Closing time soon

Since the last monthly fee will not cover the entire month of October, we're setting October 15 as the day we'll freeze this place. If you want to establish your new space together, we suggest you either set something up by then or chose somebody's blog as an interim meeting room to finalise plans.

In the meantime you can use the comments to this place as a place to organize.

Warning: the layout and colour scheme of this space may change over the next few weeks as we prepare to freeze it.

TBAT

---

 

The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)

Comments

[Ben]

I'm delighted to see that my trolling campaign after you published Froborr's shameful anti-rationality article has shut this place down. You folded much quicker than I expected.

[Nenya]

Nah. It wasn't you.

[anamardoll]

So I'm clear:

On/After October 15th, we won't be able to comment here anymore, but all thread and comments will still be visible? (Albeit in a potentially different format as noted above?)

It will be, essentially, like what Kate Harding did with the Shapely Prose archives?

[The Board Administration Team]

@Ana Mardoll: On/After October 15th, we won't be able to comment here anymore, but all thread and comments will still be visible?

Yup. Also there will be a backup archive kept on another platform which won't be visible unless something happens to TypePad.

[anamardoll]

Thank you. I really appreciate all the work you're going to in order to preserve this wonderful site and its comments. I'm sure this is a lot of work, and I appreciate it.

[chris the cynic]

Thanks again to The Board Administration Team and their work to make sure nothing is lost, as well as all of their other work.

-

It is my guess that we can work out what to do by the time this place freezes, but if we we can't I've certainly got no problem devoting a thread or more at my blog to being the interim meeting room until a determination is reached. Though probably someone with a nicer blog than mine could volunteer.

-

As for what's been discussed thus far:

-LJ seems to have been shot down for multiple reasons.

-Dreamwidth has been suggested but it has been noted that it threads comments (though
individuals can opt out) and (along with LJ) is blocked at at least one regular's work.

-In all honestly I'm a little hazy on what's up with wordpress. I gathered that there was some kind of problem, maybe, but it seems to work well for Will Wildman.

-Blogger recently changed their interface in highly problematic ways but a workaround has been worked out (See Ana Mardoll's site for details). Blogger is what Right Behind uses, for whatever that is worth.

I think that might be all of the blogging platforms that have been mentioned thus far, but it was also suggested that we could move to a message board format. (I personally would prefer wherever we move to to be a blog.)

I'm probably leaving something out.

[Mike Timonin]

chris - why would you prefer a blog over a message board? It seems to me that message boards would allow for easier side conversations, and would probably require less work to set up and maintain. A blog would require someone to make periodic posts, while a message board could allow members to start their own posts when and if they desired.

[chris the cynic]

I think that the format of a blog encourages a different kind of discussion than a message board.

A message board is sort of like all open threads all the time, whoever comments first sets off the conversation and things move on from there. There's nothing wrong with that, and indeed it can actually be just like a blog depending on what that first comment is like. So it's not that you can't have all the good stuff of a blog on a message board, but I don't feel like that's what's encouraged.

The format of a blog, I think, encourages the main post to be in greater depth than the usual first post of a thread on a message board, it encouraged the person making the post to put more work into it, to delve deeper, and generally create something that I think tends to be more interesting. That in turn flavors the conversation that follows.

I think that the decline here is largely due to us running very low on main posts, a thing that several people have said they think they can help with and ideas have been put forward to try to get more main posts and ease the production of such. A solution if we don't want the decline to continue as we move on is to get some more fracking main posts, hopefully the people will come through and some of the ideas will work, but I think that having a format that cries out for main posts, the format of a blog, will tend to encourage that more than a format that does not.

That's my thinking at least. This place worked best, I think, when there was one big post to kick off discussion and that's a format encouraged by a blog and not so much by a message board.

Also there's a benefit to not having everyone be able to do everything all at once. Say six people have great ideas on Monday and start threads around those ideas on a message board. How long does discussion last? And how much attention is a given person paying to the discussions on average? Say the same thing happens on a blog with a three day a week posting schedule. That goes from one day with heavy thread starting on the message board to two weeks of content on the blog. By staggering the discussions it means that each is likely to get more attention.

I just see a blog as being a better format in this case, especially since people have come forward saying they're willing to do more work on that front.

[sarah]

Popping in here. My life's been run-around-like-a-chicken-with-its head-cut-off busy, which is why I haven't been around (and why the shutting-down/freezing) is news to me.

