Towards 2009: The First Programme For The Glorious Advancement of the Machine Nation Project.

Using the economics theme as an example, it might be interesting to present this kind of project as a fortnightly seminar.

For example, someone like Art-T could present a short seminar (using text and graphs) at an agreed time and date and it could be opened up to questions afterwards. It could be quite interactive and some subjects might have linked seminar over the course of a few months, constituting subject 'building blocks'. There seems to be a disproportionately high concentration of smart people on this website (when compared with similar fora) and it would be good to utilise that.

unaligned wrote:

Using the economics theme as an example, it might be interesting to present this kind of project as a fortnightly seminar.

For example, someone like Art-T could present a short seminar (using text and graphs) at an agreed time and date and it could be opened up to questions afterwards. It could be quite interactive and some subjects might have linked seminar over the course of a few months, constituting subject 'building blocks'. There seems to be a disproportionately high concentration of smart people on this website (when compared with similar fora) and it would be good to utilise that.

What sort of subjects and topics would you like a seminar on?

unaligned wrote:

Using the economics theme as an example, it might be interesting to present this kind of project as a fortnightly seminar.

For example, someone like Art-T could present a short seminar (using text and graphs) at an agreed time and date and it could be opened up to questions afterwards. It could be quite interactive and some subjects might have linked seminar over the course of a few months, constituting subject 'building blocks'. There seems to be a disproportionately high concentration of smart people on this website (when compared with similar fora) and it would be good to utilise that.

What might be more amenable to someone like ArdT who may not be able to do that because of time (or knowledge indeed) would be to encourage someone to build up a portrait of their knowledge of some area - if someone is obsessive about something then let them build up a thread of their own with links and questions from the floor etc. That way there would be less pressure on them to meet a deadline and would give them the flexibility to change their mind.

There might be no better way of encouraging that than by example...

Auditor, you were successful in poaching some people from P.ie. Could we do that again to get more posting and activity going so as to set off a virtuous cycle of growth in discussion here in the Machine Nation?

I suggest you don't start by attracting people, but keep excellent standards so that interesting people will come.

One of the dangers of forums is overheating, too much psychological involvement. I suggest in that sense a limit to new thread creation.

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

Auditor, you were successful in poaching some people from P.ie. Could we do that again to get more posting and activity going so as to set off a virtuous cycle of growth in discussion here in the Machine Nation?

arnaudherve wrote:

I suggest you don't start by attracting people, but keep excellent standards so that interesting people will come.

One of the dangers of forums is overheating, too much psychological involvement. I suggest in that sense a limit to new thread creation.

These two things go together. There are posters here including myself who contribute to both forums and I believe it to be true that there is a corner for everyone and that some of the people on p.ie might do better to post here more or vice versa.

Actually I think p.ie has gotten very big and perhaps needs to lose some posters but I'm not sure about that. Whether they come or get invited I'd be inclined to agree with arnaudherve - slow steady growth and not overheat the place might not be a bad way to go.

unaligned

would you be thinking of 15-20 posters over what time period? The next 4 months or so?

Auditor #9 wrote:

Actually I think p.ie has gotten very big and perhaps needs to lose some posters but I'm not sure about that. Whether they come or get invited I'd be inclined to agree with arnaudherve - slow steady growth and not overheat the place might not be a bad way to go.

That's my view as well. I'm a conservative in terms of the growth in our citizenship, or la citoyenneté as arnaud might say. I was wondering whether we can simply poach a couple good posters to take Machine Nation to the next level.

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:

Actually I think p.ie has gotten very big and perhaps needs to lose some posters but I'm not sure about that. Whether they come or get invited I'd be inclined to agree with arnaudherve - slow steady growth and not overheat the place might not be a bad way to go.

That's my view as well. I'm a conservative in terms of the growth in our citizenship, or la citoyenneté as arnaud might say. I was wondering whether we can simply poach a couple good posters to take Machine Nation to the next level.

Well Squire came in lately and he's great so more like him. Or her.

Maybe if we had one or two people each in mind after a good prowl around p.ie might be the way to go for now. We can poach I mean invite people from boards too or elsewhere.

