Decline of P.ie?

Has P.ie declined drastically since the outage? The moderators seem to
be either non-existent or are just not doing anything. The site has
attracted more crackpots than usual and no action seems to be being
taken to control the problem. Has P.ie jumped the shark?

Regards...jmcc

I think P.ie could be jumping the shark. It's lost that je nai sais quoi ever since The Void. It's full of party hacks, trolls and other somesuch. DC should become a modern Heracles and purge the Augean Stables which P.ie has become.

There is a fair bit of what appears to me like peevishness from a lot of posters on there lately.

I'm on an archiving buzz recently - any posters stuff you would like to persuse in peace just shout - I'm working on Edo at the moment and then Feargach, Farnaby and after that the Dialogues of ibis and Pax and then the Sidewinder Polemics.

Auditor #9 wrote:

There is a fair bit of what appears to me like peevishness from a lot of posters on there lately.

I'm on an archiving buzz recently - any posters stuff you would like to persuse in peace just shout - I'm working on Edo at the moment and then Feargach, Farnaby and after that the Dialogues of ibis and Pax and then the Sidewinder Polemics.

We could also do the Saturday Night Preview with SBP and kerrynorth.

It's like Muppet Alley...

ibis wrote:

It's like Muppet Alley...

Sadly.

The party hacks were always there. But now, instead of a set of
conversations, it has become a wasteground where each of them tries to
shout loudest. It is a shame as it was good, once.

Regards...jmcc

What do you think would save it jmcc or are all sites like this born with an Expiry Date?

jmcc wrote:

The party hacks were always there. But now, instead of a set of
conversations, it has become a wasteground where each of them tries to
shout loudest. It is a shame as it was good, once.

P.ie used to give me the same feeling as MN now does - of being involved in a conversation, and interested in the next thing to be said. These days, I check in to see what idiocy or propaganda needs to be countered. The Lisbon forum consists of roughly the same group of posters repeating the same things in different ways (both sides). If someone new expresses an honest doubt, they are warmly welcomed as cleverly having seen through the falsehoods while simultaneously being treated as corroborative evidence for the main group's own positions. It is not a worthwhile forum, though I say so myself.

Auditor #9 wrote:

What do you think would save it jmcc or are all sites like this born with an Expiry Date?

Perhaps Jared Diamond should do a new edition of Collapse with a section on the decline and fall of the P.ie Empire.

ibis wrote:

P.ie used to give me the same feeling as MN now does - of
being involved in a conversation, and interested in the next thing to
be said. These days, I check in to see what idiocy or propaganda needs
to be countered. The Lisbon forum consists of roughly the same group of
posters repeating the same things in different ways (both sides). If
someone new expresses an honest doubt, they are warmly welcomed as
cleverly having seen through the falsehoods while simultaneously being
treated as corroborative evidence for the main group's own positions.
It is not a worthwhile forum, though I say so myself.

The whole
Libertas/Lisbon thing has taken the site down hill. The Libertas thing
is so amateurish it is unbelievable. Some of my best purple prose was
even ignored there. It can be fun to trollbait though.

Even the history section of P.ie seems to have gone quiet. There is a
text on the lifecycle of mailing lists that charts how online
communities tend to rise and fall. It probably could be applied to P.ie.

Regards...jmcc

I think it might have been the discovery of the feet of clay.

I'm struck by how there has been an influx of really strange posters. A lot of the old reliables (even those one might disagree vehemently with) have faded away over the last six months. I don't know if it's just Lisbon, perhaps so. Certainly it's amazing how it's become a lightening rod for Lisbon, in a way which just isn't reflected in the society at large. I'd also echo the community thing. I'm very very fond of P.ie for a variety of reasons and I just think that element has gone for the moment. Let's put it a different way. The sort of rolling discussions here are very typical of what used to be on there...

Good posters have left, crap posters have come, all the threads about Libertas and the gammy, gammy new layout are the things putting me off

BuachaillBeo wrote:

Good posters have left, crap posters have come, all the threads about Libertas and the gammy, gammy new layout are the things putting me off

Ooops. Sorry about all the Libertas threads. But they needed outing.

cactus flower wrote:

BuachaillBeo wrote:

Good posters have left, crap posters have come, all the threads about Libertas and the gammy, gammy new layout are the things putting me off

Ooops. Sorry about all the Libertas threads. But they needed outing.