I've got a blog, which has also been slow lately due to the general busyness of my life, and I'm willing to host people's articles and discussions if you all want. Probably not a permanent solution, but even if we wanted to make that a group blog, I'd be up for the challenge.

[Nenya]

As I see it, Chris, if the problem is "No one is writing main blog posts, but we still want to have discussions," then saying "We must write more blog posts! That will get everyone talking!" doesn't seem like it would work. I think we all want to talk to each other, and we all want to discuss real issues, but we don't all have the time to make long and thorough posts. So having what might be called "All open threads, all the time" (in the form of a messageboard) seems like it would be more practical in terms of actually getting us talking again. That's how I see it, anyway. If people are not talking, making the bar for participation *higher* won't help.

[cjmr]

I agree with Nenya--if we're just looking for a place where all of us will be able to find each other for discussions, a message board where people can post whatever may be the way to go.

[chris the cynic]

I kind of feel like that's ignoring everyone who contributed to the discussion by saying that they could and would make main posts.

We've already got several ideas laid out for collaborative posts, multiple people saying that they can make individual posts (sometimes given this or that thing that doesn't exist now but could be created without too much trouble) so unless everyone whose spoken up on the topic is going to fail to come through, I don't think ruling out the idea that more blog posts could help get things going again is really that obvious of a conclusion.

I can understand if it had been just one or two people. I'd encourage you not to count on me, for example, because I definitely stand a high probability of failure. But to write of everyone who had ideas to continue this place as a blog seems going too far.

-

Also a part of it is that we're looking at the problem differently.

I don't see the problem as, "No one is writing main blog posts, but we still want to have discussions," I see it as "Discussion is dropping off even though we'd rather it didn't," and the solution to that is to figure out why it is dropping off and it seems to me like the answer is the correlated drop off in main posts.

-

Or to put it another way, I don't think that just opening another place that continues on exactly how the Slacktiverse at typepad has been going of late will keep the Slacktiverse alive. I think, regardless of where we are, our current trajectory is toward the Slacktiverse dying off. If we want that not to happen we need more than a new venue to move to on or before October 15th. We need a change in direction.

My preferred change in direction is to try to go back to what worked. As near as I can tell what worked was having substantial blog posts to jump start conversation. There are people willing to try that. There are ideas on how to make it easier than it was in the past. If we can get more people to submit posts by putting those ideas into effect, I think we should at least try that.

Also we've tried slacktivist/slacktiverse message-boards in the past. They always died out quickly. They just didn't work. It wasn't the same dynamic and it couldn't sustain a community that was built up around a blog. Maybe this time it would work, I don't know. But before we go that route I, personally, would like to see if we can get back to what has worked.

[chris the cynic]

Uh, that was in response to Nenya, by the way.

[Madhabmatics]

set up a nerdy irc room imo

i will teach all of the people to use mibbit

[Nick Kiddle]

Is there any reason we have to choose between a messageboard and a blog? We could use a messageboard for technical discussions while we set up the blog, for chit-chat that might take energy away from discussions, for personal announcements and so on.

Also, chris, I get what you're saying about changing the format changing the atmosphere, but the atmosphere here has been subject to noxious outbreaks. A messageboard might help screen those out.

[chris the cynic]

There's no reason we have to choose, no. But this is a case where I don't think both is better than one or the other. Things have gotten so slow here that splitting things between two places doesn't seem like the best idea to me. We're spread thin already. If threads were overflowing with comments that would be one thing, but as is I think it would be better to have a single place to go, rather than multiple places to disperse to.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

I think Chris is right: messageboards and blogs are fundamentally different things, and interaction on them happens in different ways. We could, of course, have both, even on the same site (and I'd be willing to provide hosting for it, too*).

phpBB supply free forum software. WordPress supply free blog software. Someone sets up a hosting account with support for PHP and MySQL, installs the two, and we're free to go. And then we see which works best. (Perhaps use the forum to thrash out ideas for blog posts?)

Note that there are also free blog sites and (though rarer) free messageboard sites, but it's unlikely we could get both on one domain without paying for the hosting, though the code itself should be free.

I mean, I could suggest that we just set up a club on h2g2, and that any articles we come up with be submitted to the h2g2 Post. But that would mean making The Slacktiverse a smaller part of a larger community. This might be a good thing for all concerned, but equally might not be. It would certainly be a *different* thing.

