What happened to "mockery of stupid people"?

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Yes.

[Lagmonster]

Go to Facebook and ask him. He's a guy, not the Great and Powerful Oz.

[houser2112]

Go to Facebook and ask him. He's a guy, not the Great and Powerful Oz.

I find it ironic that it's easier to get the attention of someone through Facebook than his own site.

[Gandalf]

Personally I think the new Motto reflects the orginal purpose better anyway, the way I saw the purpose of this forum was not to insult and belittle those who thinked differently from me but to mock ideas that were frankly idiotic and had no basis in reality.

That may have been the purpose, but I wouldn't say it's been a reality at any point.

[Elheru Aran]

If I had to ascribe reasons for keeping the site up-- maintaining the community that's been built here, nostalgia, a bit of ad revenue? Frankly it's a low-intensity investment for him, he bought the server years ago and hasn't had much occasion to do more than make sure the lights are on.

For my part I enjoy having a more or less fixed group of people that I've gotten to recognize somewhat over the years, at least online. Facebook is more of a crapshoot-- you can limit your 'friends' to people you actually know, and then I have a few who I don't know personally but who I enjoy the content they post, and a few people from here. But frankly the intellectual content is a bit on the low end because most people don't have the time to do more than post memes, share whatever's the current fad, or comment some bit of inarticulate inanity. A few select people will maintain coherent arguments, but for the most part... it's just not worth it. And, of course, you kinda just have to tolerate some people being on your list, family mainly.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

If I had to ascribe reasons for keeping the site up-- maintaining the community that's been built here, nostalgia, a bit of ad revenue? Frankly it's a low-intensity investment for him, he bought the server years ago and hasn't had much occasion to do more than make sure the lights are on.

For my part I enjoy having a more or less fixed group of people that I've gotten to recognize somewhat over the years, at least online. Facebook is more of a crapshoot-- you can limit your 'friends' to people you actually know, and then I have a few who I don't know personally but who I enjoy the content they post, and a few people from here. But frankly the intellectual content is a bit on the low end because most people don't have the time to do more than post memes, share whatever's the current fad, or comment some bit of inarticulate inanity. A few select people will maintain coherent arguments, but for the most part... it's just not worth it. And, of course, you kinda just have to tolerate some people being on your list, family mainly.

Or shit up every possible post with pro-Pump/Colonel Slanders bullshit. Or anti-vaxx idiotology.

[WATCH-MAN]

Maybe it has something to do with what is argued and described here:

https://forum.questionablequesting.com/ ... -net.5417/

For those of you who dont know, SDN was once SBs younger rival, before SV. Long before. And for a while, had a larger userbase and more visitors. It also had a venomous, nasty reputation, and frequently started shit and got shit started with, and its owner, Mike Wong, used to have a hate mail section that was fairly active and to this day, a fun read.

Unlike most pre Chan online communities, SDN openly allowed users to insult, or "flame", the living dogshit out of each other. Now, its focus was almost purely "debate", and for a time, you could even hold certain views that were severely contrary to Wong, so long as you defended them. Although even way back, you could get banned on a moments notice. The two popular subjects were scifi and religion. I dont think there was ever any pretense of good faith(FUCKING LOL) on Mike Wongs part regarding religion.

Nowadays, the majority of the active pop are, or were, staff, that is mods. And Thanas in particular seems to live for logging in and finding someone to ban. Permanently. In fact, as time went on, I dont think SDN even kept handing out tempbans. No, it was perfection or gone for ever. And for the last long long time, Dalton has been running the site....mostly checking to see if there is anything to ban.

But why did it die? They didnt, evidently, ban everyone. Not enough pages of ban log.

You really answered your own question there.

When the choice is between a forum where you can actually debate and one that's forced to be an echo chamber for Mike Wong, people will naturally gravitate to the one that you can actually debate and participate in.

Wong, IIRC, tried to legitimately argue that having the President's official resort be called Camp David was akin to some european country naming their retreat "Camp Adolf." All because he viewed David from the Bible as a genocidal maniac? That's how crazy he was or is on the religion bandwagon.

