Members Only Lounge?

[Brian Ellis]

As I write, the Yes vote is 8/18. I would suggest a 2/3 majority for a constitutional change. Quite frankly, I'm not interested in the exact location of where anyone works or his salary or whether he is shagging three girls at once. My feeling is that if you cannot post it here, then you should not post it anywhere, because it's not my onions. As for the invitation to ad personem attacks, that is just plain ridiculous. May I respectfully suggest that the proponents of this fantasy may care to think a little about growing up?

[Claymonkey]

As I write, the Yes vote is 8/18. I would suggest a 2/3 majority for a constitutional change. Quite frankly, I'm not interested in the exact location of where anyone works or his salary or whether he is shagging three girls at once. My feeling is that if you cannot post it here, then you should not post it anywhere, because it's not my onions. As for the invitation to ad personem attacks, that is just plain ridiculous. May I respectfully suggest that the proponents of this fantasy may care to think a little about growing up?

Ouch? Like I said it was an idea, and if people don't want it that's fine. Maybe the job example was a bad one, and I don't think the people here are the type to talk about shagging in forum anyway. I hate public journals for a reason, and most of them you just summarized just now.

The yes votes all came fast and early. The no/maybe votes have come in since then. Having something just to have it is silly. Taking a moment to argue from you side, we have several sub-forums in the Lounge that were created to keep things civil. They did there job to law down the law but honestly how often are they honestly used? Most of us just learned how to post threads that still fit in the general forum.

[cjolley]

Put it up and see if there is a market for it.
I don't think I'd post much that I don't already, but I don't see a problem with it.

[Brian Ellis]

Taking a moment to argue from you side, we have several sub-forums in the Lounge that were created to keep things civil. They did there job to law down the law but honestly how often are they honestly used?

I don't think that that is relevant. I, for one, stopped using the Temp forum many years ago a) because of the ad personem attacks and b) because my opinions were so at odds with others' and my voice crying in the wilderness was totally lost. In short, it was a waste of time. When the Political/Religion board was started I did not participate to avoid the same problems. (I have started, I think 2 threads in it where it was a political issue that affected me directly, such as the election of a communist president to this country). The Science and Military one, I have participated in on the Science side, but not on the Military side, for similar reasons. Unfortunately, real science, i.e., knowledge, (as opposed to hypotheses and junk science) is relatively rare in it.

[Gurm]

I'm torn on this.

Once in a while I _do_ feel a need to vent, to you guys, in a manner which ... well, probably shouldn't be publicly tracked back to me.

HOWEVER, things here ARE fairly anonymous - as these things go.

Perhaps our resident hairy admin could simply make the forums unspiderable? Or maybe he already has - I haven't tried to google anything I've posted on here in a long time!

...

Ok I take it back, google brings up MURC right at the darn top of the results if you put in relevant keywords. Ack! I gotta stop posting here!

[dZeus]

Ok, what about a bit more secrecy by obfuscation:
When you're not a super-murcer, you'll see a randomly generated username as poster name for each post in this forum. (with randomly generated I mean: not picked from the list of users, but from some random list which for example only contains names of animals)
When you're logged in as a super-murcer, you'll see the original username of the person who posted?

[Fat Tone]

I don't see why Brian needs to be getting so pissed about this. How could he object to having a private area on murc for a small group of regulars where they can be as open as they want. There are some genuine frendships here (or at least as close as can be when you rarely if ever meet face to face).

I'd say if it went forward it should be up to murcers to request access from the relevant moderator. There's an obvious group of 20-30 to start.

And Brian, if you don't want to know which three birds I'm shagging, don't look.

[Gurm]

Ok, what about a bit more secrecy by obfuscation:
When you're not a super-murcer, you'll see a randomly generated username as poster name for each post in this forum. (with randomly generated I mean: not picked from the list of users, but from some random list which for example only contains names of animals)
When you're logged in as a super-murcer, you'll see the original username of the person who posted?

See I think Damian's point was that we DIDN'T want to make the great hairy one do a lot of new coding. *grin*

[Jessterw]

I haven't been posting here near as much as I used to (not for lack of want), so I'm not sure how much I would use such a private area; however, I definitely see the benefit.

The biggest issue is defining what gives a member the ability to take part or view the private sub-forum? Merely basing it on something like post count or how long someone has been member is both too restrictive and open. Of course, basing it on most anything else becomes more of a manual administrative task, at least initially.

I'm not sure, but I think most of us long-time members personally know, have met, or has spoken on the phone with one or more others. I could be wrong about that, but having one of those be true for access to the private area might be a good starting point. Obviously that's probably not needed for the core group of us that we basically already know are 'trusted' and there will be cases where exceptions will need to be made (in either direction).

[Claymonkey]

See I think Damian's point was that we DIDN'T want to make the great hairy one do a lot of new coding. *grin*

See Gurm just made my point in some ways. He knows me personally, and used my first name either on purpose for the point of this discussion or just out of habit. I know a lot of us do this as well for everyone we know personally (like JW said above). I knew Murc comes up at the top of the list if you google claymonkey. This is the forum I post to the most. If I join a forum that I don't want to be easily googled I use a different username that doesn't google well. However for art sites and here... claymonkey is more than fine.

JW's idea on how to add users seems like a good one. The core group gets access default since we can look at the list and go "yes, yes, no, yes, no, no" pretty easily looking at the Super Murcer+ group. There will be a few straight Murcers likely added too. After that asking to join AND being known in some way other than here by at least one member of the private lounge would be required. Of course if you're in the core user group and you don't want access.. that's easy to yank too.

As Fat Tone said we all have some pretty close friends here at this point. When I started posting here in what was it? 2002? I was in Oregon and became pretty close to a handful of people here. After moving back to Boston, Gurm and I actually met and I pulled him in to my company because after knowing him here.. I KNEW he knew computers enough not only be a part of my company, but be hired in above me. NM that both of us escaped that company practically screaming recently.

Will I use the private forum a lot? *shrug* I just know that I don't necessarily want people who google me for my art/background check finding out things because they read them here. Mind you I tailor my posts currently to avoid that, but now the argument is just getting circular.

[Helevitia]

I voted yes, but I have to get on a conf call so I'll post my thoughts later

[Mehen]

So whats the deal? Y/N? Or are we just gonna forget about it...? (asking you now Sasq )

[Nowhere]

You do all know that this would be formal confirmation of "stagnant/dying community" status? Sure. it'll take a while untill we all die out, but I wouldn't count on new members (what will bring them here, Matrox subforum? )

That said...I'm a bit torn on the idea. Yeah, seems nice...but I'm not sure my safe place on the net for venting is a good thing for you all

[Jessterw]

Well for all intents and purposes we're a rather stagnant community. Sure we have a relatively small number of new members trickle in, but most of those never become active participants. The core community hasn't changed much for years.

I'd be more than happy to see the whole Matrox part of the side become a semi-static archive of information, while the actual community portion become more of a private affair.

*shrug*