Decline of P.ie?

cactus flower wrote:

I think P.ie's real problem is that it is framed primarily as an Irish party political site and that frankly, Irish party politics are not that interesting just at the moment.

I agree with that. I think a broader approach where one can, yes, discuss Irish party politics, but also society and the world more generally. Perhaps as your membership grows that is more difficult to maintain though and you face the dilemma of becoming a P.ie or a Boards.ie which has plenty of discussion but so cut off from each other that they may as well be different websites.

Dave used not to nail his colours so hard to the mast like he does now. Slagging the leader of the opposition for doing his job was one of many shark jumping moments. In fact I might start a thread over there for a laugh with that point seeing as its so shite now.

There certainly appears to be some sort of issue with Fine Gael, over and above any other party. I'll say no more than that.

johnfás wrote:

There certainly appears to be some sort of issue with Fine Gael, over and above any other party. I'll say no more than that.

Well, the Green-bashing was also pretty intensive up until a month ago.

Is the party mud-slinging a recent phenomenon? Itgot very one dimensional there for a while with rakes of anti-FF threads saying the same caca and then anti-green threads with the same caca as the FF threads and it was hard to sort out the good stuff.

I also thought for one period that DC was in FG or something with the proliferation and truculence of FG posters..

One dimensionality must be avoided at all costs ..

Ronald Binge wrote:

Dave used not to nail his colours so hard to the mast like he does now. Slagging the leader of the opposition for doing his job was one of many shark jumping moments. In fact I might start a thread over there for a laugh with that point seeing as its so shite now.

Jumped the shark?

Heh heh. I can't take p.ie seriously anymore, especially when one poster claims to be a one main provisional Fine Gael and does a rambo on every FG thread and another buck eejit is some kind of savant in comparison to nearly every other poster.

I'll happily chew the fat with any political opponent and still want to have a pint with them but when you see the roll eyes and personal insults coming out then why bother.

JTS = interweb/'merican slang for a programme or website that used to be good and is now shite, usually traceable to some particular point in time.

Comes from a point in Happy Days when the Fonz did just that, before the embarrassing hell of the Joanie and Chiachi storyline.

Was the fonz good? I never saw it but I had a mug of it.

Auditor #9 wrote:

Or in The Little House on the Prairie when Laura Ingolds Wilder got married

Sex and the City when Carrie got of with Mr. Big?

Auditor #9 wrote:

Is the party mud-slinging a recent phenomenon? Itgot very one dimensional there for a while with rakes of anti-FF threads saying the same caca and then anti-green threads with the same caca as the FF threads and it was hard to sort out the good stuff.

I also thought for one period that DC was in FG or something with the proliferation and truculence of FG posters..

One dimensionality must be avoided at all costs ..

I think Lucinda must have passed on him or something like that............ ( In jest - I cant prove anything !! - but it is so personal -)

Maybe it goes back to the Freedom Institute days - or Did DC go to Triners too? -Maybe because She got to the Dail first? I do think that there is a serious element of the green eyed monster there when DC lets fly at her and allows some quite outrageous personal commentary about her go on P.ie without batting an eyelid - yet mention Declan Ganley in less than an reverential tones - prepare for a verbal crossbow to the crotch!

That is my supposition of it all and playful conjecture is all that is and I take full responsibility for it.

BTW Johnny McGuirk - if you are reading this (as no doubt you are seeing as your Libertas siren will have gone off by now) and knowing you are in the mood for suing posters on internet sites at the moment - Chill bud - or I wont go canvassing for your missus next week!

Is this the same McGuirk who worked for the Green Party of which he was a member at the same time as he was a member of FG and just left the PD's and was advising FF (aw f*** it, I give up) ? And is now working for Libertas?
Perhaps we should hire him. Or maybe not.

Actually as an aside - but still vaguely on topic

I have noticed over that the lovely Cedar Lounge - we are referred to Machine Nation (aka P.ie in exile)

Given the current circumstances - do we still want to be associated with that place ?(P.ie I mean)

Is it time to ask the nice folks over at the lounge to grant us full independent recognition?


Just a thought

We also host Indymedia slagging matches...

Edo wrote:

Actually as an aside - but still vaguely on topic

I have noticed over that the lovely Cedar Lounge - we are referred to Machine Nation (aka P.ie in exile)

Given the current circumstances - do we still want to be associated with that place ?(P.ie I mean)

Is it time to ask the nice folks over at the lounge to grant us full independent recognition?


Just a thought

And a good one.

I say yay to that suggestion.

Who will tell Devalera?

Can I suggest a form of external association



...Nah... full independence!