I actually have fairly bittersweet memories of SDN since it was, I think, the second forum I ever registered for and the first one I participated in seriously (and was actually how I found out about SB in the first place, though I didn't start going there regularly until well after I was basically done with SDN). I was around middleschool age, and had just recently gotten internet access at home. I got into this tick-based online strategy game called Dark Galaxy and ended up poking around on the forums a bit. Someone started an ST vs SW debate and SDN ended up getting linked. The whole ethos there of 'it doesn't matter how an argument is presented, just whether or not it's logically/factually sound' that defined the site at it's peak really resonated with me and reading and participating there really had a big impact on me, as I went through middle and highschool. I ended up falling out with the place after an extremely ill-advised April Fools' 'prank' on my part towards the end of HS got me slapped with a hefty temp-ban and then no avatar or sig privileges and an insulting custom title after it expired. I came back a few times (including a while I spent participating at SDN's own splinter-board, New Testingstan), but I was never able to get my account privileges returned or my custom title revoked, so it always felt awkward trying to hold conversations with people when I was effectively wearing a dunce-cap for something I did as an idiot teenager.

Still, even with some of the obvious flaws in SDN's approach (and some of the flaws mirroring that approach created in me) I still can't help but look back on the place with fondness as the site that helped me articulate my feelings on religion, first got me interested in debating people and introduced me to fandom and fanfiction.

I was a member of SDN back in the day. In fact, the main site was how I found SB (in a roundabout way that started with me googling "M2 Bradley" and ended with me seeing one of Wong's rants on Spacebattles and deciding to see what that 'SB' he was talking about was). Ok, here's my opinion on why it failed:

In some ways, SDN was doomed from the start. That's probably hyperbolic and exaggerated, but it did have major structural weaknesses. The first and most prominent was that it was basically an extension of an old Usenet group. Take a look at any one big Usenet furball on any subject and you can see some similarities. Widespread flaming, and an attitude among many that any restraint or civility is a sign of wimpy weakness to be shown nothing but contempt. Many Usenet-izens also took that 'logic' and applied to boards-by their standards, board rules are nothing more than a shield for those weak wimps to hide beyond (a lot of groups were unmmoderated, and proudly so). So trying to take a lot of those attitudes and applying them to a structured, rule-filled board was bound to be tricky.

So it was always more insular than SB, and always had more of a "dominated by an old group of ol' buddies" feel even as many of the specific users left/got banned. It was also smaller than SB even at its height-slightly smaller rather than massively smaller, and SB was a fraction of its later size, but still generally had fewer users on. And it felt like it. The setup and culture basically enforced a lot of that insularity, with the Hall of Shaming and banning trophies, along with a feeling of "tread lightly or you'll get roasted" that SB never quite had. This was not conducive to new users. I could go on and on, but that's by far the biggest reason.

I have no schadenfreude at seeing SDN decline-there were good people there, and I did spend a lot of time there. But I nonetheless quietly slunk away, and many others evidently did the same. And I could see why.

I lurked there for a long time, found SB that way too. I could never register because IIRC they wouldn't accept free email accounts like hotmail, and I have to say I'm glad they didn't. The place was pretty oppressive and even though I often agreed with the 'establishment' at the time (mostly the anti-religion, anti-conservative stuff) I could see that they were just driving away users by discouraging, to put it mildly, any exchange of viewpoints. The history forum was pretty good but once that came under the tyranny of Thanas I rarely went back.

Thanas

who?

who?

I think it was the guy with a West Wing character for an avatar. He was given the history section and he mercilessly closed any thread that was even close to not being solely about history and any thread he considered that had gone off-point.

My most active time there actually coincided with the board's implosion beginning in earnest, with old-timers engaging in suicidal flamewars before my very eyes. The moment the viritol began being aimed inward, the whole board was bound to dissolve

Their 180 degree turn on Stuart Slade and his works (which arguably propped the board up for a little longer) was something to behold. He went from being a True Expert who was massively 'respected' by the entire board to someone who got heavily criticized, chased off, banned, and then mocked by all but his few remaining diehard supporters. When you combine that sort of "Oceania Has Always Been At War With ______Asia" shift with their attitudes, it wasn't a good sign.

