The Rules: Official Discussion & Debate

[LimpyLoo]

The Rules: Official Discussion & Debate: The Movie

 

rated PG-13 obv

[luke viia]

i'll be honest, if this was just electronic music discussion, i wouldn't post. the digressions in general banter are what make the fanboy music discussion tolerable, at least for me.

 

if we're just supposed to sit here and talk about our boc related dreams, i think i might head for the door.

 

yep, this is the same conclusion i've slowly come to. i like idm but would never have joined this place if it wasn't for the wackiness going on in GB around the time that i joined. this place struck me as a community with a lot of weird and creative individuals and i wanted to get to know them. most of my favorite members are gone now, some of them for valid reasons and others for questionable infractions. some of them were banned because they didn't care for the censoring going on here and took steps to express it.

 

i don't really have any reason to hang out here anymore, it feels like i'm in an office full of employees afraid to break the rules, and i get enough of that in other environments in my life. i mean i've had to second guess myself before posting about smoking a bowl, because the owner of this site has repeatedly said he thinks people that do drugs are losers/criminals and i wouldn't put it past JR to actually get his forum members in trouble for something he feels is morally wrong. i'd rather just go elsewhere i guess, so i'll probably finally take JR's advice and get out of his house, because he's the owner, and he and i do not see eye to eye at all.

 

i should make it clear that this isn't about "NWSF," for me the frustration of the heavy-handedness is about having arbitrary shit deleted/censored repeatedly, being told that discussing it will get you banned, and having no way of influencing what plenty of us have experienced as a "WTF? seriously? and anything i say about it is just getting deleted? ok, fuck this guy" kind of back-and-forth with the administration's actions here. I mean fucks sake, I had a post deleted because it contained the word "masturbation" in the funny pictures thread. then i said "WTF? really? masturbation?" in a post and that was deleted. i kept balking and everything i said was just removed and later explained away as being "off topic." Masturbation.

[OneToThirtySix]

I for one find sexual references to be wholly inappropriate to dance music-related internet messageboards.

nene multiple assgasms

[Blir]

[LimpyLoo]

 

I for one find sexual references to be wholly inappropriate to dance music-related internet messageboards.

nene multiple assgasms

 

 

 

 

No I think OneToThirtySix was describing his reaction to said joke

[Guest iep]

 

 

Btw, I asked JR directly if it'd be possible to add a hidden nsfw forum (that would seem to me to satisfy everyone's requirements), but he wasn't interested. Not saying I was a strong advocate of the idea, since it seems rather lame and cowardly, but I did propose it.

 

and rightly so. please consider the tension a Hidden forum would bring, it would divide the community, perhaps even rip it apart-- and remember that with Frad and other ethical pillars of foundation banned and gone we will have no "Rosa Parks" to stand up to that sort of wanton segregation.

 

 

 

 

lol

 

lol

 

 

 

last post

 

[eugene]

i think we should create an international union of disappointed watmmers and threaten to collectively move to theo's forum unless the rules are relaxed, Lain C could organize this i bet.

[luke viia]

fwiw i really wasn't trying to threaten anyone with my last post, lol. just have slowly come to realize that my interests (musical, social, etc) and the focus of watmm are really very different so i would probably do well to fuck off to some other place!

[goDel]

Well, it wouldn't be a strange idea to try to start building a new community. Has been tried in the past for a number of times with varied success rates, but it's not impossible. Most important part is that it should start somewhere from the grassroots, instead of top-down from a single individual. It begins and end with people. ... And a sexy looking forum. And more sexy than watmm is pretty much well within our reach...

[gaarg]

And writing a new set of rules and making everyone read them over and over!

[FLA FUR BIS FLE]

 

I feel the time has come to complain about people who make rash complaints without first making sure that those complaints are justified

However, I would just like to add a complaint about shows that have too many complaints in them as they get very tedious for the average viewer.

I'd like to complain about people who hold things up by complaining about people complaining. It's about time something was done about it

 

 

my brain just oozed out of my ears

[Guest zaphod]

[youtubehd]6g2JN2PrHJg[/youtubehd]

[vamos scorcho]

There will be no changes and opinions will stay the same. I will say that this is a change, opening up a space where people can speak their mind on the subject.

 

It is non-trivial however, as the internet is the same space as reality. Censoring the internet is censoring reality. Non-trivial.

[vamos scorcho]

I view it as a minor issue primarily and am mostly happier the place exists than sadder the place is restricted. Disagreements.

 

These I take it to be the standard views of message boarding:

 

1. Internet is not real and should be treated like a virtual playground

2. Internet should be treated exactly like real life (don't say anything you wouldn't say to a stranger)

3. a mix leaning toward 1

4. a mix leaning toward 2

 

a spectrum from 1 to 2 makes more sense. We all have a point we sit at regarding how structured we want our experience to be and how we view our fellow message boarders (as virtual personae or humans behind keyboards)

[pcock]

I stay because i dont know where else to chat shit to people, but watmm used to be hilarious and enjoyable, and is now an enormous amount worse. the members change etc, but if you want to try something interesting joyrex, why not just do a simple poll and find out how many of your members (which is the only content this site has) agree with it. cos i think almost everyone that makes this place what it is will disagree with not being able to joke about stupid shit.