I've been leaving the odd message here and there on different blogs and boards leaving it open for people to come and visit but I think maybe we need a button which says "Register" - I don't see any

(is it still stuck to the last skin?)

Auditor #9 wrote:

..
I've been leaving the odd message here and there on different blogs and boards leaving it open for people to come and visit but I think maybe we need a button which says "Register" - I don't see any

(is it still stuck to the last skin?)

Maybe log out and have a look, oh clever one.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:

..
I've been leaving the odd message here and there on different blogs and boards leaving it open for people to come and visit but I think maybe we need a button which says "Register" - I don't see any

(is it still stuck to the last skin?)

Maybe log out and have a look, oh clever one.

Thanks bit of jedus it came back when I logged out. Phew!

Do you think people who might be passing by might hate the look of the portal ? Or not understand what it is and that they can click on threads and all that? Other forums are hardly as fancy as us with a portal you know.

A limit on threads creation please. There must be a "music" between the members, so that each one agrees to follow the threads of the others.

The numbers of threads creation is certainly one of your weak points, considering the number of members.

arnaudherve wrote:

A limit on threads creation please. There must be a "music" between the members, so that each one agrees to follow the threads of the others.

The numbers of threads creation is certainly one of your weak points, considering the number of members.

Music? I was just thinking something similar today about music and how our thread titles could reflect the lyrics from songs - people often search on the internet for song lyrics.

Is there really a proliferation of threads? At the same time there are a number of persistent threads that have been here for four months and won't ever stop. I update them from time to time.

There is also a chat box on the Home Page where people could go if they felt more chatty and save threads. Overall I agree that threads should be limited in number.

Auditor #9 wrote:

unaligned wrote:

Using the economics theme as an example, it might be interesting to present this kind of project as a fortnightly seminar.

For example, someone like Art-T could present a short seminar (using text and graphs) at an agreed time and date and it could be opened up to questions afterwards. It could be quite interactive and some subjects might have linked seminar over the course of a few months, constituting subject 'building blocks'. There seems to be a disproportionately high concentration of smart people on this website (when compared with similar fora) and it would be good to utilise that.

What might be more amenable to someone like ArdT who may not be able to do that because of time (or knowledge indeed) would be to encourage someone to build up a portrait of their knowledge of some area - if someone is obsessive about something then let them build up a thread of their own with links and questions from the floor etc. That way there would be less pressure on them to meet a deadline and would give them the flexibility to change their mind.

There might be no better way of encouraging that than by example...

Yes Auditor this is a much more realistic idea! I think I got a bit carried away there...

Also another poster suggested that creating fewer threads might be just as effective at increasing responsiveness as achieving a critical mass in terms of members. Fewer, and more focused threads coupled with a few new posters would be very welcome.

How would you describe 'more focused' threads, unaligned? Do you mean like the debate about the black boy for example and whether it was right or wrong or at least what should be done about it - we might have a tendency to talk about racism in more general terms really.

I'm also convinced that we can pick up hits from the internet more if some of our threads deal with local issues and use local names and familiar or related terminology. So, I'd be interested - over time of course - in building up a general thread say on pedestrianising named towns and the political debates that go around that issue and specifically naming towns around the country. I think using placenames in threadnames in association with general issues might get more hits if someone is searching for some information. Kate Ps thread on Wicklow/cyanide is number one in google for instance for a basic search.

Remember also that not only thread names but each post can be named ! and I'm positive that gets used as a tag for google to do searches. I'll have to test it a bit more but it's definitely used for searches within the website. You'll see it when you use the Post Reply button - you get the option of naming your post or putting in a "subject".

I would not invite any of the lapsed posters to return. Some I admire but that is not the point. Forget about them as there are 7 billion more fish in the sea.

There is too much concern about people not being allowed to speak their mind. That was why Lostexpectations left after he was edited.

Less is more and the habit of breaking threads will be the ruination of this site. Take the iseq thread which is the one I post on mostly on P.ie. It is in of itself a very boring subject even to those interested in it so on P.ie the topics could be about 3 different things with little relationship to stocks at all. You never know what you will read there.