[ray245]

I find the people complaining about SD.net hilarious, considering the standards of other forums.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Other forums have standards?! Oh," what the admin and his cronies says goes" must be a standard now.

[Crazedwraith]

Other forums have standards?! Oh," what the admin and his cronies says goes" must be a standard now.

Ironically that's what that thread is basically saying is that SDN is run that way.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

But, it isn't. I've been on forums( in particular The Star Frontiers revival forum formerly administered by Bill Logan and Larry Moore)where "what the admin and his cronies do is law," and this doesn't even come close.

This forum has rules that the staff attempt to apply to everyone fairly. Only Art Eaton's old starfrontiers.org forums even come close.

[Gandalf]

This forum has rules that the staff attempt to apply to everyone fairly. Only Art Eaton's old starfrontiers.org forums even come close.

Sure it's in the rules, but it certainly hasn't always been that way in practice.

[mr friendly guy]

Personally I think the site isn't so active due to decline in interest in its main topics. Star Wars vs Star Trek ( and to a lesser extent vs debates), and criticism of religious ideas. My general observation is, that atheists and secularists think the battle against religious forcing their views onto unwitting atheists and pushing secularism has largely been won, at least against the Christian right. Creationist in schools isn't a thing, and I remember KA Pital posting about the failures of ID being foisted onto the education system. I dare say these days, atheists seem more focussed on the "culture wars" than protecting the separation of church and state.

Combine with the fact that a lot of generic discussion can be had on social media and can reach a wider audience and its not a great combo. In fact, Mike still clearly enjoys mocking stupid people, just look on his facebook page.

I still suspect if you want to discuss a reasonably specialise topic, you're most probably better off on a message board dedicated to that than on social media. For example I lurk and occasionally post on boards discussing xianxia fiction, and I lurk on boards discussing Chinese economic and business news (even though they aren't its primary function, LOL). I don't think I can get that level of detail on social media.

Now onto the standards thing. I myself post less here nowadays due to real life. I do still enjoy that here at least, there are some standards. People have used spacebattles as an example, so I will use it as well. I remember back in the day at Spacebattles where someone could talk about AIDS killing off Africans and an idiot talking about pre emptively nuking China because they might one day become bigger than the US and nada, not a zip from mods.

These days at least Spacebattles have some more standards, but I got a warning for calling a person snowflake, after she complained about being called an idiot (by another poster) and how it dehumanises people... when she openly talks about mass killings of people she doesn't like (albeit using euphemisms). Yeah, this place at least had better standards even if I do disagree with the mods or Wong occasionally.

I still enjoyed the time on this board. The vs debate scene shaped up my interest in using maths to analyse fiction (useful for analysing xianxia fiction even if its purely for my own enjoyment and there most probably isn't a large crowd interested in my calcs detailing how much energy a particular character is utilising). I have also got great tips on electronic goods and travel tips. I also made friends here who I had the pleasure of meeting in real life, Lusakanya, K.A. Pital and Edi. These people I have contacts via facebook or email, so I am good even if one day Mike decides to pull the plug.

[TheFeniX]

I find the people complaining about SD.net hilarious, considering the standards of other forums.

I kind of miss being able to Google my online alias with a few other phrases and see people incensed at my very existence back when I ran a fairly popular Team Fortress 2 server for my gaming community. One exchange was great since, due to my profile, you could see the City, State I lived in. Some kid was like "Think we can get his info and someone can 'talk' to this asshole?" And someone responded with, "Dude, he lives in Texas. They hand out guns with Happy Meals down there. You'll be dead before you knock on the door." And another guy pointed out the multiple posts I had made in the OT forums about guns and self-defense. Then it devolved into "He must be a Waco style nutter, we should call the FBI blah blah" before the entire thread got deleted.

Ugh, GOD damn I was so mad when I lost those screen-caps when SWTOR (most likely) cratered my HDD.

These days at least Spacebattles have some more standards, but I got a warning for calling a person snowflake, after she complained about being called an idiot (by another poster) and how it dehumanises people... when she openly talks about mass killings of people she doesn't like (albeit using euphemisms). Yeah, this place at least had better standards even if I do disagree with the mods or Wong occasionally.