Oh did you do some of them? oh sorry about that!.... I left my prejudice get the better of me and assumed they were trollish kind of things without bothering to read them.... lean ar aghaidh!

I know this sounds a bit scary, but is there an element of looking at p.ie with new eyes since the outage? It had far too big (and unhealthy) a part in my life in the months before the outage and when it came back, it just wasn't the same. Maybe I've a perspective now that I didn't have then?

What strikes me now about the site is how bitchy it is and how poor the quality of argument and discussion is. There is still some good stuff - but it's hard to find. Maybe I'm losing interest in Lisbon in general as well as p.ie but the thoughts of wading through 27 pages on Lisbon and neutrality or the benefits of Lisbon makes my heart sink.

And the personalised threads make my skin crawl - Gayle Kililea - why?

That said, I do look in every now and again - it still has its moments.

I still like p.ie a lot ... sure its no holes barred and you need a thick skin and a hard neck to survive but its the passion and anger that it generates that gives it the buzz.

MN is -so far anyway - a lot more mellow - like relaxing in your Club after a hectic days trading....

Quote :

sure its no holes barred and you need a thick skin and a hard neck to survive but its the passion and anger that it generates that gives it the buzz.

Maybe I'm getting old when I expect passion to come from a place of integrity. Or maybe I'm just trolled out.

BuachaillBeo wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

BuachaillBeo wrote:

Good posters have left, crap posters have come, all the threads about Libertas and the gammy, gammy new layout are the things putting me off

Ooops. Sorry about all the Libertas threads. But they needed outing.

Oh did you do some of them? oh sorry about that!.... I left my prejudice get the better of me and assumed they were trollish kind of things without bothering to read them.... lean ar aghaidh!

You missed a lot of fun. But I promise won't go over the ground again and drive you back to P.ie...

Perhaps Bertie Ahern as taoiseach was a focus for many people. But once
he resigned, a lot of posters who had been calling for his resignation
seemed to be in shock. Like dogs chasing a car, they just didn't know
what to do when the car stopped. The Harrisite posters are quite funny
though.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc wrote:

Perhaps Bertie Ahern as taoiseach was a focus for many people. But once
he resigned, a lot of posters who had been calling for his resignation
seemed to be in shock. Like dogs chasing a car, they just didn't know
what to do when the car stopped. The Harrisite posters are quite funny
though.

Regards...jmcc

What imagery!

I think you could be right...

Brandubh wrote:

I still like p.ie a lot ... sure its no holes barred and you need a thick skin and a hard neck to survive but its the passion and anger that it generates that gives it the buzz.

MN is -so far anyway - a lot more mellow - like relaxing in your Club after a hectic days trading....

P.ie is a curate's egg. There is still a part in which you can put an issue up there and people will come and pitch into it. Not all the new posters are bad. There is a Mikesomething who posts sense about environment and planning. But the scope of the threads is very narrow and odd.

There are days when I look down the list and see nothing that grabs me at all. Libertas is pretty well done and dusted - if people don't know who they are by now they never will. Bertie is gone so Tribunal fun is over. Lisbon is just too plain laborious for most people and has been going on a long time. I used to like some of the cultural identity stuff until it was completely overrun with Stormfront posters.

I think the biggest weakness of the site is it is very much grounded in Irish party politics, and as the action now is much more global, it seems less and less relevant.

One of the things that struck me recently is that although I'm there a lot, the p.ie Lisbon poll hasn't deviated more than 1% from its current ration of No to Yes since the early days - despite a huge increase in absolute size. Either it absolutely faithfully reflects the makeup of p.ie posters, and they do the poll in a neat sequence - or someone's packing the poll.

While that's hardly critical, it's indicative.

Kate P wrote:

And the personalised threads make my skin crawl - Gayle
Kililea - why?

Because people despise the Sindo "journalists"
and this is the way that they express it? The reality is that most
Irish journalists would never get jobs in real publications in an open
market and are doomed to the mediocrity of the Dublin "media".

It is quite comical to see the number of sockpuppets that pop up defending her and the other Sindo types though.

Regards...jmcc