Not having been on mtr for quite some time (several years now), I came across a post by Scott regarding mtr in the cable guardrail thread,
Quote from: Scott5114 on December 16, 2009, 11:33:37 PM
Don't know if you're referring to me or not, but by requiring sources I'm attempting to encourage the members to do research and think about it before posting, thus raising the tone of discourse. If you want no moderation whatsoever, by all means, MTR is still available, but I think if you spend enough time around there you'd be happy to have moderation. The mod-free environment there directly results in Carl Rogers, Racist Roadsign Randy, and other terribly cool people like that.
Also, please note that our moderators often do not post in a moderation capacity. We like to join in on the discussion and express our opinions as much as you. Sometimes it can be misinterpreted. As a result whenever I speak as a moderator I try to color the words purple to help accentuate that fact.
What the heck happened over there? I remember it being a fairly friendly environment back in the late 1990s. Now, half the posts there (I just looked) seem to be flame wars or trolling. :-/
BTW, many thanks to Alex, Adam, Scott, and the other webmasters here for providing a troll-free discussion board. :clap:
It it easy, friendly, and fun to read and converse.
The usual trolls. However, I am of the opinion that MTR is a medium where it's easy to ignore those posters you do not wish to read. Nevermind that the only way to improve the signal-to-noise ratio in such a medium is to increase the signal...i.e. post relevant material. Instead, people have simply given up on MTR, and it's never going to improve if they choose such a route.
I'm under the impression that part of the downfall of MTR (and Usenet in general) is that many ISPs have discontinued providing Usenet access to its customers. When that happened, some people just said "forget it" to MTR. Also, there's a larger number of choices in social media as far as roads go these days. You have MTR, you have the various Yahoo Groups, the AARoads Forum, Facebook, and the list goes on.
Quote from: Scott5114
Racist Roadsign Randy
is he the one that attempted to adopt that section of I-55 in the name of the Ku Klux Klan?
No...Randy could actually be an interesting person to talk to, as he has gone around visiting DOTs and obtaining a huge box of sign plans, but instead decided he'd rather post to MTR about how much black people suck and how horrible C.C. Slater is for not being racist. Not worth spending time on.
hmm, so if I don a white robe and a pointy hat, I could get my hands on some sign specs? intriguing...
I stopped posting there when this forum opened. This place has a great deal more maturity, as it lacks the trolls that plague MTR and will continue to plague it indefinitely. It's still a great resource and was once a great place for conversation, but the advent of Calrog and the others have made it unreadable and not worth the effort.
As I mentioned before, the "advent of Calrog and others" can easily be avoided, and MTR will never improve if people simply give up on it.
Is there any reason for it to improve, though? Usenet is dead for roughly 99% of all internet users. MTR is just not a medium that's going to attract new roadgeeks, especially now that there's more modern options (like this!) out there. MTR outlived most of Usenet as a successful venue for road conversation, and that's really cool, but I'm of the opinion it's time to move on. Besides that, without a constant stream of new users, it's going to just be the same people having a conversation, and there's only so much a singular group of people can talk about on the internet before it devolves into flame wars.
Neither ISP I use with any regularity even has Usenet access- so I'm stuck on Google Groups. Then it becomes a deal where I can wade through dozens of spam/calrog posts in hopes of finding something interesting or come here and not have to do all that. The choice isn't that hard, and for any currently quiet roads enthusiasts who are maybe looking to come out of their shell and become part of a larger community, or aspiring roadgeeks looking to contribute, the choice shouldn't be that hard for them either. I think that's what really keeps a community "fresh" and keeps it from becoming MTR- is a constant influx of new people and a community willing to welcome those people in. More modern forums such as this one have both. MTR has neither, and when you factor in difficulty of use, it becomes clear that it's time to just put MTR out of its misery.
The forum also has something MTR will never have - moderation. Calrog would probably get an instant ban here.
I only skim through the subject lines in MTR, as once in a while there will be something interesting there.
Quote from: corco on December 20, 2009, 12:12:32 PM
Is there any reason for it to improve, though? Usenet is dead for roughly 99% of all internet users. MTR is just not a medium that's going to attract new roadgeeks, especially now that there's more modern options (like this!) out there. MTR outlived most of Usenet as a successful venue for road conversation, and that's really cool, but I'm of the opinion it's time to move on. Besides that, without a constant stream of new users, it's going to just be the same people having a conversation, and there's only so much a singular group of people can talk about on the internet before it devolves into flame wars.
This. Also, I'm also dealing with the gradual loss of access to Usenet, and comparing the quality of the posts here to the quality of the posts there, it's not worth my time to have to configure newsreaders or sift through spam posts on Google Groups to continue reading or posting there too much.
