New Atari Discussion Forums
Kjmann's Atari Sales
After getting tired of all the bad attitudes on AtariAge recently, I started
working on putting up a new atari discussion board.
I just finished it today.
hopefully This one will not attract the freaks. LOL
Check it out!
=)
ricortes
wrote:
I think it works the other way around.<grin>
Rick
kjmann
I'm a little confused at your response. =)
ricortes
>
> - Show quoted text -
I started a forem so I could make some posts and get everything backed
up to The Wayback archive automatically. In about 2 months I have
banned ~1,200 accounts. The nut jobs are the first to show and in the
greatest numbers. I've spent more time banning people then anything
else. Blanket ban of anyone with a gmail account helped cut down on
time spent banning people but the irony is I have to give it an email
address other then my gmail account or I would be banned too.
Rick
Simon Wells
So basically what you are saying is, you didn't like the reaction to
your Atari products and decided to start your own forum? Interesting!
Going from an established, well used, well liked forum and starting
your own just because of a few negative comments (whether true or not)
seems a bit of a knee jerk reaction. Now you have to grow your own
site to sell your products, reducing your market by a significant
margin. More forums just dilutes the knowledge and spreads it further
around, a BIG negative for the Atari community.
Maybe just grow a thicker skin?
kjmann
Comments on any of the products I sell are a VERY small percentage of
the poor behavior on AtariAge.
There is a lot of negativity on AA. What is Sad is that AA was
originally started by some people who wanted to get away from the
nasty people on some of the discussion forums of the time. But now it
seems that AA is turning into what it was originally created to get
away from.
I'm not the only one who feels this way and I didn't start this new
forum to sell the products in my store. I didn't need a forum for
that. less than 10% of my sales are from AtariAge People. Not that I
don't welcome the Patronage from those that come from there, but it
does remain a fact most of my sales are from people who don't even
frequent the forums.
Besides, I don't think its unreasonable to want to chat about these
things in a Civil environment, free of insults and rantings by people
who have opinions that are not shared by others. a lot of those type
of people tend to hammer on others when they don't agree with them.
ricortes
>
> - Show quoted text -
FWIW: Occasionally I look at other forums including Atari Age. No
great loss but life has me relatively too busy to take part in more
then my occasional post here. AA seems like a good and well run forem
but sheesh the hankie fights get out of control! I thought the Nolan
Bushnell thread was filled with particularily vicious and uncalled for
comments.
*BUT* the same kind of stuff sometimes happens here and just about any
other forum. I think you could just about have questions on a user
profile that would sort them out. Seems to identify:
Mostly unmarried/unloved.
Dropped out of school after a couple of years of college.<Their
teachers had it in for them!>
Thinks they are smarter then everyone but 2-3 Watson and Crick types.
Believes they have perfect recall on all topics.
When facts and their personal beliefs don't jive, they stick with
personal beliefs.
Strange connection to CB or Shortwave radio. Not that there aren't
great people involved in those hobbies, just that they attract some
real wierdos.
Their opinions are not just opinion but what should be a shared
reality.
They aren't bound by the rules of society like polite conversation or
meaningful contribution to discussions.
Rick
kjmann
I haven't seen things like that in users profiles before but I haven't
considered looking at some of the profiles on AA before. Perhaps I
should. LOL
Sounds like there are some people that are in severe need of
counciling hopping around the net these days. =)
As for the Nolan Bushnell Thread, Your Right. It got ridiculous after
a while, as have some other in the past. =)
Bill Kendrick
<snip>
> Sounds like there are some people that are in severe need of
> counciling hopping around the net these days. =)
"These days" going back to the beginning, I think. ;)
--
-bill!
Sent from my computer
Edward S. Baiz Jr.
Falcon030 with 16meg of ram
The Doctor
I'm not sure that I understand the point. You're going to host
a newsgroup or groups via HTTP instead of NNTP? Why not just host an
actual Atari BBS via emulator? That way you could put up some
ATASCII/ASCII games to play. Otherwise just run your own NNTP server.
(like the makers of elinks did)
And anyway, you have to sign up just to read the message boards? I'm not
going to go through the effort of doing that just to preview the boards
so that I know whether I want to sign up or delete my newly created
account. Plus even the login page utilises TABLEs. I can only imagine
the TABLE hell that I would endure once I "got in".
