The atmosphere of the forum...

Questions and comments
Gilberto de Piento
Posts: 1942
Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2013 10:23 pm

Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

It’s also not lost on me that my presence is toxic and maybe I should be the one to leave.
I don't think this is the case unless I missed something really bad. Is there something specific you are talking about?

Fish
Posts: 570
Joined: Sun Jun 12, 2016 9:09 am

Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by Fish »

@GdP - I should have amended that as “toxic to some.” To understand the concern, see
viewtopic.php?p=186158#p186158 and viewtopic.php?p=186174#p186174 (my response here) and imagine there being several people out there who refuse to participate because I appear to be passing silent (and sometimes not-so-silent) judgment on contributors here. @C40 has also mentioned that my debacle thread also chilled at least one forum regular who stopped posting. So I am aware that I do have an effect on others, through the side effects of my good intentions.

I consider everyone on the forum to be posting with generally positive intent, so I am judging myself not by intentions but rather the same metric that everyone cares about---results.

Add: Just to clear the air, I will take @Seppia’s advice and mention that I was only thinking of @TopHatFox and @frugal as I was writing that forum ethics thread. THF has since upped his game and also proven himself to be a massive generator of serendipity as a conversation starter. I may not have an apology for @frugal (yet) but I certainly owe the forum one.
Last edited by Fish on Wed Mar 20, 2019 10:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

daylen
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Location: Lawrence, KS

Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by daylen »

@fish Be careful drawing conclusions about what posts / members made other members leave / withdraw. Reality is often more complex, and what someone writes here may not be representative of the attitudes they employ off forum. Sometimes things just need to be delt with elsewhere and recent forum activity could be misleading.

theanimal
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Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by theanimal »

@Fish- FWIW, I think it'd be a major loss to the forum if you left.

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C40
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Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by C40 »

Fish wrote:
Wed Mar 20, 2019 10:20 am
@C40 has also mentioned that my debacle thread also chilled at least one forum regular who stopped posting.
Good news - he is back. :D

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Jean
Posts: 1890
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Location: Switzterland

Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by Jean »

I really like the exposure to people I disagree with. Please don't leave.

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Seppia
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Location: South Florida

Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by Seppia »

Fish wrote:
Wed Mar 20, 2019 8:23 am
It’s also not lost on me that my presence is toxic and maybe I should be the one to leave. :?
Excuse me for turning this thread into a love fest, but no, don’t leave.
You have some of the best threads and posts I can recall since I joined.
If I could be allowed a sugegstion, while 99.99999% of the internet doesn’t think enough before posting, you may be the only person I know that I would say thinks a bit too much :)

daylen
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Location: Lawrence, KS

Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by daylen »

Some signals require a specific type of noise to emerge. The boundary between the signal and the noise is dependent on biased observers. Bias is path dependent and shared paths are rare with respect to finite human existence. Generally, all paths tend to agree more on signals with very long or very short frequencies; in between is the domain of complexity, emergence, and non-linear behavior. An overly serious interpretation of complexity fails reliably.

Not sure what that means for humor, but some acceptance of chaos is likely required for some long term stability. A stable definition of chaos is another story. :)

TopHatFox
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Location: FL; 25

Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by TopHatFox »

Looks like the thread on compassion turned into arguments :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

plantingourpennies
Posts: 99
Joined: Mon Jun 25, 2012 12:11 am
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Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by plantingourpennies »

@black_son_of_gray expressed most of my thoughts better than I could. Two small additions-

1 There are many places on the internet to argue about politics, but really only one to discuss ERE. I would support tighter moderation of political topics, and looser moderation of ERE matters.

2. I am an example of what b_s_o_g stated below-speech silences other speech. Mostly I am a lurker, but the political arguments that consumed the forum in 2016-17 were too much. Yes, their form was appropriate, but their content was too much for me, so I largely left.

We are here to discuss, pontificate, and wax poetically about ERE...if we trade focusing on ERE to focus on constant political bickering then we've surely made a poor trade. ERE unites the forum, politics will almost always divide it.

Good to have Ego back.
black_son_of_gray wrote:
Sun Mar 17, 2019 4:16 pm
2. Speech silences other speech, and WYSIATI. <snip> When someone makes a "borderline" post right on the edge of community standards, we see that post… but we don't see all the posts that have been stymied (which could be many), we don't hear from users who have been "chilled" (which could be many), we don't see new members sign up that were ready to chime in but reconsidered (which could be many). So, we tend to underestimate the negative effects simply because we can't see them.