I too have pretty much given up on MTR, I read it occasionally and post infrequently. Obviously I prefer the Roadgeek Yahoo List (I started it years ago) but have recently took a step back and transferred ownership to H.B. I filter out most of the noise on MTR but there just isn't too much signal these days and Usenet is dieing a slow death anyway.
I just started visiting AARoads recently and so far like what I see. While I will still stick with Roadgeek for most of my online road stuff I might start frequenting AARoads more often. I am still torn between the natural simplicity of an email reflector with the formidable power of a vBulletin system like this.
Here's my view...where this forum is strong is that new (younger) folks in the hobby can ask/find threads on things that were really popular in mtr 10 years ago. Think of all the canonical lists or I found this about routes in New York from the 1950s those kind of discussions. Things that were relatively new to everyone then - because it was the first online community of people with the same interest - has become pretty much common knowledge now. Many of these topics, if posted to mtr, are usually overlooked by folks, like myself, that have been around for 10 years or so. This forum does allow someone to find that thread an they and other new folks can keep it alive. There are a lot of folks that are college aged and younger in this forum, and it will be interesting how their involvement in the hobby grows or wanes in the years ahead. A ton of people have come and gone - for one reason or the other.
USenet is a slow death and people do and have moved on. However, this forum has had its drama also. I joined after the whole blowout with that middle school kid in San Francisco died down. So it's not immune. I have followed froggie's idea of posting again to mtr - and have found on items I have posted (I-73 and other topics) discussed more in depth there or in yahoo groups than this forum. Also, I have received more suggestions on various trips in those forums (yahoo specifically). So his point does have a lot of merit.
So far, I see this forum for more of the trivia/sign geeks/MUTCD etc. vs. discussions on various issues and news that you find in the regional yahoo groups or even mtr. I am sure that this forum will likely evolve into it though. Personally, I've evolved in more of discussion of various current projects and research and the trivial stuff is mundane (Lists of wrong way multiplexes, sequential concurrences, etc.) but then again that's just me.
Each forum has it's place, it's just up to the user to participate how they wish.
While I would prefer one worldwide discussion forum on roads, the truth of the matter is that it likely won't happen. So at this time, we have a number of different ways to discuss our hobby, such as MTR, Yahoo Groups, AARoads forum, SABRE, etc. You do have some people who prefer to just stick with Usenet, it's what they're familiar with and see no reason to have to change. Some people prefer the e-mail format of Yahoo Groups, some people prefer the AARoads forum, or perhaps more than one forum.
AARoads is a great place to have a road discussion forum, since it does tend to be a good starting off point for people in the hobby. What I mean by starting off is that that when someone searches for something like "Interstate 83 in Baltimore", AARoads (or one of its other sites) comes up among the top items in the search, and then people can easily find the Forum or whatever else they are looking for from there. This is similar to how I started working my way through the hobby, when one night in 1999, out of curiousity, I wondered if there was a web page on the Sunken Meadow Parkway, found Steve Anderson's nycroads.com and the rest is history.
Also, I find that if you post the same question to MTR, the Yahoo Groups and AARoads Forum, you may get different sets of responses from each. I recently posted a question for suggestions from an upcoming trip to Arizona. I received some responses about scenic drives from one place, and some comments about SPUIs from others. And nothing about colored Loop route shields. So yes, different forums about the same topic may yield different responses to questions.
I gave up on MTR three months ago. I had had Carl Rogers killfiled for years, but I reached the end of my patience when I realized I had to add someone else to my killfile because he was using one genuine road-related post to, in effect, pay for 20 others full of stridently anti-Obama rants. I added him to the killfile, but discovered that it did not make all of his previous posts vanish from my newsreader (Thunderbird), said "The hell with it," and unsubscribed. I have looked at it just twice since then, in Google Groups. I missed it for about three days and then just got on with things.
For the record, I have never had Randy Hersh in my killfile. My MTR killfile is still programmed into Thunderbird and it has just two names in it--Carl Rogers and the other individual.
There are many causes of MTR's decline and most of them have been touched on in this thread. There are a few others, however. First, MTR is a text-based Usenet newsgroup, which means that for certain types of content--such as photos and PNG rasterizations of sign drawings--it cannot really compete with Web forums such as this one, which have the ability to serve up that content without the need to click on links (which may in turn require launching a separate browser application). I have been doing sign drawings for close to 10 years now, and when the Roadgeek fonts became available in 2004 I was able to start producing some quite good pattern-accurate drawings, but I never felt comfortable uploading them to a Web server and providing links to them on MTR. "Hey, click through and look at what I drew"--not my style.