Incidentally, the existing archives could be exported to a different platform in a way which didn't interfere with the privacy of posters. Set all IP addresses to the loopback address (127.0.0.1) and set all e-mail addresses to the SHA1 hash thereof (thereby preserving distinctiveness while protecting anonymity) [new_email = sha1(old_email + salt) + '@example.net'], or something like that, should do it. I don't know whether that's actually wanted or not, but if it is wanted, that's one way to do it.

TRiG.

* This would mean that I could see the database. I could promise not to, but the very fact that I could would be problematic for people with privacy concerns, so it's probably best if you don't take me up on this offer.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

And yes, Chris' last post, which wasn't there before, is also a valid point: a blog is, for lack of any better description, more "concentrated" than a messageboard. Everything happens on the last one or two threads. And perhaps a blog, even with only open threads, no actual content, is still better at hosting a small community than a messageboard would be.

TRiG.

[The Board Administration Team]

@TRiG: Incidentally, the existing archives could be exported to a different platform in a way which didn't interfere with the privacy of posters.

Going to step in for a moment here. We know how to export the existing archives to different platforms (in fact we have created non-public backups on different platforms already.) There are a number of technical issues that arise when one does that--issues that are not obvious (or even evident) until one attempts to export from this platform to specific other platforms.

More to the point members of TBAT have over time, on the board and in private emails, promised various commenters that no one other than members of TBAT will ever have access to the "behind the scenes" data.

Since this board will remain visible after it is frozen any new board can, of course, link to this site for those who wish to access the archives.

[Ross]

If it's at all possible, I'd really like whereever we end up to provide an rss feed. Routing things through google reader (1) keeps me up-to-date and (2) basically negates the deleterious effects of being behind a ridiculous firewall.

[anamardoll]

I think we could do both, re: blog vs. forum.

I had a Nabble forum attached to my Blogger blog for a time. (It's still there, but hidden since no one was using it.) I'm pretty sure there are forum widgets for WordPress?

[anamardoll]

(I should have read further before posting. I'm not advocating one or the other. My personal vote would be for a blog, but that's purely because I would be more likely to read a blog than a message board. See Ross' statement re: RSS feaders and apply a +1 from me.)

[Firedrake]

Blogger/Blogspot and Wordpress both offer RSS feeds of all posts plus all comments. Livejournal gives you all posts but only per-thread comments feeds (like this place). Dreamwidth doesn't appear to offer comments feeds at all.

I'm broadly in chris' camp on this, largely because forum software almost never offers sensible feeds (or even a simple "show me all the posts I haven't read yet").

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Yeah, should have guessed that this would be more complicated than I expected. TypePad, it seems, always is. Anyway, as you point out, there's no need so long as this place stays up.

TRiG, who for some reason is having problems logging in again.

[kisekileia]

I'd probably prefer a forum to a blog, for the same reason as Nenya. I think people may have been intimidated by the idea of producing posts with the length and depth of many of the main posts here, and the bar for starting a thread on a forum is a lot lower. That being said, I don't know of any really good free forum software.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

The only free forum software I know at all is phpBB. There's some talk of releasing the rebuilt version of h2g2 as free software, but that project's not finished yet.

TRiG.

[MercuryBlue]

Dreamwidth doesn't appear to offer comments feeds at all.

I don't know whether it does but I do know where to go to find out. Can't right now, I don't know whether the work firewall lets IRC through and I don't know that I want to find out, but when I get home I'll ask.

[anamardoll]

Nabble is free forum-ware.

[MercuryBlue]

I poked Dreamwidth IRC, and Denise (who is big boss lady) tells me that DW has neither ability nor plans to do comment RSS and that it's not possible to default comments to flat view. I suspect this makes DW an unsuitable platform for Slacktiverse.

[chris the cynic]

So, do either of the free forum software things mentioned in this thread have feeds that will work for those whose lives are made considerably easier by feeds?

(I don't use feeds so, though I've used both, I have no idea.)

[anamardoll]

So I'm not advocating Nabble, it's just what I've used on my Blogger board, so I know it's integrate-able with Blogger blogs.