Freedom_2018
Posts: 479
Joined: Sat Dec 18, 2010 12:10 am

Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by Freedom_2018 »

One other suggestion to do with the structural layout of the forum which could alleviate some of these problems (BTW I am surprised for all the damn self declared NT rationals out here, how little focus is on a structural solution versus a he said, she said, please don't go type of approach WTF :-)

Instead of engineering and fixing people and human nature why don't we fix some structural stuff and see if that works.

How about increasing the number of forum sub-headings ..like in the MMM forums (I know I know it is a dirty word around here but hear me out)...for example I have been EREd over 6 years so I don't care so much about reading 'on the way to ere posts' so on say the MMM forum I occasionally check to see any interesting in the Investor or PostFIRE section or if I need some laughs, go to Wall of Shame stuff.

Looks like we do have a fair number of forum subheadings (I checked as I was typing this)..so why can't people just go into the category they want and not go into categories they don't want.

Could it be that the problem is too few active people (like I said in my first post on this thread topic)??? Lurkers don't count in impacting the culture of the forum but are quietly reading and smiling or cringing as the active folks post...only to surface occasionally into a 'safe space'.

prognastat
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Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by prognastat »

m741 made a topic kind of related to a more structural solution:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10514&p=185402&hilit=filter#p185402

I didn't use it because I do like seeing everything, but it's still a clever way to remove the categories of topics you aren't interested in. Chances are it wouldn't be hard to write one that hides those unwanted categories from the homepage too.

Also there is a Chrome extension called tampermonkey that should work the same as greasemonkey.

From my understand as far as server side code changes JLF doesn't want to have to write and maintain custom code.

EDIT:
Added to m741's script to make it more comprehensive in it's blocking of unwanted categories:

Code: Select all

// ==UserScript==
// @name         ERE Filter
// @version      1.1
// @description  Filters unwanted categories from the ERE forums
// @author       m741, Prognastat
// @match        https://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/search.php?search_id=unreadposts
// @match        https://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/index.php
// @match        https://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/search.php?search_id=newposts
// @match        https://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/search.php?search_id=unanswered
// @match        https://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/search.php?search_id=active_topics
// ==/UserScript==

const filteredForums = [
// 'Introduce yourself',
// 'ERE Journals',
// 'ERE Community',
// 'Money Questions',
// 'Skills &amp; Tools Questions',
// 'Lifestyle Questions',
// 'Health Questions',
// 'Work &amp; Education',
// 'Housing Questions',
// 'Transportation Questions',
// 'Friends &amp; Family Questions',
// 'Inspiration',
// 'Politics, and other eternal disagreements',
// 'Resources &amp; Recommended Reading',
// 'ERE Book/Blog/Forum',
// 'Miscellaneous',
// 'Administrative',
];
for (const element of document.getElementsByClassName('row')) {
  for (const forum of filteredForums) {
    if (element.innerHTML.indexOf(forum) >= 0) {
      element.parentNode.removeChild(element);
    }
  }
}

User avatar
Bankai
Posts: 986
Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2014 5:28 am

Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by Bankai »

bigato wrote:
Wed Mar 20, 2019 4:54 pm

Another thing that annoys me to no end is that you have to click on the topic *AND THEN* click "first unread post". Why on earth doesn't it just show you the first unread post by default when you click the topic?
I just click the red bit on the left from the topic title and it brings first unread post for that topic, so just 1 click.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9369
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

We could start a thread where we read and discuss "ERE" line by line, like a bible study group.

I have led or belonged to many real world book groups, and it is ALWAYS the case that it is difficult to keep the conversation on the book (which maybe half the members actually finished reading) and off of gossip, strange tangents, or "what's for snacks?" That's why there are lists of useful questions provided with Recommended for Book Group books. Opening the book at random to get us started:

1) What is contingency goal-setting?
2) How does Liebig's Law of the minimum relate to contingency goal-setting?
3) Why is problem solving simplified if problems are kept "small, slow, and diversified?"
4) How have you applied what you learned from the Contingency Goal-Setting section of "ERE" to your own life-style design?