 

 

im not even saying unban NSFW imagery, its fine that the pictures need to be cleanish, but censoring actual discussion? its just shit as fuck.

[keltoi]

I hang around here like a squirrel caught by the nuts while stealing nuts from a bird feeder.

[Guest Mirezzi]

[youtubehd]6g2JN2PrHJg[/youtubehd]

 

Dear lordlol...well played.

[goDel]

The day a squirrel caught by the nuts became a meme was as beautiful as it was painful.

 

I can still see them balls getting caught when I close my eyes. Ouch. Good thing rixxx wasnt within reach. ;P

[OneToThirtySix]

Well, it wouldn't be a strange idea to try to start building a new community. Has been tried in the past for a number of times with varied success rates, but it's not impossible. Most important part is that it should start somewhere from the grassroots, instead of top-down from a single individual. It begins and end with people. ... And a sexy looking forum. And more sexy than watmm is pretty much well within our reach...

I was thinking about this, too, and as long as the members pool agree that we want to redirect the attitude towards this site, it seems more realistic.

[Joyrex]

 

Have the major artists and labels look to WATMM as a way to interface with their fans, and as a conduit for them to promote their works.

 

Is that in case of some hypothetical future in which Facebook, Twitter, & Resident Advisor cease to exist?

Really, you're that narrow-minded that you'd think I'm trying to replace those services?

Everyone have a good time coming here, and contribute meaningfully.

 

How do you define "everyone"? Everyone that registered after 2010? Because I'm pretty sure you've alienated everyone else.

That's your (uninformed and biased) opinion.

 

Have WATMM be THE electronic music resource online - get back to my nerdy, obsessive collecting of Featured Artists minutiae and have it as a resource for fans to utilize, in the best format and presentation possible, with user contributions and involvement.

 

If that's what you want then you should make it a blog, not a messageboard. The kind of hijinx that made this place fun were very messageboard-centric community antics. Messageboards are for posting profane, humorous things, and for neckbeards to make wall of text posts about how various pieces of art don't live up to their expectations.

How you can honestly think that message boards are proxies for profanity is beyond me. Tell the makers of IPB and Vbulletin they need to rebrand to cater to their audiences they've been ignoring all these years.

 

 

I am simply tired of this forum being looked at by professionals and others as some cesspool where the greasy little IDM prepubescent nerds hang out and share their immature fantasies and giggle at poop jokes.

 

The fanboy featured-artist minutae obsession & dicksucking probably does way more to turn off professionals to this site than a thread containing boobs. Liking boobs is universal, while multi-page threads about blank black boxes on discography webpages & idol worship of musicians who haven't produced anything meaningful for over a decade makes the place reek of asberger's.

Again, your misguided opinion - if you were an artist, would you want to be associated with something that you felt was immature or you disagreed with on a social, political, or personal level, especially if that association could potentially hurt your chances of being signed or attracted the wrong kind of publicity?

[Joyrex]

Alright. First off, Joyrex, I've gotta say thanks for providing a place many of us have used, as I have, for a decade or longer. As silly as it may seem, I vaguely remember making the transition from lurker to member in a crowd of largely anonymous members, though over all of this time I choose not to say anything more often than I do. I've participated in little more than the GB subforum simply because I've never had much to say about a release. I like many releases, but I am no musician. I don't have much of a place in any other subforum here, though I will lurk about. Though I believe my presence here goes largely unnoticed, it's fun to interact with the quirky characters that run about. I've gone through periods of more or less forgetting about this place since it was cleansed (not using that in a dramatic sense) because of that lull in IDM that really wasn't what brought us all here in the first place. On top of a remarkable lack of product from the most easily recognizable IDM musicians for quite some time (which just began breaking recently), the loss of constant hilarity [albeit largely NSFW] that made this place attractive had sucked the life out of this place.

 

Let me get this out. Trolls and all that comes with them are the one thing I hate most about the internet. The whole culture of it sucks. Unfortunately, dissension can sometimes be misconstrued and labelled as shitty trolling. It's easier to make a snarky remark and write someone off by labeling them as a troll than to make the attempt at reading what they say on this topic and giving it a consideration for being something sincere. It's a 5-letter term for internet douchebaggery, and it's spiraled out of control and swept across the internet like a wildfire. Please don't let yourself stoop so low as to call members of your forum trolls, even if they are. Recognition of trolls is the thing that keeps them alive.