Lastly bear in mind that we are in the middle of summer. Lets see how it is when the evenings get dark.

youngdan wrote:

I would not invite any of the lapsed posters to return. Some I admire but that is not the point. Forget about them as there are 7 billion more fish in the sea.

There is too much concern about people not being allowed to speak their mind. That was why Lostexpectations left after he was edited.

Less is more and the habit of breaking threads will be the ruination of this site. Take the iseq thread which is the one I post on mostly on P.ie. It is in of itself a very boring subject even to those interested in it so on P.ie the topics could be about 3 different things with little relationship to stocks at all. You never know what you will read there.

Lastly bear in mind that we are in the middle of summer. Lets see how it is when the evenings get dark.

Fair points dan - especially about being able to speak your mind and tell it how it is. And do the naming thing which I think is within the bounds of art rather than than abuse e.g. Chief Yellow Jacket, which sounds like you might have become more native American than the native Americans themselves. The Irish don't have such a naming tradition so I always felt we should respect yours.

But I think people like a good rant - I just don't know where to jump in when a thread goes skew-ways and posters start doing this and this to each other. Pet hate of mine. I think it's down to anger management there. An emotion we're not trying to repress here ...

youngdan wrote:

I would not invite any of the lapsed posters to return. Some I admire but that is not the point. Forget about them as there are 7 billion more fish in the sea.

There is too much concern about people not being allowed to speak their mind. That was why Lostexpectations left after he was edited.

Less is more and the habit of breaking threads will be the ruination of this site. Take the iseq thread which is the one I post on mostly on P.ie. It is in of itself a very boring subject even to those interested in it so on P.ie the topics could be about 3 different things with little relationship to stocks at all. You never know what you will read there.

Lastly bear in mind that we are in the middle of summer. Lets see how it is when the evenings get dark.

I wasn't aware of threads or comments being edited. Your point about the time of year is a good one. I think the iseq thread is probably the best thread on P.ie.

By the way YD, your comment about NDS and SilvioDante holding hands at the Obama rally gave me a genuinely good laugh

Quote :

I wasn't aware of threads or comments being edited. Your point about the time of year is a good one. I think the iseq thread is probably the best thread on P.ie.

Threads and comments aren't edited in general at all - I think I might have rephrased one abusive comment once and informed the poster and gave him an opportunity to engage with that.

There was a time when, with the zeal of the newly coverted to moderatorship like teachers fresh out of training college, we mods were all a bit trigger-happy with tidying up other people's posts because we were younger then, enthusiastic newbies who wanted everything to be perfect. Now that we've settled down - and the site has too, that doesn't happen any more. We probably took on too much in even contemplating that level of moderatorship from a practical point of view, and didn't really think of the consequences for posters. It was a worthwhile learning experience in the spirit of MN.

It would be nice if Lost came back, but that's his choice.

unaligned wrote:

youngdan wrote:

I would not invite any of the lapsed posters to return. Some I admire but that is not the point. Forget about them as there are 7 billion more fish in the sea.

There is too much concern about people not being allowed to speak their mind. That was why Lostexpectations left after he was edited.

Less is more and the habit of breaking threads will be the ruination of this site. Take the iseq thread which is the one I post on mostly on P.ie. It is in of itself a very boring subject even to those interested in it so on P.ie the topics could be about 3 different things with little relationship to stocks at all. You never know what you will read there.

Lastly bear in mind that we are in the middle of summer. Lets see how it is when the evenings get dark.

I wasn't aware of threads or comments being edited. Your point about the time of year is a good one. I think the iseq thread is probably the best thread on P.ie.

By the way YD, your comment about NDS and SilvioDante holding hands at the Obama rally gave me a genuinely good laugh

Good points also youngdan about the threads; the ISEQ one on p.ie is one I always read first over there - it is, as you've said before, a conversation between individuals on related subjects and I think it's a model thread. It's not focused and specific but ranges inside an arena of related topics - wealth, energy, commodities shares and more and is an epic thread with characters from all over the spectrum in there. And there are some classics coming out of it too - your post about the handjob recently had me laughing out loud too.