I always liked the people who avoided any moderator action by focusing on "safe words" with shit like "your mother should be ashamed of you" which is actually a pretty scathing insult if you think about it while I'd get actioned on other forums for saying shit like "they never should have scraped you out of your father's jerk-off sock." And channers have ruined a lot. "Butthurt" being one I can't use because supposedly they own it now even though it was a popular phrase among all my friend in the early-90s. You don't even know what triggers twitchy admins on a lot of forums.

[Dalton]

Nowadays, the majority of the active pop are, or were, staff, that is mods. And Thanas in particular seems to live for logging in and finding someone to ban. Permanently. In fact, as time went on, I dont think SDN even kept handing out tempbans. No, it was perfection or gone for ever. And for the last long long time, Dalton has been running the site....mostly checking to see if there is anything to ban.

[Dalton]

Yeah, "mockery of stupid people" went away. Everything I've done here was discussed with Mike and other moderators. My hope and my goal is to attract fresh blood and keep them around, maybe have things pick up a little. If you don't like the direction, that's fine, but I don't want anyone feel like they can't speak their minds without getting instantly throttled.

If you have a question or a concern, please by all means feel free to talk to me directly. Like Mike, I'm just a dude, not some monolithic entity wielding a banhammer.

[Iroscato]

I sometimes wish I were born a decade or so earlier. The internet in the late 90's - early 00's seemed like such a fun place, before all of the money in the world got poured into it and behemoths like Facebook and Reddit emerged. This board is practically an historical artifact of that period, and one that I hope continues for many years.
I seem to be noticing a recent uptick in activity too which pleases me - probably mainly due to there being new SW films to complain about and the United States now being run by six monkeys stuffed into an orange rubber skin-suit.

[TheFeniX]

I sometimes wish I were born a decade or so earlier. The internet in the late 90's - early 00's seemed like such a fun place, before all of the money in the world got poured into it and behemoths like Facebook and Reddit emerged. This board is practically an historical artifact of that period, and one that I hope continues for many years.

I'm just glad this is still here. Seeing what I see when I type in Jedi-Outcast.com is depressing in more than a few ways. Damn wayback machine isn't the same. I can see some stupid asshole made a post, but I can't mock him for being a stupid asshole because I can't read what he wrote.

"cl_parsepacketentities error means George Lucas hates you. Enjoy your ban."

It's not all complaints, but goddamn talking video games was much more fun before the console war bullshit.

[Ziggy Stardust]

These forums will always hold a pretty special place in my heart. Even though I didn't officially join the forums until 2006, I was lurking around here far earlier (must have been around 2001 when I first discovered the main site and Mike's fan fiction before gravitating towards the forums).

In fact, I actually recall my initial attempt to join the forums was rejected by our dear Dalton! IIRC, that was back when you weren't allowed to join with a free e-mail address account without specifically asking the admins for permission. I remember contacting Dalton but being denied an account, for reasons I no longer specifically recall. But I was 14 or 15 at the time, so likely for something idiotic I said.

In any case, I lurked for a couple more years before I ended up getting an account in 2006 (when I no longer had a free e-mail address, ha!). And this site really was a huge part of my education and development, in terms of learning to understand logic and critical reasoning.

The internet in the late 90's - early 00's seemed like such a fun place, before all of the money in the world got poured into it and behemoths like Facebook and Reddit emerged

Early internet was a strange and wonderful thing. Dial-up modems, AOL chat rooms (anybody else here remember the ol' Red Dragon Inn? One of the early fantasy role-playing chat rooms, GeoCities sites ...

[Dalton]

I have no memory of anything before, say, yesterday

[Formless]

Really, I don't understand some of the people who say this forum is "dead". Some of the subforums are dead, I'll grant you, like the VS forum or the STGODs, but does that qualify the forum as dead? No. The forum as a whole is still quite alive as far as I am concerned. Every day I come here and there is conversation going on, even if its just in News and Politics. The top threads of most forums are no more than a month old each, most less than a week or a day. There are more people who post actively than I can keep track of, even if certain personalities have far higher post rates than others, but what do you want? Twitter? I tend to think like Mike on this: I would rather have a slow contemplative conversation than a cesspit of spam any day. That's what keeps me coming back here as opposed to only getting my SF fix from i09.

