loads of strands going on up thread, not adding anything new but just want to put another voice in favour of
staying here/very similar format of site
paying towards the running costs (Ā£5 would be grand value to me personally)
making site changes to bring costs down to manageable levels
staying under the DiS umbrella
the dis name is something I have a lot of affection for and think it does a lot to hold everything together here. the last point is the one im least wedded to, but would hope there was a good amount of work/planning done to make it viable before any fully independent options were considered
whoa, thereās a lot to catch up on here andā¦i havenāt.
my worthless input is that this place is an incredibly valuable resource to me for many reasons. Im sure it is for many which is why threads like this do seem to get emotional.
not sure what my point is other than i appreciate the people who are looking at alternatives/discussing/trying to sort it out as im clueless but am invested! Fair fucks. I donāt really care what it looks like so long as it continues to slip through the work firewallā¦
Having had a look at Geneva, it feels more like being in a WhatsApp group, or indeed several WhatsApp groups at once.
While the chat moves very fast on here, Discourse still allows you to catch up on it all slowly at your own pace, for those of us who have SOME work to do during the day (safetywink)
Geneva looks like more of a chore to keep up with - whereas Discourse opens threads from the top and allows you to read from the beginning, Geneva looks more like a group chat where it starts at the bottom with the most recent messages and you have to scroll back to see what youāve missed (I think?)
If we did move to Geneva Iād still visit and take part but I can see myself getting a bit overwhelmed with trying to keep up with things and not engaging as much, so Iām very much on team Discourse if possible.
This sums up some of my assumptions but also some conversations on here are like 15 people having very quick back and forths, which is where it could work and maybe save 2m pageviews a month
To say it has never been acknowledged or apologised for is untrue. And no amount of apology will ever be enough. And if currently there were issues or fears it would happen again, I would of course be putting in every and any safeguarding required.
Itās worth noting that one of the people subjected to a huge amount of misogynistic abuse (and an entire thread dedicated to it) on here was an artist I managed. Thereās also been people using this forum to share various bits of information about my personal life, so to suggest I wasnāt aware and didnāt acknowledge and that Iāve never apologised or have been neglectful or wilfully obtuse is not true.
Without meaning to derail this anymore, and I mightāve regret this as Iām not going to spend anytime having a discussion about it, I donāt really know what people expect Sean to do in terms of accountability. Like some not good stuff happened, because some people who use the site were dickheads, and then things where put in place to stop that stuff happening? I guess wasnāt set up to safeguard people well enough, but thatās not really surprising given how the community forum side has kindof evolved, itās not like Sean set out to build a safe forum space for people when he started drowned in sound inc (donāt think thatās been the goal anyway)
Thatās kind of what I remember! I wasnāt really involved in any of it so maybe I should just shut up tho!
AutumnBeach later acknowledged an example of this happening that I sent them privately.
Iām not sure what can be done further from an accountability and responsibility POV that hasnāt been done over the threads that have centered on this topic for the last 6-12 years. I donāt think the boards wouldāve changed so much since then without Sean (and others) doing so.
Itās incredibly important to remember the differences between the message board format and more general social media formats or DM style functions including WhatsApp groups.
For example, when the queen died, we had a single, enormous, thread. At any point, someone could start from the top, read a bit then leave and return later to the last post they read.
So sure, at times there was probably 100+ posts where a handful people bounced around their ideas or jokes or whatever. Same in any big thread, like when weāve had monster threads for an election day.
But in any thread, everyone with an account is able to follow the entire conversation from start to finish, in their own time frame. That means everything. Thatās why we all know so much about each other. Thatās why itās so important having the Serious Issues board hidden.
Compare that to twitter where you have a sprawling mess of different threads, or the way that you open a WhatsApp group with 100 new messages and either scroll through them all immediately, or lose your place.
Thatās why this community is what it is. Seems mad now but back on the old boards threads used to get mashed up and hard to follow. Despite that we all stuck with it. When we moved here, we could follow every thread we wanted to very easily, with things only getting a little bit wonky if an account is deleted - which is infrequent enough that itās not an issue.
This is why so many people are hesitant to move elsewhere, especially if itās not a proper message board. Itās also why the handful of people who properly engage stay for ages even if they only found this place in recent years, after the main DiS site stopped posting.
Two examples where I believe Sean has addressed it that Iāve found quite quickly were;
āIāve fallen below my own standards in the past in some of my posts on here, and I wish to publicly apologise to anyone I have not believed nor treated with the respect that they deserve.
Iām truly sorry.ā
And
āI am sorry if by my negligence to monitor the millions of posts on these forums if I have allowed standards to slip far below what should be acceptable let alone tolerable in the modern world.ā
Both were 4-5 years ago. On the hundreds of threads that have been made about the issue of how dis was/was run or have evolved to discuss this Sean has definitely acknowledged and apologised for it on a number of them.