On the editing of lostexpectation's post - it was on a thread related to Declan Ganley and Albania and cactus judged that lost might have said something that could have been legally dodgy if picked up so changed a "will" to a "could". We were more unhappy that lost left after that than anything else.

After that, editing of anyone's post was not allowed by any moderators without the permission of the poster themselves.

Auditor #9 wrote:

unaligned wrote:

youngdan wrote:

I would not invite any of the lapsed posters to return. Some I admire but that is not the point. Forget about them as there are 7 billion more fish in the sea.

There is too much concern about people not being allowed to speak their mind. That was why Lostexpectations left after he was edited.

Less is more and the habit of breaking threads will be the ruination of this site. Take the iseq thread which is the one I post on mostly on P.ie. It is in of itself a very boring subject even to those interested in it so on P.ie the topics could be about 3 different things with little relationship to stocks at all. You never know what you will read there.

Lastly bear in mind that we are in the middle of summer. Lets see how it is when the evenings get dark.

I wasn't aware of threads or comments being edited. Your point about the time of year is a good one. I think the iseq thread is probably the best thread on P.ie.

By the way YD, your comment about NDS and SilvioDante holding hands at the Obama rally gave me a genuinely good laugh

Good points also youngdan about the threads; the ISEQ one on p.ie is one I always read first over there - it is, as you've said before, a conversation between individuals on related subjects and I think it's a model thread. It's not focused and specific but ranges inside an arena of related topics - wealth, energy, commodities shares and more and is an epic thread with characters from all over the spectrum in there. And there are some classics coming out of it too - your post about the handjob recently had me laughing out loud too.

On the editing of lostexpectation's post - it was on a thread related to Declan Ganley and Albania and cactus judged that lost might have said something that could have been legally dodgy if picked up so changed a "will" to a "could". We were more unhappy that lost left after that than anything else.

After that, editing of anyone's post was not allowed by any moderators without the permission of the poster themselves.

There was certainly a nervous start to modding, partly inexperience and partly nerves due to threats from Mr. Cochrane. lost's post was reinstated and modding now is as Auditor said - posters are pmd if there is a concern. Mods are not supposed to alter someone else' post unless there is a definite legal risk to the site has been an Editorial Team discussion. I wonder though did the days of heavy handed editing leave people feeling that they can't say what they want? What I would say is I'm not aware of any situation in which a poster has been prevented from making a point or raising a subject, unlike Politics.ie where a good number of people have been threatened with legal action for posting on Libertas/Ganley and where some general posters have been excluded presumably because of their political stance.

I agree with youngdan about new fish in the sea, and about splitting threads, I've done it a couple of times after asking posters if they minded (probably too polite to say no) but when I've had posts split that I've started I've never liked it - and on observation, it seems to me that split posts sometimes die and rarely thrive.
I think this might be good advice from arnaudherve and youngdan about letting threads develop and roll on and not jumping about too much. I'm not so sure about not having a lot of threads though - it is up to posters if they want to engage consistently with a few threads that are most interesting to them, they can ( and some do ). Others like to move about more from topic to topic.

I agree with arnaudherve that we should stick to posting away and enjoying ourselves and not looking over our shoulders to attract people. What I do think is that the site should be welcoming to new members and should be visible on internet searches. If posters remember that their thread titles are searchable, and word them so that they clearly relate to the topic, the threads would be more visible on the internet. Also, writing a little bit on Machine Nation and posting a link on any other sites (I don't mean P.ie) is a good way of helping people find us.

Would it be possible to have a join us button (P.ie has one) linked to the registration page?

cactus flower wrote:

Would it be possible to have a join us button (P.ie has one) linked to the registration page?

The registration button on this site should be enough though shouldn't it? I can't find that 'join us' button on p.ie ...

Auditor #9 wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Would it be possible to have a join us button (P.ie has one) linked to the registration page?

The registration button on this site should be enough though shouldn't it? I can't find that 'join us' button on p.ie ...

Maybe they got rid of it since the influx of dodgy new members?

You know, I hadn't even noticed lostexpectation was gone. The only thing I can I can remember about him was the atrocious spelling, which reflects badly on either him or me.