Edited to add: Lightbulb moment! I vote that anybody who hasn't actually read the book by midnight this Sunday be kicked off the forum, but It's okay if you have to put yellow sticky notes on the pages you didn't understand. That's what study and discussion groups are for.

prognastat
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Location: Texas
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Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by prognastat »

EDIT
Doesn't work right, was testing with the wrong string.

Alright one more update on the tampermonkey/greasemonkey script.

The following will remove the unwanted categories from just about everywhere and anything your search on the ERE forums you simply remove the // from in front of the unwanted categories:

Code: Select all

// ==UserScript==
// @name         ERE Filter
// @namespace    http://tampermonkey.net/
// @version      2.0
// @description  Filters unwanted categories from the ERE forums
// @author       Prognastat, m741
// @match        https://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/search.php?search_id=unreadposts
// @match        https://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/index.php
// @match        https://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/search.php?search_id=newposts
// @match        https://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/search.php?search_id=unanswered
// @match        https://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/search.php?search_id=active_topics
// @match        https://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/search.php?keywords=*
// ==/UserScript==

const filteredForums = [
// 'Introduce yourself',
// 'ERE Journals',
// 'ERE Community',
// 'Money Questions',
// 'Skills &amp; Tools Questions',
// 'Lifestyle Questions',
// 'Health Questions',
// 'Work &amp; Education',
// 'Housing Questions',
// 'Transportation Questions',
// 'Friends &amp; Family Questions',
// 'Inspiration',
// 'Politics, and other eternal disagreements',
// 'Resources &amp; Recommended Reading',
// 'ERE Book/Blog/Forum',
// 'Miscellaneous',
// 'Administrative',
];
if (window.location.href.indexOf("https://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/search.php?keywords=") == -1) {
    for (const element of document.getElementsByClassName('row')) {
        for (const forum of filteredForums) {
            if (element.innerHTML.indexOf(forum) >= 0) {
                element.parentNode.removeChild(element);
            }
        }
    }
} else {
    for (const element of document.getElementsByClassName('search')) {
        for (const forum of filteredForums) {
            if (element.innerHTML.indexOf(forum) !== -1) {
                element.parentNode.removeChild(element);
            }
        }
    }
}

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jennypenny
Posts: 6851
Joined: Sun Jul 03, 2011 2:20 pm

Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by jennypenny »

Why does there need to be a system or code in place? Can't you just skip what you don't want to read? I usually skip the threads on things like bikes, job hunting, polyamory, etc, because they don't pertain to me. It's not that big a deal. I skip over news articles I'm not interested in when I read the paper and news websites, too. Doesn't everyone? I'm not sure why this is even a thing?


@Fish -- Don't leave. This forum specializes in overanalyzing everything. You fit right in. :)

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Mister Imperceptible
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Joined: Fri Nov 10, 2017 4:18 pm

Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

Yeah, no one sitting at the freaks table is asking anyone to leave the cafeteria. We are just emphasizing the right to fling peas everywhere because divergence is intregral to the advance of civilization and the evolution of mankind, or something.

Tyler9000
Posts: 1758
Joined: Fri Jun 01, 2012 11:45 pm

Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by Tyler9000 »

I'm apparently more similar to JP, as the idea of only reading certain categories doesn't even occur to me. It's always "Active Topics" that shows me everything. I read what looks interesting and skip anything that doesn't strike my fancy, and I find lots of interesting things that way that I'd never think to look for. In the spirit of Jacob's call to be the example you want to see in the world, I think we'd all benefit from focusing less on filtering out what you don't want and more on posting the quality content that you do want.

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C40
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Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by C40 »

Mister Imperceptible wrote:
Wed Mar 20, 2019 8:07 pm
Yeah, no one sitting at the freaks table is asking anyone to leave the cafeteria. We are just emphasizing the right to fling peas everywhere because divergence is intregral to the advance of civilization and the evolution of mankind, or something.
One of the problems with the internet and forums: people can fling peas all day long on anyone and everyone, and there is no possibility/option for someone who got hit with one too many to walk over and smash the pea flinger in the head with a lunch tray.

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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: The atmosphere of the forum...

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

Usually it would not have too much of an effect considering many pea flingers already had their heads smashed repeatedly in childhood and are now just demonstrating that the human spirit is irrepressible.

But I do feel bad in a way for those who never had their heads smashed and now feel the delicate rain of peas to be an unbearable onslaught.

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