But Nabble does seem to have feeds. If you go to my Nabble forum here:

http://www.anamardoll.com/p/forums.html

And scroll down, there's a FEEDS link in the left hand corner. The options are:

FEED: Topics only
http://rambly-ramblings.2308065.n4.nabble.com/Rambly-Ramblings-ft4040926.xml

FEED: Topics and replies
http://rambly-ramblings.2308065.n4.nabble.com/Rambly-Ramblings-f4040926.xml

I haven't slapped them into my Google Reader yet but they look legitish. Mind you, I still vote for a blog if we're doing either/or. But I know that there are security issues. When all this Blogger stuff went down, some blogging friends noted that their pre-Blogger days were subject to DOS attacks like whoa. I know that Slacktivist has some dedicated trolls, which means that we'd probably be stuck with Blogger for the superior Google security.

Mind you, I'm okay with Blogger now that I have my script, so there's that.

[chris the cynic]

Yeah, my preference is probably tending toward blogger, with some reservations because they're assholes. Assholes that seem to have the best technology.

But there is a question as to comments. I don't see a way to make them completely flat. Instead they seem to always be in a state of branching once. One branch is better than infinite branches if you don't like branching, but it's still branching.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

So,
who's going to be running this blog/forum/whatever? Isn't that the most urgent thing to sort out?

TRiG.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

As far as I can work out from their help pages, Nabble is non-Free, in the FOSS sense. I'm not sure whether that's an issue to anyone but me, though, and it's certainly something I can live will. I'd prefer truly Free FOSS stuff, though (hence also the preference for WordPress over Blogger). (And I'd prefer a blog over a forum, too*.)

TRiG.

* There is a WordPress plugin called Simple::Press which integrates a forum into the blog. I don't know whether that's available on WordPress.com, though.

[chris the cynic]

who's going to be running this blog/forum/whatever? Isn't that the most urgent thing to sort out?

I'm not sure that it's the easiest thing to separate out.

I think, I'm pretty sure, that what we move to will have a lot of say in what kind of a control structure is possible. There's a difference between a place which can accommodate multiple layers of running and a place where the only way to give someone any control is to give them complete control.

There's also the question of what's going to be involved in running.

If it's a blog run via submissions and open threads, running that's going to involve one type of thing. It it's a forum, running that's going to be completely different. It isn't necessarily the case that the person who would be best at one would be best at the other.

-

That said, in that it needs to be figured out in 15 days, or we need to figure out where we're going to to carry on this conversation after the freeze, yeah it's urgent. And since we haven't talked about it, we probably should. Anyone have nominations for "Person/people that I trust to take over"?

I'm not overly worried about someone who's sticking around through all of this turning out to be an evil overlord myself. So I think I'd be pretty comfortable with pretty much anyone involved in this conversation taking over.

[anamardoll]

Blogger blogs can have multiple persons registered as "authors" (and/or with varying permissions for things like "can make new posts, but can't modify other people's posts" -- "editors", I believe they are called).

In my mind, the best solution would be something like:

1. Set up Blogger blog with multiple contributing authors. These would be people who intend to contribute a post and/or blog-building work.

2. Set up a static page within that blog with Nabble forum. This would be for planning, chatting, forumy fun.

3. Let authors post blog posts on an "honor" system according to some loosely defined rules: blog-posts are the property of the author, and do not convey community consensus, authors are responsible for editing their posts prior to publish, posts should remember the community goals for pluralism and inclusion, etc. (We could have a Mission Statement!)

---

If we just want someone to Drive To Decision and do the legwork to setup the above, I can do both #1 and #2 in a matter of hours before turning over the keys to the other authors. Not because I'm a genius or anything, but because I've done it before twice now (AMR & AMP) and I can cannibalize my old code easily.

Trouble is, my name will therefore be on everything quite a bit, unless I make some kind of generi Slacktiperson@gmail.com account to host it all under. And I'm not sure my name SHOULD be on any of this, given that I will probably have time to contribute maybe one article in the next three months. Actually, having the Slacktiperson account (or whatever) is probably the best plan, now that I think on it. One more thing that is easily enough handed over to the larger community.

If it would help the community and if people would like me to do the above, I totally can and will do -- probably first thing Tuesday. But I'd want to wait for some buy-in here before I go off half-cocked like I so easily do. Thoughts?

(I also add my name to the hat of "volunteering my board + forum for chatting about this further" if we hit deadline without deciding anything.)

[Firedrake]

I'm nothing like a regular contributor here, but I'm in favour of anamardoll's approach (with a generic email contact as suggested). If the putative future moderation team would like an email alias that can expand to multiple people, I'd be happy to provide that (free, long term) - though I believe gmail can do the same thing and doesn't require people to trust me (just Google).

