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Jul - General Chat - The 'hidden' member group New poll - New thread - New reply
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Xkeeper

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Posted on 04-24-16 07:33:32 PM Link | Quote
q&a time!

Delpolo> I still don't know what's up with the green coins other than "oh well some people were given a bunch to buy items no one else can".

Green coins have generally just been a fun thing. Giving them out actually requires modifying the database, so it isn't something that was ever done often (and generally they weren't useful, it was just a number. For a while I think the status image in profiles couldn't even display it.)



StapleButter> green coins are a form of elitism

patently false, see above


StapleButter> like the "member+" thing
StapleButter> is there even anything going on in the member+ forums anymore

this, however, might take some more effort on my part to explain. i'll quote a larger chunk for context...

Lunaria> personally I don't see the point in the member+ thing myself, it just fractures the community
Lunaria> but what do I know
StapleButter> remnants of the "JustUs League" cra
StapleButter> p
RanAS> I think at least some discussion must be going on over there, since sometimes even when there's no new posts the Stats page will still register extra posts.
Lunaria> it could be in one of the hidden forums
StapleButter> kind of feels like "hey look we're having cool discussions but you aren't part of them"
StapleButter> but uh
Lunaria> huh, it is still there
RanAS> IIRC There's only one hidden forum that us normal members can access, and it's a town, not a forum.
StapleButter> what I miss is
StapleButter> for example
Lunaria> you'd think we'd trash these hidden fora that noe one ever posts in
Lunaria> no one*
StapleButter> you can look at the general forums of board2 or the AB archives
StapleButter> people would talk about whatever, get to know eachother etc
Lunaria> I personally prefer casual talking in irc form or similar
Lunaria> I generally never cared much for the "generals" threads
Lunaria> if that makes any sense
StapleButter> yeah


I didn't bother removing extra stuff, so just pay attention to only the relevant parts.

Here is what I had to say about most of it, from another "quiet" channel. (This one isn't related to board matters at all, but is mostly a deeply personal channel.)

[DigitalBasic] wow I actually looked in #x and thought i was in #super-x for a moment
[DigitalBasic] haven't seen that much discussion in there in years
[DigitalBasic] although it does make me sad looking at the conversation between #x and #super-x at the same time
[Q] Yeah
[DigitalBasic] #x was basically "there are posts in a private forum we can't see and it's weird we get nothing elsewhere" while #super-x is "well they know of our existence, guess that means they will not be like us"
[Q] Yeah
[Xkeeper] that has been an awkward separation for a long time
[Xkeeper] i think it was partially born out of my want to create a place like this, a small group for only certain people, a sort of "safe" core
[Xkeeper] but after a while it grew beyond that, into a sort of elite clique
[Xkeeper] (and then this place was created to make up for it, though it hasn't changed much and i'd like to think we all get along)
[DigitalBasic] yeah i've mentioned it before i'm sure
[Xkeeper] fun fact, there have been a few attempts by yrs.truly to fix this
[Xkeeper] none of them were really "strong" though, a lot of it was "no more posting in this forum please, use the other ones" and "chat in #x instead of here pls ? "
[DigitalBasic] but they won't listen because of that "elite clique" feel? at least from what i'm seeing
[Xkeeper] a little of that, probably
[Xkeeper] i'd like to believe it's also at least paritally because super-x is generally a 'safe space' closed off from potential bad actors
[DigitalBasic] i could understand that when #x had a lot of... questionable people joining up
[DigitalBasic] but i feel that hasn't happened in years


The long and short of it is mostly that the "member+" group was created as a sort of separate, safer place, for a group of people that were generally seen as able to get along with each other. It was seen as a way to lower the chances of intra-personal conflict and keep everyone happy, able to be more open and honest with one another.

That obviously isn't exactly how it worked out, and so we ended up with what you have now. The group generally kept to itself, since everyone in it was a known quantity, and from there few people interacted with everyone else in the community, so nobody had any suggestions for new additions. Basically, it closed itself off and sorta suffocated everything.