(but, then again, most HTML BBSes are TABLE hells)
OAnd it seems to like to use explicit tags like B when it should be
using implicit tags like EM (or STRONG).
I can't understand why anyone would want to use a HTML BBS. NNTP lets
your newsreader sort and arrange message lists to your heart's content.
You can see the list of articles sorted by subject or just see a list
sorted purely by date.
(useful for very low volume groups)
And, of course, it (the newsreader) keeps track of what messages have
been read or not.
And last but not least; why should we leave this newsgroup at all. It's
a public newsgroup that everyone should become aware of the moment they
type "*atari*" into their newsreader. So this is the natural forum to
make everyone's main focus so as not to splinter the Atari community. It
literally needs no advertising.
--
The Doctor
Hornet
>your newsreader sort and arrange message lists to your heart's content.
Which is great if you use NNTP. Let's face it, the overwhelming
majority of casual net users (and even dedicated net users) don't even
know what NNTP is. An HTML web site is still the way to go if you want
to involve a majority of interested people in an Atari discussion. By
limiting the discussion to the newsgroups you will always have access
to the six or seven regulars who check in daily - don't, however,
expect ot get much in the way of a wide-ranging discussion about
anything.
Hornet
ricortes
Ironically I think it is the "wide-ranging discussion" that got KJ to
act. Yeap, NNTP has its flaws: No binaries, no images, et cetera. On
the other hand NNTP and Doc's bbs are the last places you can connect
with a real Atari. Probably not a frequently required perk but still
kind of neat in its own way.
To a large extent the web boards are a bit of an illusion. For
instance we traditionally honor intellectual property rights here so
pirated software was frowned upon. We also are mostly non commercial
once again from tradition that dates back to when NNTP was run on
college computers and it ads weren't allowed. Ever go to a party where
people only talk in their little circle of friends? You put [anti
piracy, pirates, non commercial, commercial, hankie fighters, why
can't we all just get along?, ...] together in the same room you end
up with a full room of people that aren't relating to each other.
There are other traditions that certainly predate my presence here.
You would have to go back to the Cleveland Freenet and do some
digging. I'm comfortable with the existance of NNTP and the few bbs's
that remain. Kind of a secure feeling.
Rick
Hornet
>that remain. Kind of a secure feeling.
I'm not saying that NNTP is a "bad" or "worse" forum for discussion,
what I am saying is that it is very much unknown to the vast majority
of online users and has a (very) limited discussion population.
Yes, web-based forums leave themselves open to abuse. But still,
that's where the people are.
Dave
ricortes
It's hard not to use personal examples to agree with you. If you get
here from google groups, there are ~288 c.s.a.8 members using their
interface, me too. I started an SMF based board about ~2 months ago so
I'd have a place to post personal junk and so far I have had to BAN
over 1,200 users and have 400 members who haven't given me reason to
ban them yet. I figure 90% of them are bots or spiders. That's
certainly where the people are and abuse is rampant.
Rick
Hornet
Here in eastern Pennsylvania I take the Reading Eagle newspaper. It's
a pretty good sized-town and the paper is a typical large-town paper.
Last year they went to a web-based feedback forum to make it easier
and faster for people to respond and communicate with them. Last week
they stopped the service because of "rampant hate-mail and racist
abuse."
I dunno. Sign of the culture perhaps. The easier technology makes it
to communicate, the more people have to screw it up. Damn shame
though.
Dave.
RetroJess
now completely out of the main stream, but what is an
'SMF based board' and where would one find your board?
-Jess
"ricortes" <rico...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:1d47b755-67cb-4970...@v6g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
ricortes
> Pardon me for being over 30 when we got our first 400 and
> now completely out of the main stream, but what is an
> 'SMF based board' and where would one find your board?
>
> -Jess
SMF => Simple Machines Forum just a prerolled message forum. Kind of
like the Red Hat of forums.
Yes, I have a black sense of humor that you may not find funny.<grin>
By my own admission it's pretty sucky excuse for web space. There are
excuses and there are reasons. Mostly fortunate time burner reasons
like grandkids birthday parties but it takes time away from coding and
soldering to ban 1200 people!
Rick