Second, for a variety of reasons such as the advent of Carl Rogers and the gradual diminution of ISP provision for Usenet, MTR has become an attractive platform for gang formation. There are now several cadres of highly involved regulars who will never leave MTR, no matter what, and there is a substantial amount of back-channel communication which makes itself evident in obscure references in MTR which only the "in" people understand. That in turn makes people like me question whether we will find an audience if we post something purely road-related. Others feel excluded from the "gangs," even if they themselves wouldn't really want to join them, and those feelings of exclusion often prompt them to firehose MTR along lines calculated to provoke: "All other road-related websites are shit," "Do not accept imitations in lieu of the real thing," "People who run road-related websites are incapable of getting laid," "The blacks are awful," "Skinheads are invariably racist," "I work in the cash-based economy so I have tax-free income," etc. It isn't really possible to talk people down from that kind of firehosing behavior if they have convinced themselves that they are standing up to bullies. In modern American society racism in particular is the unforgivable sin, and lots of people think that licenses unforgivable acts to punish it, so watching Randy versus the rest of MTR is a bit like seeing Monte Cassino fought with words.
The emergence of MTR gangs means that there are now a lot of people who alternate between making sensible, road-related posts and running with the gang. One person might provide links to a sign gallery in one post, and say something along the lines of "Randy/Carl/whoever is awful" in another post. Because I use Thunderbird as an integrated mail/news client, I am essentially limited to putting threads on ignore or killfiling individual people. (The fact that the killfile is not retroactive is a big disadvantage for me. When I decide to killfile a person, I want him completely out of my sight, so I don't want to see his posts when I review old threads.) I can't really deal with the people who alternate between running with the gangs and making road-related posts unless I use a separate newsreader and develop a score-based news filter, as Mark Roberts has recommended several times in MTR. MTR is supposed to be entertainment and this is, frankly, too much like hard work.
This said, MTR still remains a good source for breaking news. I think it is still worth looking at occasionally for TxDOT-related news, for example (I try to stay current because I still have more sign design sheets from TxDOT than any other road agency on Earth and the recent trends toward CDAs and design-build procurerment are a direct threat to that). But it makes more sense for me to find those through Google Groups searches rather than wade through Carl versus ECHM, most of MTR versus Randy, etc.
I am sad to see MTR come to this pass. Paul Wolf was kind enough to call me out by name (or, rather, posting handle) about a month ago as one of the consistent high-value posters, so of course I am sorry to walk away from that. But the low signal-to-noise ratio has been unforgiving reality for years now, and I simply don't see how that will change short of a major technological innovation like easy score-based filtering.
Quote from: J N Winkler on December 22, 2009, 02:28:11 PM
I simply don't see how that will change short of a major technological innovation like easy score-based filtering.
I didn't quote the whole thing, but at some point you did note that there was an entrenchment of "MTR and nowhere else" attitude. Is this attitude prevalent among the quality-content posters, or just those that make noise?
depending on the answer to that question, the solution may be social, and not technological - somehow convince the high-quality posters to switch over to other road forums. This would likely imply leaving MTR entirely, because who wants to have discussions fragmented by the fact that they are held in two locations. I do not know how to make the switch less harsh than it seems at first glance ("everybody start posting on AARoads forum all at once").
right now this forum is definitely oriented towards sign geeks but that is not an innate feature of its design; if people started talking about other aspects of road geekery here, then by definition that one complaint would vanish. But if precisely one person starts discussing the latest TxDOT project and no one else notices, then he's gonna give up and go back to MTR.
Damn inertia.
Quote from: J N Winkler on December 22, 2009, 02:28:11 PM
firehose MTR along lines calculated to provoke: "All other road-related websites are shit," "Do not accept imitations in lieu of the real thing," "People who run road-related websites are incapable of getting laid," "The blacks are awful," "Skinheads are invariably racist," "I work in the cash-based economy so I have tax-free income," etc.
also: could you please define "firehose"? I cannot glark from context whether it's a pro-MTR or anti-MTR behavior.
Quote from: agentsteel53 on December 22, 2009, 02:38:54 PM
I didn't quote the whole thing, but at some point you did note that there was an entrenchment of "MTR and nowhere else" attitude. Is this attitude prevalent among the quality-content posters, or just those that make noise?
I'd say it is entrenched among both, but to a higher degree among the noisemakers because they would have the most to lose if MTR died and their audience went away. My reasoning for this is that quality content will sooner or later find an audience--not necessarily on MTR.
Quotedepending on the answer to that question, the solution may be social, and not technological - somehow convince the high-quality posters to switch over to other road forums. This would likely imply leaving MTR entirely, because who wants to have discussions fragmented by the fact that they are held in two locations. I do not know how to make the switch less harsh than it seems at first glance ("everybody start posting on AARoads forum all at once").
