The Testing Chat III: The Time of Great Chatting

[Darksi4190]

I thought the "everything is ponified" rule was a separate one, rather than a variant of 34. Like it was rule 43 or something.
...

[Oxymoron]

what variant of rule 34 applies to ponies?

In a just universe? None whatsoever

:RogueFace:


Edit : image spoilered as to not offend Flagg

[Crazedwraith]

i have no idea if people have invented an actual number for it.

that was why i was asking

[Oxymoron]

I'm not sure there is one yet.

[RogueIce]

Rule 34.2 apparently.

[adr]

doesn't it piss you off when the show is so quiet you have to turn it up all the way just to hear it

and then the commercials are so loud you have to turn it down all the way to avoid ruptured eardrums


i heard congress or the fcc or someone was going to do something about that.... and i guess it isn't *that* bad on broadcast tv, but watching shows on the network's website is fucking terrible

[RogueIce]

They did: http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/loud-commercials

The Internet is still fair game, though.

[Glass Fort MacLeod]

what RogueIce said. THer'es a few names I've seen cropping back up that came bakc, and really 2004 is not much different from 2002-2003 either, so ther'es a fair bit of the old
crowd still around.


I think part of the problem is exactly that.. there's not much new blood sticking around, and the successive conflicts/arguments over board culture that have erupted have cotinually shaved that margin thinner and thinner, either because people leave or are kicked off because of the fights that occur. And the board culture's negative attirbutes are what keep any new blood from thickening the ranks. Too much argument, too much conflict, too much focus on 'winning' or 'being better' or 'being right' than the other guy.

The board has literally eaten itself to near death, and its only the lack of further conflict that have prevented any further eradication.

Edit: Oh and News and Politics. That utterly destroyed the board, because you can't dictate LOGICAL ABSOLUTES on things like religion or politics. Not without alienating or offending people, and if you do that you're going to destroy what little unity the board may have.

[Oxymoron]

Gotta keep our blood pure, you know ?

[Glass Fort MacLeod]

Its dangerous no matter who does it. Boards that are premised on being 'superior' to other people, conflict, or generally just looking for people to mock/yell at (again N&P) are going to have a hard time maintaining any sort of unity without an external enemy to fight. Without that, board culture will dictate that a target be found and it more likely will turn on itself.

Unsurprisingly, this happened on SDN. And I don't think its coincidence that a fair bit of that conflict stemmed from the non-scifi boards.

[adr]

The Internet is still fair game, though.

figures.

BTW the newest episode of Psych on usanetwork.com is fucking hilarious. i love that show, totally worth taking an hour off my sailor moon addiction to catch up

[Aaron]

*shrug* sooner or later Mike will tire of paying for it or Rob's life will become to busy (frankly I'm surprised he isn't already) to watch over it.

[Darksi4190]

In addition to the board culture turning toxic, I think a lot of the losses happened when the board shifted away from SF and Fantasy as it's primary focus and started talking more about news, politics, and other miscellaneous shit. In the beginning, we didn't even have a News and Politics, Gaming and Computers, or SLAM forum. Those were all split off from OT as the number of posters rose and there were too many topics cluttering up OT, but they were never the focus of the site. SDN was founded primarily as a SF and Fantasy discussion board, with a focus on a few specific franchises. Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Stargate, LotR, and the occasional bit of 40k. As people grew out of those franchises, or as their declining quality caused people to lose interest, they tried to take the same attitude they had developed when versus debating into discussions about politics, religion, and other things that people deeply cared about, and it the atmosphere started turning toxic.

Let's be honest. the SDN style of "lol owned the newbie trektard" doesn't pose a problem when you're debating about something that on some level, everyone involved knows is meaningless. Everyone involved knows that the SF and Fantasy discussion threads are just a convenient and fun means of wasting time, with the exception of the occasional outright loon like DarkStar or Batman. You can call someone a fucking retard in a Vs. debate and he'll shrug it off because to some extent everyone knows it's basically a game. When you take that same attitude into the n&p forum, and call someone a retard for a deeply personal political, social, or religious belief, it isn't a game, and that person is going to take it seriously. That's where the vendettas and feuds get started.

tl,dr: The creation of the n&p forum is what ultimately damned SDN. The style of discussion worked perfectly fine when people were just wasting time talking shit about their favorite franchises, but eventually those franchises either ended or stopped putting out quality material, and people started talking about shit that actually mattered to them. When that happened, the antagonistic style of discussion SDN had cultivated was bound to drive people off eventually.