There are probably a lot of other factors going on in this mess, but I will say that having a private space to vent and talk about things has been a useful thing for a lot of people. It just wasn't supposed to be quite this divisive.


Anyway, that's that, feel free to ask me anything about it if you want (or yell at me or whatever else). This stuff wasn't really meant to be that secret.

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Arisotura
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Posted on 04-24-16 08:03:07 PM Link | Quote
Originally posted by Xkeeper
StapleButter> green coins are a form of elitism

patently false, see above

my point was that it could be a form of elitism, ie. "here have green coins because I like you/you're staff/whatever"

I feel better if it wasn't used that way, though (and I don't really care about green coins)



either way, thanks for the insight about all that


regarding the idea of keeping together people who get along well: it's not something you can completely control, you never know when relations might turn sour

I haven't been there the whole time so I can't tell how it went (other than the stuff that made it out, like the Liliana story), that's just my two cents

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RanAS
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Posted on 04-24-16 08:40:12 PM Link | Quote
I knew that there were some secret forums, but honestly I figured that most important discussion about the site and about the users wouldn't go there either way. I thought of it as a small place for a small group of people to talk about whatever, something that sometimes people need. Like chatting in private with your best buds. I never thought, and I still don't think that it would be used in a damaging way to the overall community, as long as it never really got to the point of "elites" StapleButter said below, wait that's not the right direction above.

I'm sorry, like, it's difficult for me to explain, but even though I knew of this "secret group", I knew that it probably wasn't anything mindblowing or anything bad or y'know something of the sort.

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Posted on 04-25-16 02:30:04 AM Link | Quote
It actually started out as the staff forum, and there were only a handful of people who had access. The local moderator status actually became the member+ status once the group got large enough. You can be the moderator of individual forums without having the local moderator status, all the status does is give you a different name color and access to another forum. The different name color was dropped to remove the idea of "supie" members being somehow "better" than others; and in this case, it's exactly as Xk said, it was just a small group of people who get along and therefore, stuff that's more personal could be shared.

The reason this group exists at all is a holdover from the old Acmlmboard days; a completely public community with several bad apples, some of which were staffers who weren't shy about showing that off. So plenty of conflict and eggshell-stepping was present. The smaller, private community came from the desire to have a community with people who weren't interested in being assholes to each other, plus the ability to open up about personal issues without the whole internet knowing about it. It was never meant to be an elitist club at all, and nobody with access to those forums feels like they're "better" than anyone else here.

However, most of us have stayed in the private portion of the community for so long that we only actually know the people who are there, and haven't met any of the newer people who've joined more recently, which becomes a feedback loop of being uncomfortable stepping out. For a while, we "promoted" newer users once we saw how they posted and knew they weren't prone to the immature behaviors of the old days, but all that did was balloon the group to the point where there's enough people for it to be its own community, which doesn't help.



tl;dr: Small group of people who wanted to get away from a larger group of people full of conflict and wanted to be able to be more open about personal stuff without the threat of being attacked. It grew over time and is basically its own community now which is why some members stay there instead of venture out here. No elitism or anything like that.

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Lunaria

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Posted on 04-25-16 01:42:24 PM (last edited by Lunaria at 04-25-16 01:42:52 PM) Link | Quote
I never really was too keen on the idea of the member plus thing, but it's kind of hard to put into word exactly what I find problematic about it though. I realise that it was probably not the intention, but it somewhat makes me feel that regular users are just second grade members, not good enough to take part in all of what the community has to offer.

I also think that it simple crates a needless divide between people here, especially given how slow Jul is these days in regards to activity.

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Shadic
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Posted on 05-02-16 01:28:15 AM Link | Quote
Xkeeper

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Posted on 05-06-16 10:49:53 PM Link | Quote
There has been a fairly substantial push to migrate the attitude back towards using the public spaces, for what it's worth. It's not always easy (I have to remind people fairly frequently ) but I'm doing what I can.

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Jul - General Chat - The 'hidden' member group New poll - New thread - New reply


Rusted Logic

Acmlmboard - commit 47be4dc [2021-08-23]
©2000-2022 Acmlm, Xkeeper, Kaito Sinclaire, et al.

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