A lot of people are keeping feet in multiple camps. For a while I was following MTR, SABRE, and SkyscraperCity in addition to AARoads. There are others, less internationally oriented than I am, who follow MTR and the Yahoo groups as well as AARoads. (I don't do the Yahoo groups because they tend to focus heavily on parochial issues in places I haven't visited for 10 or more years--my interest is more in design problems. I do belong to GreatLakesRoads but all of the list emails go to an address I check perhaps once or twice a year.)
Quoteright now this forum is definitely oriented towards sign geeks but that is not an innate feature of its design; if people started talking about other aspects of road geekery here, then by definition that one complaint would vanish. But if precisely one person starts discussing the latest TxDOT project and no one else notices, then he's gonna give up and go back to MTR.
Yes, that is a problem, but in the long run I think it will be overcome by the structural advantages AARoads has over MTR, like moderation and a high proportion of people who are here to listen and learn. Membership is also rather small, and perhaps geographically not that evenly distributed, so once the forum grows past those particular limitations, it will have no trouble attracting content.
Quote from: agentsteel53 on December 22, 2009, 02:40:04 PM
Quote from: J N Winkler on December 22, 2009, 02:28:11 PM
firehose MTR along lines calculated to provoke: "All other road-related websites are shit," "Do not accept imitations in lieu of the real thing," "People who run road-related websites are incapable of getting laid," "The blacks are awful," "Skinheads are invariably racist," "I work in the cash-based economy so I have tax-free income," etc.
also: could you please define "firehose"? I cannot glark from context whether it's a pro-MTR or anti-MTR behavior.
It's used metaphorically--what I mean is that there are people in MTR who post either to keep others on the defensive or to manipulate them into acting in a certain way, in much the same way police forces in Southern cities in the 1960's would use firehoses against blacks in the street. For example, Carl Rogers likes to shill his websites by implying that all other roadgeek websites are worthless imitations of his, run by people who live with their parents and have no girlfriends. This prompts people to respond predictably: our websites are better than his; Adam Prince has a girlfriend, and she's sexy-looking; etc.--never once realizing that Carl has manipulated them into letting him set the agenda.
Meanwhile, Randy has a favorite trope--he will post a link to a crime-pages story, usually featuring black-on-black violence, and direct it at C.C. Slater: "Look what your svartzie buddies did. You ought to be so proud." (This is a paraphrase, but
svartzie and
you should be so proud are standard taglines.) Once started in this way, a thread can go on, and in the past has gone on, for hundreds and hundreds of posts, many of which contain variations of the phrases "Racist Roadsine Randy," "Rancid Randy," etc. Randy has now picked up a sock puppet, "Randy Hersch," probably run by his opponents (why do Gentiles seem to think it is acceptable to misspell Jewish names?), who pops up occasionally to say things like "Black people are awful" and so on.
With that kind of intense behavior going on, people who come to MTR to discuss roads fade into the landscape--we're just passersby. We have to ask ourselves: should we killfile various people and just try to have our own discussions? With Carl Rogers that particular solution is a no-brainer, but with C.C. Slater it is not so straightforward since he does make road-related posts. Randy is also formidably knowledgeable about Interstate signing and his posts on that topic are usually well worth reading. There are others I have considered killfiling on general grounds of idiocy, but even they occasionally make good posts.
I became active on road forums in the early 2000's, and it always surprised me about the fact there wasn't really one American roadgeek forum, while British, German, French and Dutch road forums popped up between 1999 and 2003. Things like newsgroups/usenet/MTR was pretty unknown territory for me, as such kind of internet activity has died out long ago in Europe. I didn't find out about MTR until like a year ago. I knew AAroads for a few years, but it wasn't a discussion board back then. I found some forums about trucking, roadtrips, and other forums which had subforums about highways, but it wasn't until early 2009 that the AAroads forum was founded, which, to me, looked like the first organized roadgeek forum.
I had dial-up internet until 2002, and after we got broadband access, a whole new world about roads opened up to me. I started following the German Autobahn-online.de forums, but eventually lost interest in that forum due to it's horribly antiquated looks. Then I joined the Dutch wegenforum in 2003, I am active there to this day. My interest has grown since, expanding all over Europe and North America. As digital cameras became more common in the mid-2000's, I found out many more people enjoyed taking pictures of highways. I joined the Skyscrapercity forums in 2006, mostly for the Highways & Autobahns section, which wasn't much back then, but had increased activity from mid-2007. I also have an account on the Swiss Autobahnen.ch forum, and the SABRE forum, but I gotta admit, following the wegenforum and Highways & Autobahns already consumes most of my online time.