I think it's important to have something up and running before the deadline so that the new URL can be posted here before it's frozen.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Firedrake's last sentence there is important, actually. I'd not thought of that. And I do think Ana Mardoll's suggestion makes sense, especially given that she clearly knows what she's talking about. I'd even be happy to use Blogger (on a "better the devil you know" basis), even if the comment form on their blogs is sometimes almost unusable (there may be a way around that).

TRiG.

[chris the cynic]

Actually, having the Slacktiperson account (or whatever) is probably the best plan, now that I think on it.

I third this.

-

I think that I prefer that one group/person have control over when posts go up just to make it easier to try to maintain a schedule. See my earlier comment about the benefit of staggering discussions for why I think it's important to maintain a schedule. Especially given that we're not likely to get a lot of main posts, it's important to make sure that they're spaced out when they do come.

On the other hand, if there's a message board to discuss blog related business, then perhaps it wouldn't be that hard for a more distributed group to maintain a schedule.

-

If we intend to keep up "This Week in the Slacktiverse" which I think we definitely ought to, then someone needs to put that together from submissions. I would have no problem doing that work, but I do have a problem with recognizing when trigger warnings are needed, which is an important skill if we don't want to be sending people to read things that will trigger them. (For my part, I've had to ask others to figure out what warnings are needed on my own posts. mmy was very helpful on that front.)

-

Since we can't expect main posts to immediately come in when we move, does anyone have ideas for semi-open threads they'd like to see?

-

Also, I have a thought. Might be a good thought, might be a bad thought. Probably needs discussion.

There are, now, multiple deconstructions going on. I've lost track of how many. While This Week in the Slacktiverse would presumably cover those from those who submit to it, it might be worth giving them their own day. Have one scheduled post be the link to deconstructions updated in the last week post. Not just on the basis of submission but also ones that are simply ones people might be interested in.

Sort of like the weekly linking to Fred's Left Behind deconstruction, but with a much broader scope.

So, good idea, bad idea, silly idea?

[Firedrake]

Speaking purely for myself, I read everything via RSS feeds so I don't need summary posts (but I don't object to them either).

I think the system that hapax, Kit and mmy set up is a good design: whatever you call them, you have a small team of people who take on the responsibility for keeping the site running on a technical and procedural level (abuse reports, feature requests, that sort of thing). These may overlap with authors of articles or may not, but it would seem reasonable for them to have exclusive authority to post thread-starter articles (i.e. new posts as opposed to comments) so as to keep a schedule on track and to give an editorial thumbs-up to articles - though one could, I suppose, also open up posting privileges to a group of trusted authors if that seemed like a good idea.

[Brin]

Re: Ana's idea

Sounds worth a shot. It's vaguely worrying, but I think that's just because it's different and any idea for a new place would have that.

Whatever we end up with, I'll show up and comment. (Probably not make new posts, as I'm terrible at starting conversations. Often I can't even bring myself to say to Mom "Listen to this neat thing I just read!" and have to conspicuously laugh or make "Hmm" noises trying to get her to ask about it.)

[Froborr]

Ana's idea seems good to me. However, what about comment moderation? Would the site owner (Ana, it seems?) do that, or would authors be responsible for moderating their own articles, or a team, or what?

[anamardoll]

I would not be the site owner; I would set up everything under a shared email account, say "SlacktivistAuthors@gmail.com" or something similar. This email could be accessed by any of the authors interested in contributing to this project. I would be one of those authors, but only one of what I hope will be a dozen or more people (and one with severely limited time to contribute, I'm afraid).

I would propose that authors moderate their own articles. I do not think there's anything inappropriate about an author saying "X is off-topic for purposes of this thread" and/or an author asking someone to leave the topic and/or an author closing comments on a thread if it becomes too onerous to moderate further.

Since there would be an open forum attached to the board, "spirited" discussions could be asked to move there.

Eventually we would have to deal with perma-bans, but I think that's something that will have to be dealt with when it arises. I'm of the Shakesville "get on my tits, get off my board" school, so everyone knows where I stand on perma-bans, but this would not be my board, so my vote only counts for so little here. :)

[Ross]

The thought occurs that there are platforms that are more amenable to killfiles, in which case we could dodge the issue of bans by, like, just keeping a list of "people you might want to ban" if that would cause less consternation

[Ross]

* change that last "ban" to "killfile"

[storiteller]

I support Ana's idea of a group blog with multiple authors who moderate their own posts. Then if someone gets in a fuss for the author banning them on that post, they can just go comment on someone else's posts. That would take the stress off of one person or team moderating comments all of the time and would be closer to Ana's blog or John Scalzi's, both of which I think are very well moderated.