[Darksi4190]

*shrug* sooner or later Mike will tire of paying for it or Rob's life will become to busy (frankly I'm surprised he isn't already) to watch over it.

Also this. Sooner or later, Mike Wong will have to take a pay cut, or remodel his house, or start putting his kids through college, and he'll have to take a close look at his personal expenses and decide if hosting SDN is still worth it. On that day, He'll probably come on to make one last announcement, that the board has a week or so left to live before the lights get turned out.

Looking back at the profile pages, A lot of those old posters who left actually check back in to lurk every once and a while. I wonder if we'll see them come back to post before the end.

[Losonti Tokash]

that style of discussion was always shitty

[Darksi4190]

Talking about the eventual "end" of SDN has me genuinely curious about what'll happen afterwards.

Will someone set up another SDN-style board for all the guys who still want to do that sort of thing?

Will we see the remaining members try to regroup here or over at SB.com, essentially becoming a refugee population within the culture of another board?

Or will everyone just go their separate ways?

[Flagg]

The real problems with SDN are the inconsistent modding, double standards, and lack of a discussion driving influence of poster or posters like Mike Wong. Every board needs at least one person who is a heavily prolific poster of high signal to noise ratio. When Wong posted, he posted a lot and it was usually entertaining and informative, even if you disagreed with what he said (or many times did).

This board is dead because Stark got run off. He was the most prolific poster with a good signal to noise ratio.

[Djinnkitty83]

Talking about the eventual "end" of SDN has me genuinely curious about what'll happen afterwards.

Will someone set up another SDN-style board for all the guys who still want to do that sort of thing?

Will we see the remaining members try to regroup here or over at SB.com, essentially becoming a refugee population within the culture of another board?

Or will everyone just go their separate ways?

Facebook.

[adr]

hosting a web forum is actually pretty cheap, you can almost just set it and forget it at not much more cost than you're paying anyway for home internet. i think mike uses a dedicated internet for it which ups the cost somewhat but it still isn't a lot of money esp compared to other life costs

google ads pay really poorly but sdn might even turn a small profit with them just cuz the costs aren't that high to begin with



i betcha the death will come cuz something goes wrong like a server hardware failure and mike just doesn't give enough of a shit to spend the time to fix it; essentially i predict sdn's death will be pretty random when it comes

[Zod]

hosting a web forum is actually pretty cheap, you can almost just set it and forget it at not much more cost than you're paying anyway for home internet. i think mike uses a dedicated internet for it which ups the cost somewhat but it still isn't a lot of money esp compared to other life costs

google ads pay really poorly but sdn might even turn a small profit with them just cuz the costs aren't that high to begin with



i betcha the death will come cuz something goes wrong like a server hardware failure and mike just doesn't give enough of a shit to spend the time to fix it; essentially i predict sdn's death will be pretty random when it comes

I think I remember he posted once that the ads basically paid for the board's upkeep so it was mostly self sustaining.

[Darksi4190]

i betcha the death will come cuz something goes wrong like a server hardware failure and mike just doesn't give enough of a shit to spend the time to fix it; essentially i predict sdn's death will be pretty random when it comes

That would actually be kind of depressing. I'd always imagined that when SDN did end, Mike would make that final announcement that the board had X days left to live, and everyone would just go batshit crazy. There would be some people (Myself probably included) who would wax nostalgically and make threads about remembering their favorite moments on SDN, while others completely lost their shit and tried to fulfill all the feuds and vendettas they'd accrued over the years. As the final date for the closing of the forum got closer, the board would descend further into complete chaos as people bailed out to come here or to SB.com or anywhere else they could find a safe haven as others clashed violently with one another right up until the last moment.

Also for some reason I imagine this playing in the background while all of this is going on.

[evilsoup]

Edit : image spoilered as to not offend Flagg

why would you ever not want to offend flagg?

[Flagg]

Edit : image spoilered as to not offend Flagg

why would you ever not want to offend flagg?

Because if you do I'll offend you more.

[evilsoup]

you'd have to go full-shock site to offend me, I mostly find your posts hilarious

[The Spartan]

Please don't.

Some of us still have a gag reflex...