 

I got on here not too long ago today to find my avatar had been deleted at some point between making it last night and getting on today. I have no way to say who did it, really, though I am able to see who the last few visitors were to my profile. That's beside the point. I'll agree that this particular point might be better addressed in a PM, but at the same time it relates to the topic at hand and the argument some people are making. I don't know what was wrong with the avatar, other than Fred is a touchy subject right now. To be honest with you, I've never known Fred personally and my interactions with him here have been minimal. I don't know if I was skirting the rule of banned members or what, but the avatar was clean and had a purpose. It should be pretty obvious by this point that there are some people that sorely miss Fred, the hearty welcome backs he got in his short-lived return should serve testament, on top of the discussion that has followed. And look, I'll be honest, I never PMed you or any other authority to question his banning, I went by the bits and pieces that have been discussed by others. So I don't know I'm wrong for that. Though, I still don't know what rule I broke to get my avatar deleted. For Christ's sake, you have a moderator with MSPainted balls for an avatar. If it's simply about a reminder of a banned user, how about the avatar that relates to long-gone Lion (with a bit of salsa)? Either I'm terribly mistaken (in which case, sorry for bringing it up), or I'm just being penalized (albeit softly) for speaking out on a subject that's getting quite a bit of attention (at least from the few participating here so far). Or I've broken Joyrex's unwritten rule of site owner's discretion. But since it must somehow relate to the rules, I figured I'd just go ahead and bring it up here. I received no PM, no warning, nothing. Just avatar deleted. It was an homage to Fred simply because he was one of the main people who made this place what it is to me and it genuinely saddens me he's gone.

 

And please, don't take that as me ignoring the fact that you're the one that put this place together. I'll admit I've never donated a dime. I'm too goddamn poor. That's not to say that I've appreciated what this place has to offer. After all, I still come back, and you don't require payment to participate here. It's voluntary. I get it, but I still don't understand...

 

You present the issues like there is an impending doomsday on the forums. Sure, nothing lives forever. Someone briefly argued over what the users want versus your vision of these forums. They may have claimed this place is dying, which it's obviously not, as you mentioned membership and all that jazz is higher than ever and you're getting the costs covered. That's a great thing. But once again, I'll make the argument that this is a community, and I'll be more frank in that you're being viewed as a heavy-handed ruler over this community. If you're arguing that this community is now what financially keeps it going for the most part, I'll say that I personally think it's BS to not have some sort of board meeting to see how others feel. Because so far, aside from you splitting this topic off and participating in it, it seems like you're doing nothing but repetitively saying "nothing is changing about the rules or anyone who has been affected by them."

 

And unfortunately, it seems like most of the community are arguing for leniency to be given to Fred. I think this recent stuff is more about him than the rules, though the rules are still an issue because that's why he's gone in the first place. This just seems like a proxy for our cries to fall on deaf ears. I really don't care about the rules, because it's not hard to follow them. Most of us can agree that T&A threads are not what we're arguing for. We're arguing for reason. Fred never came here to tear it down. I don't think I've ever broken a rule, except maybe allowing myself to take part in straying conversation. But in GB, conversation almost always wanders off. It's kinda shitty if you can't speak your mind if the topic leads you that way. We all love our freedoms, no matter where we are. Limiting our ability to chit chat with one another about whatever we feel ultimately disrupts the beauty that this place once had. Watmm memes. Or before it was desginated so as a thread, inside jokes. Things that genuinely made you laugh your ass off. But it's as if you decided to use this place as a resume builder or something, where GB would become a cage full of animals that desperately wanted to be free. This place existed for a long damn time, even with the lengthy cold spell IDM has gone through. I, for one, think if you showed some mercy to Fred and let him back in, you wouldn't see your doomsday scenario play out the way it is in your head. You'd see the camaraderie that he's always invoked among the membership. You'd see this whole rules mess blow over until another one of your late-game rule changes ruffles the jimmies of the community again.

 

I'm not saying you're a monster. I'm not saying that any one person here is bigger than you (though, if I knew Kaen was still around, I would be willing to bet he's bigger than you). I'm just saying that from your position of power over this place, it's not gonna kill you or the forums to let some stuff slide every now and then.

 

I feel like I'm just at the point where I'm running around in circles.

 

TL;DR:

 

1) Which rule did my McGriff avatar break (so other members can be aware should they decide to hold vigil)?

2) I think I can speak for the majority when I say most of the community would agree that exception to the rules is the unwritten rule that has been forgotten with regards to Fred. Give him a break.

 

edit:

I took too long writing it all out, for all I know, there's another page of discussion since I last read it.

 

I changed your avatar for that very reason - there's no reason to "protest" the banning of a member as all it does is incite others to act out, frankly creating more headaches for me.

[OneToThirtySix]

 

 

I for one find sexual references to be wholly inappropriate to dance music-related internet messageboards.

nene multiple assgasms

 

 

 

 

No I think OneToThirtySix was describing his reaction to said joke

 

Actually, I think I've been taking this too seriously. I still read most text literally.

[Guest Adjective]

JR you have a way of saying things that makes it seem as though you see yourself as above the community that's gathered here, rather than a part of it.

 

I mostly come here for the musicians and visual artists that share here, and I worry when some of the most interesting members of that scene get lost to the rules.

[gmanyo]

JR how many featured artists have you banned

[LimpyLoo]

 

 

 

I for one find sexual references to be wholly inappropriate to dance music-related internet messageboards.

nene multiple assgasms

 

 

 

 

No I think OneToThirtySix was describing his reaction to said joke

 

Actually, I think I've been taking this too seriously. I still read most text literally.

 

 

more likely my joke was too indecipherable/unfunny