My first and final attempt to help out in the Mythtv "community", was when I signed up to their forums and posted a follow-up to an existing thread. My follow-up quoted a few lines from an earlier posting by somebody else, which happened to include a useful web link (from the quotation) to some patches or something.

I got "banned" for posting links as a n00b, and my IP address got blacklisted. Lovely people there. The funny thing is, this behaviour turns out to be about 100% typical of their closed development "community" and active hatred of end-users.

End of story.

We should see about storming those forums Matt. I'm in.

Ha! Thanks I think they aren't worth it. After I get what I need from them I'll be leaving that awful board behind me and they can enjoy a community that'll shrink rapidly

I have some really good suspensions/bans from game forums. One was for posting under 'Suggestions' for Warhammer Online that EA/Mythic should implement random drug testing for developers and QA so something like patch 1.2 (which did a LOT to kill the game) would never happen again.

In fairness, I should add that Mark Kendall, one of the primary devs (if not the primary guy) is excellent and approachable, a great chap. But most of the others, well.. they often make the Linux Kernel Mailing List look rather tame by comparison.

Regarding political/religious topics, I never really cared for the former. The latter has probably been some of the best religious discussions I've ever had anywhere; tolerant in the true sense of respecting the person while holding a different opinion. I don't know that I've found that anywhere else, off or on the internet. The thing is, I've felt we pretty much exhausted religious topics and were rehashing quite a bit in the latter threads.

I still brag about this place to my Christian friends, though, and say what a great benefit those discussions have been to me in terms of understanding how other people with different beliefs think.

I agree that with a shrinking base, less forums is better. I also don't mind the topics that get posted. Reading posts here about sliced cheese is infinitely better than the most important topic you can imagine on any other forum.

Crap... did I miss a good thread?

/me goes off to search for "sliced cheese".

Just as a trial, I changed the announcement about the empeg meet to a global announcement. That means it shows up at the top of every forum. I personally don't like this, but it is one of the few ways to make sure it is seen for those who only bookmark and browse Off Topic.

I am open to suggestions though on better ways to handle this. If it's a suggestion that isn't possible with the current code, the 8.0 release is around the corner, and now would be a good time to make suggestions to UBB.

One alternative is a "content" island, basically adding a sidebar to the left or right of the site. I'll have to dig into other possibilities later.

Given the nature of this particular announcement, I personally like it global.

Jeff,

In the shrinking-base department, did you ever take djc up on his offer to fly to Texas on his own dime to have a dialogue about homosexuality?

I sent him a PM on the subject (though I'd never have let him pay for it), but he never responded.

I'll say this on the topic of religious disucssions- I thought most of them died out before the user base started shrinking significantly, but perhaps I am mistaken on that count. I know that I was away from the board for quite a while (due to it being blocked at work and then getting distracted when I was at home and able to access the board).

As mentioned, I've always valued this place for the ability to speak freely about strong beliefs without people getting offended, but perhaps my value didn't exactly accurately reflect everyone's feeligns. If anything I've said has done harm to this BBS, I am truly sorry for that.

Jeff, you gotta be kidding! Your posts on the subject of religion were (IMHO) among the most valuable and treasured responses on the whole bbs. I agreed with very little that you said, but your calm, well-reasoned dialogs (even if your spelling was, ummm... a bit free-form sometimes ) were some of the best made by any member of the board. I always felt a little bad that you seemed to be so outnumbered in your opinions here, but I certainly admired the way you kept at it, undaunted in your convictions.

Maybe I should start a thread with a religious argument in the hopes that you will jump in...

tanstaafl.

I always felt a bit ashamed that I didn't pipe up alongside Jeff more often, but usually he said what I wanted to express well enough that I didn't feel like I had much to add. Well done Jeff.

Ah, I didn't know that you accepted and that he didn't follow through, so I should be less of a snit. At the time I thought it was a very generous and perhaps very brave offer on his part. It seemed like he really had a need to have that discussion, and I was disappointed that it didn't come off. Now *that* would been something to talk about with your friends.

Looking further down the thread, I hope that you don't feel like you offended *me* if that's what you were getting at. Depending on the phases of the moon, what I had for lunch, and the color of my mood ring, my contibutions here are, I'd say, a very, very mixed bag (see sig) from the intelligence, civility and overall value standpoint. I am thankful that I can usually rely on fairer folks like Doug to slap some of my bad karma upside the head and reflect more helpfully on questions such as yours.

Being a public employee (for the indefinite future), I don't get to read the BBS at work As I am getting older, I don't stay up as late and I type more slowly every passing day, so I will likely be a diminishing irritant here, but maybe moreso for bigger reasons, like being "done" with a lot of subjects. Like politics, religion, climate change, gun control, and a host of other things. That being said, I think Off Topic is totally precious and hope that anyone can ask anything forever.

Gee, I can be so much more circumspect when the Percocets start to kick in.*

Jim


*gall bladder getting the heave-ho in 2011