There are forums I can find right now that are truly dead. Forums where no one posts, and the newest thread is years old. And I can think of forums that no longer exist at all. It was just a few years ago that Wizards of the Coast took down their forums, for instance. You cannot find that content anymore; its deader than dead. Its lost to the internet, perhaps only readable on the Wayback Machine (I haven't done the experiment). This place? Not dead. Certainly a little quieter, but the people are still here and I still see a few new faces appear every month. Certainly its not a lot of growth, but then again that could still change if we give new people a chance.

And no, I don't think its completely to do with social media. Someone else mentioned Reddit, although the software works quite differently. I would also cite the Curse network and its forums as being fairly active, as well as Giant in the Playground as evidence that a forum merely needs a niche to thrive despite social media being a thing. As far as I'm concerned, if you want to revive the forum, use it. Post threads about things that interest you, respond to threads that sound interesting, and don't just do this in N&P!

[Alferd Packer]

Early internet was a strange and wonderful thing. Dial-up modems, AOL chat rooms (anybody else here remember the ol' Red Dragon Inn? One of the early fantasy role-playing chat rooms, GeoCities sites ...

I think the fact that there was something truly new to experience every time you opened up your browser is the key. It's something that can never again be replicated. It was unique--call it the digital frontier.

And now the internet is basically the Times Square Applebees.

[The Romulan Republic]

I sometimes wish I were born a decade or so earlier. The internet in the late 90's - early 00's seemed like such a fun place, before all of the money in the world got poured into it and behemoths like Facebook and Reddit emerged. This board is practically an historical artifact of that period, and one that I hope continues for many years.

I'm pretty sure the internet's always been a gutter, to some extent.

I tend to liken it to Mos Eisley- "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." But now and then there will be a cantina with a cool band and a bad ass smuggler or Jedi to talk to.

I seem to be noticing a recent uptick in activity too which pleases me - probably mainly due to there being new SW films to complain about and the United States now being run by six monkeys stuffed into an orange rubber skin-suit.

This.

There's more contentious shit to talk about lately. The downside is that that also means more to rile people up, I suppose.

[Elheru Aran]

I had some thoughts before the weekend kicked in, but I lost them.

Just got them back, though. In brief:

--One major reason why the board got a lot of flak early on, I think, is that as far as I can recall it was one of the more moderated communities where rules were actually followed for quite a while. Usenet, other forums, etc-- flamewars and trolls everywhere. Then people come here, make a transgression, and people are quoting chapter and verse at them. Bit of a rude awakening for some. A newfound haven of sanity for others. This is less notable nowadays because forums, for those that still use forums, have become more like SDN in that moderators are more on duty and likely to enforce rules. Even social media is moderated to some degree; if people bother to report harassment and abuse, they can be banned.

--There has -always- been something of an 'old guard' here. When I joined it was the ASVS crowd. Then there was the Senate. Now it's mostly just a bunch of longtime members who essentially use this board as a way to keep abreast with each other. A lot of them also know each other on FB too, so it's not like they NEED the board, it's just a convenient way to interact with other people a little more anonymously. Yes, some people are a little more buddy-buddy with Wong than others. Since he's not really a presence here anymore, it doesn't particularly matter.

--Wong doesn't NEED the board. He's never (as far as I can recall anyway) asked for donations to keep the server operating. There's a small fee if you try to use a free email to register (not sure if that's still a thing). There was some discussion a while ago that implied the board itself makes some money via advertising revenue; no idea how much, no idea how relevant that is. Possibly enough to pay for itself. In which case, if it's revenue-neutral, he has no reason to take it down (or on the flipside, he's got no reason to keep it up, but presumably that would be a bit of a hassle because then he's got a disused server and power supply sitting around in his basement).

[Ace Pace]

And now the internet is basically the Times Square Applebees.

What a crock of shit. To avoid the main discussion topic, I want to pick on this one.

There are many other small internet forums. There are still active mailing lists. There's also big giant platforms like Reddit or FB, but they didn't make the rest useless, they just made the internet bigger and most of the new audience use those platforms.