I might as well throw in my two bits as well.
Martin Bennett scribed:
My point was that IMHO, changing the ML was both uneccessary and a shame
because it was a fun, cheerful and entertaining place before hand. I
really feel that there is no point in changing something that isn't
broken, and FFML ain't broke!
As far as I could see, the situation in the ML was fine before all of
this upheaval happened and I think, just from the reduced message load
(which I caused most of), that people are now posting less because the
mood here has taken a sudden change for the worse. We used to be all
friends here, now I'm not so sure...
>From my perspective as a one time major spammer here, and now a mostly lurker,
Martin is right. My first post to the list was a spam during the infamous
Passion Spice thread. Now *that* was an out of control Spam thread, however,
it also indicates just how much things have changed here. That was a thread
that generated over a *hundred* messages a day for 2 weeks before *ANYBODY*
started complaining. Now, however, if a Spam thread goes for more then a day,
we get people giving everything from polite requests <a good thing> to
border line flames to kill it. I understand that some of the Spam is out
of control, but I've seen the attempts made at controling it only make
matters worse. A lot of the veterens who posted a lot back then don't
post at all now. I know that a lot of them have gottenn too busy with RL to
post much, but not all of them. Others have lost access to the 'net or had
other reasons for leaveing, and thats a shame. The ML has lost a lot of
the friendly sharing that happened then. Its still a friendly place, but as
time moves on, I've seen less and less of that here. Also, the Spam has gotten
worse because the constant calls for cutting down on the Spam has generally
killed off the good Spam as its first casualty, leaving mostly the annoying
noise. Going back to the Passion Spice example, there most people on the ML
used .sig characters for interaction, a good form of writing practice.
However, they were one of the first casualties of the anti-spam crusades.
Admittedly, they could be abused, which is mostly what i did with mine,
but when they were lost, a valuable tool was as well. The anti-spam crusades
have also killed off the ML generated Spam 'fics. From my POV, these were
essentially round robin type stories that were open to the entire ML to
add whatever they want. The true Spam 'fics no longer happen here
anymore and another tool for practicing writing has been lost. All of
the attacks against Spam have only accomplished stopping the stuff that was
even marginally helpful to the ML and made it so that the majority of the
Spam that is being generated now is true noise, like people have pointed out.
The ML has really lost a lot due to this, and I'm truely sorry for it.
I don't know if the mood is quite as bad as what I stated before, but
I DO know for certain that it's not what it was...and that's a shame.
I still say that the SPAM is what gave the ML it's character, but it
seems I'm in the minority and the "wiser heads" are going to prevail,
so there is really not much more that can be said.
If you are in the minority, you can consider me a member of it as well.
P-word.
PS: Appologies to WW, I was too hard on him.
My apologies for this rant as well, especially to WW, who really does try hard
and deserves our respect.