I tried to get some interest for MTR, I didn't like it's antiquated layout and the fact there are a lot of trolls there and hotlinking photos doesn't seem to work there either. I have written an entire Dutch-language encyclopedia about every single freeway-standard road and most U.S. Highways in the United States and much of Europe, and even into other countries like Japan, South Korea and Brazil on the wegenwiki, a subsidiary of the Dutch wegenforum.
I think a main reason is inertia. The sites in Europe are probably newer and as such bypassed usenet and newsgroups entirely. Meanwhile in the US, MTR had already been long established.
Quote from: agentsteel53 on December 22, 2009, 02:38:54 PM
depending on the answer to that question, the solution may be social, and not technological - somehow convince the high-quality posters to switch over to other road forums. This would likely imply leaving MTR entirely, because who wants to have discussions fragmented by the fact that they are held in two locations. I do not know how to make the switch less harsh than it seems at first glance ("everybody start posting on AARoads forum all at once").
right now this forum is definitely oriented towards sign geeks but that is not an innate feature of its design; if people started talking about other aspects of road geekery here, then by definition that one complaint would vanish. But if precisely one person starts discussing the latest TxDOT project and no one else notices, then he's gonna give up and go back to MTR.
Damn inertia.
Word of mouth advertising has proven to be effective. While you probably don't want to be constantly advertising the AARoads Forum on MTR or the Yahoo Groups, occasionally advertising the forum may not be a bad idea. Also, encouraging people to check out the forum may be beneficial for getting a wider and more diverse audience, so the AARoads Forum isn't totally slanted towards one aspect of the hobby. Granted, you will find people who won't do anything different than what they do now, but a little encouragement won't hurt.
I'll agree that the AARoads Forum is currently slanted towards the sign side of things, but one way to increase discussion about road design, road construction, road history, etc. is to post about those things and hopefully others will take notice and feel comfortable contributing to those discussions.
Quote from: dougtone on December 21, 2009, 05:12:46 PM
While I would prefer one worldwide discussion forum on roads, the truth of the matter is that it likely won't happen.
There's a language barrier and that it'll be full of country cliques.
Quote from: deanej on December 22, 2009, 05:11:19 PMI think a main reason is inertia. The sites in Europe are probably newer and as such bypassed usenet and newsgroups entirely. Meanwhile in the US, MTR had already been long established.
The history of SABRE is that it part split out of MTR (as it was US dominated and there were few British people), part was new. Originally it was an MSN newsgroup/forum hybrid to discuss one website, but the chance to discuss UK roads with a high signal-noise ratio (not 1 or 2% of MTR anymore) meant that people decamped there and it gathered inertia and members and MTR wasn't a place British roadgeeks went as there was no point anymore - more people and more discussion on SABRE. Then as the membership got increasingly annoyed with the awful functionality of MSN Groups (and Yahoo groups - there was one that dealt with some of the running - sometimes as much as 30 messages a day, almost as much as the MSN page), we examined alternatives, settling with phpbb forums. Membership was surprisingly strong by the end of the MSN days, given how annoying the system was, but really boomed after the move to phpbb.
Quote from: Chris on December 22, 2009, 03:50:56 PMI joined the Skyscrapercity forums in 2006, mostly for the Highways & Autobahns section, which wasn't much back then, but had increased activity from mid-2007.
This is the closest thing there is to a world forum. However there isn't that much discussion on those places where there's other places to talk about it. It thus becomes eastern European roads dominate. I don't mind that, however, I was there for quite a while and I didn't like the large amount of those weren't road-geeks (but scraper-geeks) and the net-police that weren't mods (I've found a lot of them on various UK railway forums, often far more anal and far more sheltered). I think it was more the people in other sections of skyscraper city than Highways and Transportation (UK transport, subways, European railways) that meant I couldn't be bothered anymore. However H&T had lots of posts I couldn't be that bothered about - lots of in-country discussion and so on.
Quote from: english si on December 23, 2009, 05:17:35 AM
Quote from: Chris on December 22, 2009, 03:50:56 PMI joined the Skyscrapercity forums in 2006, mostly for the Highways & Autobahns section, which wasn't much back then, but had increased activity from mid-2007.
This is the closest thing there is to a world forum. However there isn't that much discussion on those places where there's other places to talk about it. It thus becomes eastern European roads dominate.
This is mainly attributed to three factors;
1) most road construction happens in Eastern/Central Europe these days.
2) People from those countries are very enthusiast in sharing that with the world, they want to show countries like Poland and Hungary are not poor anymore, and have very good roads.