[Mike Timonin]

I also like Ana's idea.

[anamardoll]

OK, since I've seen several "yes's" and no outright "no's", I'll set something up today on my day off and have a link here by tonight. BRB.

[anamardoll]

Here is what I have so far. Beta, obviously.

http://slacktiverse.blogspot.com

Email me to get access to the shared SlacktiverseAuthors email (I don't want to put the password on a public board, obvs), and/or to be added as an author to the board. (I would start adding people unilaterally, but I'll miss someone and then feel bad, so just send me a ping, if you will please.)

I hope this is helpful.

[The Board Administration Team]

@Ana Mardoll: Thanks for all the work.

To make things a little easier for those who want to find the new board and get the password from you we edited your comment so there is a clickable link to the new board and an email link that will bring up your address and a stable subject line.

[anamardoll]

Thank you TBAT. (And I wish I could set things up as prettily as you have here!)

[anamardoll]

Oh! And randomly:

I like Disqus, and I think it's the best commenting system there is right now, HOWEVER, I seem to recall that a lot of folks here do not like Disqus, so I've not implemented it on the new board. There should probably be a discussion about that at some point.

[Nenya]

I, too, like Ana's idea, and have bookmarked the Blogspot site. Very nicely done. Thank you.

[chris the cynic]

I've been going on the assumption that the the new board would be a disqus free environment on account of the aforementioned dislike of it. If disqus might drive away people here, I'd very much prefer to avoid it.

The idea is to provide a new home to all the people who have enjoyed the community here and don't want to lose that community.

[Froborr]

I have a strong preference for not Disqus. It's extremely erratic at work, but consistently so: On Love Joy Feminism (which is Patheos) I can read and write comments freely. On Patheos!Slacktivist, I can comment about one time in ten, but read freely. On Anna's blog I can never comment, and sometimes I can't see the comments.

[anamardoll]

@Froborr, which makes me sad. :(

The especially weird thing is, even if you can't post, you should be able to read, since it's all back-filled to the Blogger comment system as well (which should show if Disqus is not). I wish so much I could come to your computer and troubleshoot. :(

[kisekileia]

I'm happy with this solution.

[cjmr]

I'm also happy with the current solution.

[Ross]

I can't use Disqus at work (at all. Flat out blocked as a "social networking" site), but I've grown fairly fond of it all the same since it'd good about RSS and it also provides a commenter dashboard, where I can go to see all of my own comments and direct followups across multiple blogs and articles.

[sarah]

It sounds like a good plan to me.

[chris the cynic]

@hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy or, for that matter, anyone else in the "Blogs of the Slacktiverse" section

The section Blogs of the Slacktiverse has been reproduced at the blogspot site as it appears here. If you don't want your blog listed on the blogspot site, please send an email saying so. (If anyone not on it does want to be on it, please send an email saying that.)

This specifically came up because someone asked if you want your blogs linked to given your (TBAT's) stated intention to move on.

-

The email to send things to is SlacktiverseAuthors@gmail.com

[kisekileia]

Would TBAT perhaps be willing to put up a link to the Blogger site on the front page of this site when this site is frozen?

[The Board Administration Team]

Yup Kisekileia, that was the plan.

[kisekileia]

Thanks :)

[chris the cynic]

kisekileia,

Thanks for asking that because I've been meaning to but kept on forgetting.

-

TBAT,

Thanks.

[chris the cynic]

@TBAT

I just wanted to double check something. If I understand what it means for this place to be frozen correctly it just means that nothing new can happen and will not, therefore, break any links pointing to existing articles because no addresses will change.

Is that correct?

-

And thanks. Thanks again. Thanks for everything. No matter how much I say it, it doesn't seem like enough, but thanks.

[The Board Administration Team]

@chris the cynic: . If I understand what it means for this place to be frozen correctly it just means that nothing new can happen and will not, therefore, break any links pointing to existing articles because no addresses will change.

That is correct.

There will, however, be some movement of links to articles that were once on subsidiary boards such as under the cut. Those articles, including the comments, are in the process of being moved over to this board. When that process is complete we will attempt to update the links to them.

