The subtitles aren't searchable, are they?

I didn't think there were that many active puppets at the moment? In fact, I can only think of one (two if you count SuperFunGordon, who popped up yesterday).

The subtitles aren't searchable, no - they're not really part of the forum.
I'll have a look into changing that, it might be quite simple...

That's what was stuffing me really...

I think it's fine. I think getting your knickers in a twist because there's too much to "catch up on" when you get back from a holiday is a little melodramatic. Who cares? We're just having a bit of a laugh and occasionally playing games together. If you really have "missed" something, I'm sure it'd be fairly obvious when you got back anyway.

I am now significantly happier than I was 5mins ago
(eye test also booked for next week)

Not keen on the sock puppets at all. I prefer everyone to be upfront and accountable for what they're saying, personally.

The only sock puppets out there are the occasional comedy ones and Davpaz' clutch of personalities.

Oh, and ComicalGirth/Arkham Asylum.

You make me sick.

Ahah! I knew someone would use that thing one day

Thank you emoose!

When I joined B&B had SPAM SPAM SPAM or something in the sub title IIRC so I figured that's where you went to shoot the shit. Most forums I go to have one..Well, that or a dated thread (one per day, first user up starts it).

I pop in when I can and my first post of the day I say good morning/afternoon just being polite (too long in the USA).

As for other threads being dragged OT? Whatever, it doesn't bother me. Everyone does it and it certainly doesn't bother me when it happens to me so yeah, whatever

About a fortnight ago I realised that I should be able to make it to the Manchester meet after all, and figured I'd probably even enjoy the train journey there and back. Then I saw the size of that thread and, frankly, I can't be arsed. I got as far as reading the first post and seeing that the hotel mentioned is fully booked and gave up there. I don't have the time, patience or inclination to wade through it all to find out what's going on.

I'm also interested in how many of the top posters are here saying they don't get all the injokes. Does that mean anyone here gets the injokes? I'm one of the WoS refugees here and I don't get even a fraction of them, save for the obvious £2 a month ones. Plus, I get the feeling that these things get repeated and dragged up to the point of massive tedium, even for the small percentage of people that do get the references and jokes. Also, a brief reminder, it's been nearly two years since we split with WoS. Isn't it time to maybe forget all that now? We've become a very different entity to what that place was.

I think maybe we need tighter moderation on genuine informative threads, like the Manchester meet one, and maybe some individuals need to 'reign it in' a bit in other threads. It's a tough one, because on the one hand we're the sum of our members and those that don't like what we've become can always vote with their feet (as I have occasionally considered doing), but then we have had some people flounce off that I've genuinely missed once they've gone.

I do agree with that though Zio. Sometimes I see a thread that's happened while I was away and thought Man three pages? I'll never read all that...

For example I saw this thread this morning and thought sod that. Went and said my good morning before having a quick look at this one and realising it was pretty serious.

I admit though that I didnt read all the posts. I read Grim's and flicked through to stick in my 2p 'cos I figured there would be plenty of joking around and stuff.

As I say it doesn't bother me that much though.