The Change in Babble Culture

We do keep stats on visits to the rabble site (if I'm not mistaken, it's something like 300,000 unique visits per month).  I'm not sure we have anything specific to babble, but I've put in a request for those numbers if they're at all available.

@ Ken Burch - The Great Schism was a long time ago.  Audra has moved on.  There was information on both sides none of us are, or should be, privy to.  Leave it lie, I say.

Okay - thanks.

The Great Schism? I am not sure how the fracturing of the Russian Social Democratic party into Mensheviks and Bolsheviks has anything to do with Babble culture.

So obviously the fact that nobody wants to talk about it means it was probably important - which is probably why nobody wants to talk about it...if anyone wishes to break the conspiracy of silence on this significant Babble historical event from the hoary past - we're all ears...

The Great Schism took place in response to a labour relations decision taken by Rabble management. Many of those who left founded EnMasse. Subsequently, the Little Schism took place when some members of EnMasse left the site to found Bread and roses.

Audra being fired.

@ LTJ

Well, you see something not being done, there's an easy solution to that. 

I tuned in for a couple of the votes while I was working last night. Personally, I just assumed there wasn't much interest here in that process. 

Speaking of which, I don't know about any old history and I don't care to, because I don't think it's any substitute for dealing with what is here and now. 

More importantly, from a few comments - so yeah, I'm guessing - sounds to me like people have as much information as is really necessary, and what is not known is private information that is really no one's business.

What's the use of having more information if what there is already is not acted upon?

 

If we acknowledge that the culture and many of the people are different today than way back then then we are acknowledging that the old history has no relevance. I was around at the time and I have to agree there is nothing from that time that would inform on where things are now or what would help.

One big change in my opinion is the use of twitter. Through your choice of follows you can create your own community and customize what you want to see. I feel that makes Rabble/Babble largely obsolete in terms of a place to go to for news.

But that was only one of the values of this place and I would argue not at all the most important.

Here was and still is a place to go and collect ideas and share them in more than a sound-bite. Here ideas can be laid out, receive comment and grow. Other ideas can win support. People can bat back and forth their interpretations of ongoing events in a community that everyone shares (each twitter feed is unique so you can't converse in the same context as another person as you can here).

I would also say there are people here who have found connections that lead them back here to see how so-and-so responds to a certain context or event.

Also unlike Twitter you can catch up here when the volume of twitter makes catching up impossible.

The investment for people is high however so there is a lot of passion flying around and unfortunately pockets of animus.

There are other less positive things as well but I think they have been explored and commented on. I think some of the decline of the place also relates to the alternatives and why people come here as well as any of the more noisy encounters.

Can't get Twitter here, and we don't even have access to cellphone service. Even if they were available, I wouldn't subscribe to them. So rabble and babble will thus always remain relevant to me.

That's precisely the kind of comment that too often makes this a toxic workplace. What can possibly be gained by such a nasty remark?  Will it make babble a better place?  Will it help us mods do a better job?  No to both.

 

Very, very slow to load on dialup.

"That was the cause of The Big Schism - I don't think it had anything to do with The Little Schism" Audra's firing made some Babblers believe that Babble had become a servant of The Establishment. They broke off to form two new boards and caused The Little Schism. I agree with Catchfire by the way. The golden age before Audra's firing never existed. This has always been a pretty rough place.

not + or helpful

I only plugged into the internet starting in 2001, and after awhile I discovered this wonderful way people were communicating, called Message Boards. I joined a few and eventually gravitated to the "General Discussion" areas where the same people who were being helpful in the rest of the forum threads were spewing the most ridiculous pro-Bush pro-war bullshit.

I just had to join in those discussions and it inevitably led to my banning in most of those forums for "personal attacks". So, becoming frustrated, I started Googling "left wing forums" and found Babble, that was in 2004. As I started reading babble, I was at once thrilled and scared, thrilled because here were posters telling conservative trolls to "fuck off" and not only were they NOT getting banned for it, after the little right wing pukes complained to the moderators, but they were THEMSELVES being banned for having started a thread innocently asking why gay couples should not just be happy with civil unions instead of marriage, or whatever. It was so deeply satisfying, I'm sure you all understand, to see these hypocritical little con bullies not being able to fill up message boards with their vileness by hiding behind blanket no personal attack rules.

Scared because, well to be honest, I recognized I was out of my weight class here. I finally found a message board I could love but I didn't feel there was much I could offer that wasn't already being said much more eloquently and intelligently by the vast majority of the regular posters. Also, I'm a loner and frankly don't usually have much to say anyway.

So, I signed up and posted a bit but mostly just read, which was O.K. because the level of discussion was such that I found myself learning as well as entertained. A win win.

During 2006 I was busy and away from Babble and actually missed the whole schism thing, only found out a bit later, and I was like holy shit where is everyone. I looked at the two other forums created post schism and although many (most?) of my favorite posters were currently posting at those websites, it wasn't, for me, the same. The "je ne sais quois" that made babble unique and exciting pre-schism was not, again, for me, recreated in either of those two sites. Sadly, though, it seemed to be gone from babble as well.

Having said that, I have continued to read, and (very) occasionally post under different pseudonyms (hehe who's next...jimmythegreek perhaps?), up to this point and will continue to do so as for me, it is still has some of the best posters on any message board I've seen. I know post-schism members tend to feel somewhat insulted by the implication that babble "was better before" they got here lol, and it was, but not because of their presence, but because of others absence.

I don't know, maybe the whole schism thing did more damage to babble then we care to admit, it's not hard to believe that the sense of community that existed before '06 evaporated when a large portion of those that participated in making babble a community left. But that was six years ago. That's a long bloody time, so either babble needs the equivelant of a couch and box of kleenex and deal with unresolved issues, or it's irrelevant.

P.S. I am aware of the irony of a very sparse poster commenting about community, but I come here every day to read.