There are a few commenters who have in the past had problems with cyberstalking and who had, even before the decision to freeze the board, asked to have some comments removed for that reason. Thus anyone reading back through the comments may notice the occasional instance of discontinuity where one or more commenters are responding to a no longer visible comment.

[chris the cynic]

Thank you.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Ooh. Shiny new skin! I like!

Bit late now, mind you.

TRiG.

[chris the cynic]

I don't know if an of the people who would be taken by surprise by this would be reading this thread but it has finally occurred to me (I'm slow sometimes) that maybe I should say something on this board. There was a sort of test to try to make sure everything would go smoothly already, but the first official weekend post at blogspot will be this weekend, deadline for submissions today.

Everything that you have written (for the blogaround) or read (for the in case you missed this) since the last weekend post here which was almost a month ago now, is fair game. As well as, obviously, any causes that could benefit from people on the internet hearing about it (for things you can do).

Part of the reason I'm trying to get the word out is that I think it's kind of important is to get as much of of the long "I've got a month's worth of things to say," submissions out of the system as possible. By all means I want people to share the full month's worth of stuff, but I think it's better if it's all at the same time rather than, say, one person doing it in the middle of everyone else sharing only a week's worth.

Part of it is that the whole point of creating a new site instead of just stopping when this site stops is to try to keep the community and the weekend post is all about the community, things the community wrote, things the community read and thinks are worth sharing, causes and petitions the community is trying to get the word out on.

Parts of it are other things.

So email submissions for the weekend post to slacktiverseauthors at gmail dot com.

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@ TBAT, I hope you don't mind me advertising for a post on the new board here.

If you do mind, feel free to delete this, not only will I not have hard feelings, but even if I would I'd rather hard feelings fall on me than you.

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Unlike TRiG, I much preferred the old look, and am grateful you had it that way while the place was active.

[chris the cynic]

Damn it, I meant to link to the last weekend post here.

See, it was almost a month ago. Also, if you, like me, figure out what you've written since the last post by going to that post and seeing what you submitted then, that could be helpful.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

My liking for the new skin is not unmixed, but I do find the narrower column easier to read. And the amount of whitespace is relaxing to the eye. So I like the overall layout. Not sure I like the details. The font of next/previous buttons does not balance well with the font of the comments. The heading is rather blockier than I'd like, and the subtitle "It's (usually) more complicated than that" has disappeared. For an archive site, though, it'll be fine.

TRiG.

[chris the cynic]

Oh, I definitely wasn't complaining about it going forward. It's fine for an archive site.

I just happened to like the old design when the site was all active-like.

[III-IV]

So, um...

I hope you’re not planning to freeze this place on the stroke of midnight GMT, because otherwise I probably won’t finish typing this in time. And that’d be a shame, because apart from one old thread I posted in, this is going to be the only thing I actually type and submit to the Slacktiverse. I’ve been a lurker here since... um... probably some time in the first half of 2008. Somewhere between March and August, I think. I’ve been reading the comments and blog posts here, at Patheos, and at various personal blogs, for four years now, and I’ve never thanked any of you for writing those things. So... thanks. It’s a cliche, but you got me through some difficult times. I’ve had a particular fondness for the discussions about writing fiction — partly because I was (and am) trying to write myself, but also because they were objectively fascinating in their own right — but the political side of the Slacktiverse is also very important to me. The trouble is, you guys have always seemed to have everything covered. I never felt like I had anything particularly important to add. So even though I've been here quite a long time, I've never really said anything.

Traditionally, I think this is the point where someone would implore me not to kill them with sheep... but I don’t even know if you guys do that any more. :)

Sorry. I’m rambling. I just wanted to wish you all luck, and mention that I hope to see you in the future. I know the intention is to continue certain parts of the Slacktiverse on blogspot, and I’m sure that will work out great, but even so I know I’m going to miss this place.

[Froborr]

I've been looking for the right words for weeks, and it seems I'm unlikely ever to find them. So I guess, all I can say is, thank you. Thank all of you, for every post, every discussion. I've never learned as much as I have here, and I'm proud to have called this my Internet home for a time.

Thanks especially to you, hapax, Mmy, and Kit. You stepped forward when this community appeared on the verge of dissolution, and kept things going for months in the face of sometimes truly vile attacks.

I'm sure I'll see some of the same old screen names in the new Slacktiverse, but I also know there's some I won't. I'll miss those of you who aren't coming over, and I hope we meet again somewhere in the wilds of the Internet.

Until then, good-bye and best of luck in all you do.