3) A major problem in "old Europe" is that people from the "big four" (Germany, France, Italy, Spain) are not very good in English. They usually know some very basic English, but most are unable to participate in a discussion on a somewhat more advanced level of English. So far for western education... There are more than enough interesting issues in Germany, Spain, Italy or France, but most posts in those topics aren't even by natives, but by foreigners (like me). This is also a factor because French/German/Spanish language road forums already exist. Maybe they don't feel the need to discuss/show it to people from other countries.
The UK Motorways thread on SSC, despite being relevant to English speakers, is pretty awful, mostly as the intellegent conversation is elsewhere (OK, not a lot happens in the UK wrt Motorways). Ireland is slightly better, as stuff is happening, but SABRE (and boards.ie) take most of the news (which tends to get posted everywhere) and most of the intelligent/informed conversation. There's a critical mass that has been reached in Hungary, Poland, etc, so the standard and quantity of discussion is raised on the whole as there's a lot of informed people there and there's nowhere else really for that discussion (that I know of).
That said there does seem to be a lot of people without much common sense on H&A - check out the discussion as to what the red lines mean on a map of the GB motorway network, after they had been explained by the person who posted the original map.
Quote from: dougtone on December 22, 2009, 08:45:00 PMWord of mouth advertising has proven to be effective. While you probably don't want to be constantly advertising the AARoads Forum on MTR or the Yahoo Groups, occasionally advertising the forum may not be a bad idea.
FWIW, my mtr participation declined from mostly-lurking for a couple of years to total abandonment (and canceling my NNTP server access) about a year or so ago.
I found aaroads recently by noticing in my Wordpress stats how folks were finding the Roadgeek fonts. ;)
Jonathan, I think I can sum up your post in regards to mtr in a few words, "You just don't care for it anymore."
Jake, it will take for a forum like this to evolve. What has made it a success here is really all the younger than 25 folks and the trivia/fantasy highways/sign geeks. In the late 90's to about 2001 or 2002, MTR was full of discussions like this. Plus even now, this forum is nowhere near as active as mtr was in it's heyday. But to use a legal phrase they all have been "asked and answered". So the newer folks don't have a spot for that anymore. Plus, the folks that maintain those lists have come, gone passed it to someone else, that person came and went an it's gone.
I think an issue is - and this was brought up years ago in mtr - a lot of people in this hobby want one place. (the mtr thread was why not have one big site and everyone does there thing on it.) But it's difficult for a hobby with so many interests and subinterests to have jsut one place. This forum may develop to more of the trivia/fantasy highways/sign geek place and other discussions on regional, policy, and other issues may go elsewhere. SERoads, admittedly highly NC focused, is more discussed on news items than I found a cutout shield in South Carolina. Here, the place would go crazy...elsewhere not so much.
It really comes down to what your interest is in the hobby. If you appreciate signs and a photo of every sign on I-95 in South Carolina - this is the place to be. If you don't, other forums may be better at this time. In Jonathan's case if you don't want to do a link to your site and just post them here...obviously this is better.
It really just matters what your interests is/are and how you want to participate. Time will either bring other interests here or not. I don't sweat it...and honestly neither should anyone else.
Quote from: CanesFan27 on December 23, 2009, 10:45:43 AM
I think an issue is - and this was brought up years ago in mtr - a lot of people in this hobby want one place. (the mtr thread was why not have one big site and everyone does there thing on it.) But it's difficult for a hobby with so many interests and subinterests to have jsut one place.
I would be happy to have one place. And given that our forum is divided up into sub-boards, and is generally threaded, I do think we have the technological capability to evolve towards this being the one place. It's just a matter of getting the necessary influx of other interests.
My two cents, for what they are worth...
MTR is like the Rose Bowl. It's the granddaddy of them all. I do not fall into the camp of those who think it's useless or past its prime or not worth visiting anymore. In fact, it is still my preferred medium for roads discussions and most times I will post things to MTR that I don't post to the Yahoo groups or here.
I agree with those others who have commented on the decline of MTR and other Usenet groups in general and their conclusion that it's the result of larger ISPs dropping their Usenet feeds. And in turn this causes smaller, local or regional ISPs to also drop Usenet because they carry the AT&T newsgroup feed. And I blame much of that on an over-reaction to trying to get child porn-based binary newsgroups off their servers. Instead of blocking those specific groups hosting illegal content, they just do away with Usenet altogether. (I pay for Usenet access, Newsguy in particular, because I make heavy use of the music binary groups. There is a free Usenet service that hosts only text groups, Eternal September -- formerly Motzarella -- that others are using).
