I understand what folks want, but I don't understand why they think Wordforge is the answer

I understand that there are folks who want SERIOUS DISCUSSION of IMPORTANT ISSUES OF THE DAY.

That's great. Nothing wrong with wanting that. I wholeheartedly support that goal.

I just don't understand why some people think that Wordforge was ever a place where that occurred on a regular basis.

It fascinates me that people who have been here since the beginning want to believe that Wordforge has ever been different from what it is right now - drama, spam, juvenile antics, a cyber playground where people get to say things to each other we would probably never say in real life.

Sometimes good discussions break out, really entertaining threads. Not every day. It has to be something that inspires the best writers to contribute. But when one gets going, it's great.

There's a group of people here who seem to have become very disenchanted with Wordforge. They've fallen out of love with it. They stick around because they've been here for years, Wordforge is comfortable, it's familiar.

But familiarity has definitely bred contempt.

Wordforge hasn't changed, but it's members have. They've gotten older, and I think many of them have simply outgrown it. But they don't want to move on, because it's comfortable, and familiar.

I think they also know that other sites that purport to offer SERIOUS DISCUSSION of IMPORTANT ISSUES OF THE DAY are overrun with Neroon-like admins & moderators who increasingly censor speech and ban people along partisan lines. If you're on their side of the partisan divide, you celebrate the heavy-handed silencing of your political opponents. Not so fun if you're on the wrong side of the fence.

If you want an echo chamber where dissent is prohibited, there are countless places to go on the internet where that's offered in any political flavor you desire. If you feel like you need a "safe space" where people are punished for "offending" others by disagreeing with their socio-political opinions, you can find that too.

Wordforge, OTOH, is advanced citizenship (to borrow from Michael Douglas in American President).

Okay. So what does that tell you, flashlight, about where to go from here?

agree to a point, but what folks want is a better mousetrap - however I don't want you fuckers beating a path to my door, because you won't keep off my lawn. Hard pill to swallow, I know.

There's plenty of room over at Democraticunderground.com.

Best mouse trap is a cat.

The Green Room has always been there for more serious/moderated discussion, it's just that the people who claim to want that seem to want to have their cake and eat it, too. "But the Green Room isn't as active." Well, go make it active, then. Nothing is stopping you. If you want to post something in the Red Room, you get the lack of moderation with that, and to be honest, that's some of the draw. It's what makes Wordforge at least somewhat unique. You can totally just flame and generally bash on people for saying something you think is stupid here, which would get you warned or banned basically anywhere else. If you don't want that environment, that's what the Green Room is for, and frankly I think if people started using it more, it would pick up in there, and the mods would probably have their hands full because of how used to just being able to fling random flames/trolls most of us are from always being in the Red Room.

As the first mod of the Green Room (it was actually a bit of a pun on a certain habit of mine-for the first few weeks it was "miscellaneous"), I can safely assure you it was not created for "serious" discussions and I don't recall there ever being one in there... In part it fulfilled what the workshop and techforge eventually were created to do along with sports and other non political chats. When we had a few hundred active members, those offshoot forums were a helpful way to categorize. Now that we've but a fraction, it's a redundant "common room".

Maybe it should just be killed?

Or maybe it could be repurposed.

What about merging the Workshop and Techforge back in to it?

I'd rather see Techforge remain its own thing, but you could fold Camp Wordforge into the Green Room AFAIC.

I don't think this board will ever be what it once was, no matter who is admin and no matter what decisions are made.

We've lost too many members. Some were run off. Most left due to real life reasons. Some passed on. A few have been banned. With social media becoming ascendant, it will be even harder to get those people back.

We also have less stuff to talk about. Every possible political issue has already been discussed here multiple times. And everyone has pretty much staked out their opinions. Most of the people who are still here are strongly partisan and have made up their minds about various positions. What is the point of debating issues we'll never agree on?

We could talk about scifi or media but honestly there are better places for that. And the main interest we all had in common was Star Trek... but Trek is a pale shadow of what it once was.

The only reason we still come here is because we know each other pretty well, for better or worse. There is something amusing and nostalgic about the squabbling that still goes on here and it's interesting to pop in once in a while and see what the old gang is up to. But that's pretty much it.

WF needs more gimmicks to make it popular.

Perhaps we should bring back the arcade.

There was a point in 2009 where some wanted to debate and discuss topics without the rep issue and whatever other drama was taking over at the time. So we allowed flame free RR topic discusdion. The fact that you don't remember shows how quickly interest for that died off.

Once upon a time, oh about 20 years ago I thought the internet would be a great place discuss issues of the day. In a mere few minutes I realized I was wrong and it was just a bunch of nonsense so if I couldnt beat them, I might as well join them and I have been a comment board troll ever since.

The Internet is about cats and porn, that's about it. Oh, and world domination, too, but that's why the cats and porn are there, to serve as a distraction.

A lot of the past four years this place has probably resembled the left's parochial RL world, in which most of the surrounding pods agree with the orthodoxy, a few perfunctory or half-hearted attempts to contradict the religion of unity notwithstanding. They got spoiled, though every few months it was time again to reject the idea it's akin to a left wing circle jerk or echo chamber.

As with The Donald to follow The Obama, you sometimes get the reaction snapback you deserve if not the one you'd predict or desire. Life's a bitch that way.

we may disagree on many things, but I must admit - good call on cats & porn! Cats & porn saturate a large percentage of my consciousness. For example today I went bow hunting. 90 percent of this is done via ambush, a proven tactic in hunting or military tactics. So once you get set up, you have a long time to wait for your target to show up. Your mind will wander - you listen for squirrels barking (indicating a large moving creature like a deer is freaking them out) and sudden mass flights of small birds (they freak out over deer too). You scan your shooting lanes for movement - a tail wagging for example. But while you do all this your mind is on autopilot. So what to think about? Cats & porn of course!

eh. When I was in 8th grade we acted like 8th graders, 12 years later we acted better when we interacted with each other - more history, less immaturity. The passage of time DOES change us, we ARE older, and yeah, some of us have less tolerance for juvenile bullshit. Part of that is familiarity, part of it is increased respect, part of it is probably

and by that I do not mean "can't we all just get along. Sharp elbows are fine as long as the result has some value and is not redundant. It's not that trolling is bad, it's the lameness of so much of the trolling.

Indeed.

What happened to the Wordforge of old that trolled an entire fandom into thinking Jolene Blalock was going to quit Enterprise?

Yelling out racial epithets for shock value isn't trolling, it isn't subtle, it isn't impressive, it's just sad. Proper trolling is more akin to gaslighting someone.