Worldbystorm is the man there isn't he? I'm sure he might flick through this thread tomorrow and then oblige us by recognising us as an independent entity. Ard Taoiseach suggested forming a trade agreement with Worldbystorm and the CedarLounge folks in general. Anyone any opinions or ideas on that? Between both sites some people might be reinventing wheels or researching similar stories. Are there nets of sister-sites where this affiliation thing happens?

Oh, twinning - like cities. Sounds very nice altogether. Could we establish some sort of ERASMUS programme too so some of us can have bursaries to study over there and they here?

Personally, I haven't noticed any dramatic change in p.ie's signal to noise ratio recently. This is coming from a web-anthropologist's perspective rather than an active participant, but I have always found it to have a pretty low, but existant and constant signal to noise ratio.

I reckon it's more the repetitive nature of debates, given the churn, that reqularly drives the better and more genuine debaters away than an absolute drop in quality. Meticulously debunking a thought-free argument is fun the first few times, but the reproduction of cliches and glibness is always easier and quicker than taking the time to assemble an argument from reality to debunk it. That's why, I think, that on any reasonably open web discussion forum of sufficient size, you tend to see a regular migration of the better posters onto pastures new, unless specific and well thought-out mechanisms are put in place to constrain the tendencies of the steady stream of nutters who are immune from shame and are happy to endlessly regurgitate patently stupid points.

As soon as you get a 911 conspiraloon thread that is not greeted with overwhelming derision, you know the place is doomed.

This pattern has an alarming tendency to repeat itself on open, community-driven web-sites. The most successful of such sites, such as wikipedia, slashdot, and to a much flimsier extent boards.ie, have evolved elaborate decision making and moderation mechanisms to fight against this trend.

The biggest problem facing those running open community sites is to recognise that managing it is a difficult problem. A very open moderation policy can attract lots of traffic and meteoric growth, but it invariably leads to a crash at some stage, when the last genuine posters finally quit under an avalanche of regurgitated cliches.

Well posted chekov.

And a nice little bit of p.ie Gold from Conor

Conor wrote:

RBinge wrote:

Here's a question for discussion. Has P.ie jumped the shark?

It's timely you've started this thread. I've been monitoring this site for the past four years now, specifically in relation to your very question, and I'm ready to report my findings.

Yes, politics.ie has jumped the shark. It is officially not-as-good-as-it-used-to-be.

It was not-as-good-as-it-used-to-be when you joined, and it was not-as-good-as-it-used-to-be when I joined.

Now, after almost half a decade of painstaking research, I've calculated that "not-as-good-as-it-used-to-be" is the constant state of politics.ie. "Not-as-good-as-it-used-to-be" defines politics.ie.

The obvious deduction, therefore, is that politics.ie's highest point was the moment after the forum was established, but before the first post was made. Therefore, even though it marked the start of the inexorable decline in the quality of contributions to politics.ie, the first post on the board was the best post ever.

Unfortunately, through upgrades and database crashes and whatnot, the original imprint of this post is lost to us forever. However, teams of internet archaeologists have managed to piece together what may be an exact replica of this precious artifact.

I reprint for you below, the precise moment when politics.ie jumped the shark (originally dated 04/02/03, at 03.03):

webmaster wrote:

test

cactus flower wrote:

I think P.ie's real problem is that it is framed primarily as an Irish party political site and that frankly, Irish party politics are not that interesting just at the moment.

I'm not a fan of party politics at the best of times, but the site managed to keep my attention for a few years. As ibis says, it's because there used to be real policy discussions there, as opposed to the bitching and sniping you get now. It used to actually have the broader approach that johnfás was talking about. I think the departure of borderlinegenius was a sad day.

Edo, was Lucinda in the 'Tute? Dave wasn't in Trinity, so it's not from there. He also wasn't in FG. I never got the impression that he knew her personally, but I could be wrong.

John McGuirk was in FF, joined FG, had some minor dealings with the Greens, but I don't think he ever joined the PDs. Most of the rest of the 'Tute were PDs, though.

chekov wrote:

Personally, I haven't noticed any dramatic change in p.ie's signal to
noise ratio recently. This is coming from a web-anthropologist's
perspective rather than an active participant, but I have always found
it to have a pretty low, but existant and constant signal to noise
ratio.

I'd say that it has been constant for the past two yeares or so, but that there was a greater ratio prior to that. Not sure what the tipping point was, though. It seems to be cyclical: people join, think it's great, and then start thinking it's not as good as it used to be. However, more people join and the cycle repeats. I think Conor may be on to something in his thesis.

Maybe it is as good as it needs to be.

My grief with it is not harmless nutters, but racists, who are not harmless, but create a climate where people get their heads kicked in.

I really don't understand why zyklon b is tolerated.