The thing I like best about MTR is the fact that it's not moderated. In all honesty, the moderation here and in some of the other avenues of information is a little too heavy-handed for me. I recently became the moderator of Roadgeek (the Yahoo group) and will be much less involved in moderation than my predecessor was. The best moderation is a killfile. I keep Carl Rogers alive for purposes of humor and have long since quit responding to his trolling and his taunts, but I plonked Randy because he is a repugnant human being. It works fine for me.
If I had to choose one forum, I'd choose MTR over all. It's still the original and best. But thankfully we're not forced to make that choice and if we don't like the way a discussion is going in one forum, we can take it to another one and continue it there.
I left MTR as a regular for good in July 2004, after about two years of off and on participation/lurking. MTR had its usefulness; it was where I first discovered that there were other roadgeeks in 1997. But the negativity there chased me away years ago and I never read it now...
Quote from: hbelkins on December 23, 2009, 02:46:20 PM
The thing I like best about MTR is the fact that it's not moderated. In all honesty, the moderation here and in some of the other avenues of information is a little too heavy-handed for me.
Hey, well, we're always interested to hear how we're doing as mods. Do you think we're being too harsh as a result of some specific instances of moderation? Or is it just a preference for lack of moderation in general?
When it comes to moderation in a place like this we have three roles as mods. One is to act as a bouncer, keeping out people who harm the community (people like Calrog, Randy, and spammers). The other is to act as a custodian, cleaning up threads, locking topics, splitting and merging them as needed. Finally we need someone to act as peacekeeper. I believe at the current time the last role is something we need to work on, as we have had limited experience with this–most discussions here are pretty friendly–but in those few flareups we've had I think we could stand to improve in our response some. Hopefully we can improve in that way in the future. I have seen other forums where the moderators have bred a culture of rational, advanced debate without it becoming an argument. Controversial subjects could be discussed without incident because the membership was well trained to always debate each other on their points and not their personalities. This is what I'd like this forum to be, and if we can create a culture like that, I'm sure we'll be able to have some great discussions on some of the advanced topics in roadgeeking, like the political situations that arise due to road construction.
I'm actually rather surprised and overwhelmed by the number of non-U.S. posters we have here. You guys make this place better by providing an international viewpoint, helping us see things we might have missed because we're so used to the U.S. way of doing things.
I think that as we approach our one-year anniversary, so far our forum is doing pretty great, and I expect it will continue to improve next year. I'm glad for all of our members, and hope to keep seeing all of you around :)
Quote from: Scott5114 on December 23, 2009, 07:19:57 PM
our one-year anniversary
I for one am firmly in favor of a Stalin-esque rewriting of history, remanding anything that may have occurred during the Nonexistent Regime of the Nonexistent One (may any concept of him continue to be mathematically impossible to formulate)
Those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it...
Quote from: Scott5114 on December 23, 2009, 07:19:57 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on December 23, 2009, 02:46:20 PM
The thing I like best about MTR is the fact that it's not moderated. In all honesty, the moderation here and in some of the other avenues of information is a little too heavy-handed for me.
Hey, well, we're always interested to hear how we're doing as mods. Do you think we're being too harsh as a result of some specific instances of moderation? Or is it just a preference for lack of moderation in general?
When it comes to moderation in a place like this we have three roles as mods. One is to act as a bouncer, keeping out people who harm the community (people like Calrog, Randy, and spammers). The other is to act as a custodian, cleaning up threads, locking topics, splitting and merging them as needed. Finally we need someone to act as peacekeeper. I believe at the current time the last role is something we need to work on, as we have had limited experience with this–most discussions here are pretty friendly–but in those few flareups we've had I think we could stand to improve in our response some. Hopefully we can improve in that way in the future. I have seen other forums where the moderators have bred a culture of rational, advanced debate without it becoming an argument. Controversial subjects could be discussed without incident because the membership was well trained to always debate each other on their points and not their personalities. This is what I'd like this forum to be, and if we can create a culture like that, I'm sure we'll be able to have some great discussions on some of the advanced topics in roadgeeking, like the political situations that arise due to road construction.
I'm actually rather surprised and overwhelmed by the number of non-U.S. posters we have here. You guys make this place better by providing an international viewpoint, helping us see things we might have missed because we're so used to the U.S. way of doing things.
I think that as we approach our one-year anniversary, so far our forum is doing pretty great, and I expect it will continue to improve next year. I'm glad for all of our members, and hope to keep seeing all of you around :)
I'm an owner/moderator of the Northeastroads mailing list at Yahoo Groups, and most of my moderation has to keep the mailing list free of spammers trying to sell up in order to sell male enhancement pills, get rich quick schemes and well, you get the idea. At this forum, most of the moderation activity I see from the moderators has to do with moving topics when necessary in order to keep a focused discussion group in shape.
Quote from: froggie on December 23, 2009, 07:37:34 PM
Those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it...
there is nothing to repeat. :sombrero:
Quote from: dougtone on December 23, 2009, 07:39:50 PM
I'm an owner/moderator of the Northeastroads mailing list at Yahoo Groups, and most of my moderation has to keep the mailing list free of spammers trying to sell up in order to sell male enhancement pills, get rich quick schemes and well, you get the idea. At this forum, most of the moderation activity I see from the moderators has to do with moving topics when necessary in order to keep a focused discussion group in shape.
luckily, having to register and have your membership approved by a real human being really cuts down on the spambots here. Does Yahoo have anything of the sort, or is that by definition impossible given the ability to post without being pre-approved?
Yahoo has an option in place where members to a Yahoo Groups mailing list have to be approved by an actual person. This is what I do for Northeastroads, and what I have done is that a prospective group member has to basically explain why they want to join the group (a sentence such as "I like roads." works for me).
oh okay; I misread your previous post and thought by "keep out" you had to individually delete spam messages, lest it turn into MTR. looks like you have a similar system of pre-approval as this forum.
(that said, I don't think I've approved a new member in months. I tend to rearrange posts into more relevant topics, make sure images are sensibly sized and not broken, and keep the Ginger population down :sombrero: )
Quote from: agentsteel53 on December 23, 2009, 07:58:28 PM
oh okay; I misread your previous post and thought by "keep out" you had to individually delete spam messages, lest it turn into MTR. looks like you have a similar system of pre-approval as this forum.
(that said, I don't think I've approved a new member in months. I tend to rearrange posts into more relevant topics, make sure images are sensibly sized and not broken, and keep the Ginger population down :sombrero: )
It sounds more like your role in moderating the forum is essentially maintaining the day-to-day operations of the forum, which is similar to what I do, but at a larger scale.
indeed. I might be one of the few people that gives *every* post at least a casual glance. I use the "Recent Posts" view as my default.
Quote from: CanesFan27 on December 23, 2009, 10:45:43 AM
Jonathan, I think I can sum up your post in regards to mtr in a few words, "You just don't care for it anymore."
I certainly don't care enough any longer to try to follow it in real time. Now I think of it more as a resource I can access massively in arrears. The garbage then falls away since it becomes visible only if I do a Google Groups search for it specifically.
Quote from: hbelkins on December 23, 2009, 02:46:20 PM
I agree with those others who have commented on the decline of MTR and other Usenet groups in general and their conclusion that it's the result of larger ISPs dropping their Usenet feeds. And in turn this causes smaller, local or regional ISPs to also drop Usenet because they carry the AT&T newsgroup feed. And I blame much of that on an over-reaction to trying to get child porn-based binary newsgroups off their servers. Instead of blocking those specific groups hosting illegal content, they just do away with Usenet altogether. (I pay for Usenet access, Newsguy in particular, because I make heavy use of the music binary groups. There is a free Usenet service that hosts only text groups, Eternal September -- formerly Motzarella -- that others are using).
I disagree. "My ISP no longer provides a Usenet feed" is just an alibi. In order to hook up to Usenet in the first place through their ISPs, they had to find the address of the ISP's news server, which is no more difficult than finding a free third-party news server--I found mine through a Google search. I think the real reason is that they see the atrocity exhibition MTR has become and are voting with their feet.
QuoteThe thing I like best about MTR is the fact that it's not moderated. In all honesty, the moderation here and in some of the other avenues of information is a little too heavy-handed for me. I recently became the moderator of Roadgeek (the Yahoo group) and will be much less involved in moderation than my predecessor was. The best moderation is a killfile. I keep Carl Rogers alive for purposes of humor and have long since quit responding to his trolling and his taunts, but I plonked Randy because he is a repugnant human being. It works fine for me.
Yes, and you haven't gone to a lot of trouble to hide that from Randy, have you?
Think about the "killfile as moderator" concept for a minute. When people say they are leaving MTR because their ISPs no longer provide Usenet news feeds, they are in effect admitting that they are not willing to do a single simple Google search to find a new news server. If they are not willing to do this, then why do you think they would take the time to do something far more complex, like making a list of all the people on MTR whose posts they don't want to see and add them to a killfile, or implement score-based filtering?
QuoteIf I had to choose one forum, I'd choose MTR over all. It's still the original and best. But thankfully we're not forced to make that choice and if we don't like the way a discussion is going in one forum, we can take it to another one and continue it there.
If MTR were the only choice (fortunately it is not), I think I would give up roads-related discussion altogether, except through private email and the like. There is a sufficient wealth of resources independent of MTR (and indeed other road-related discussion groups) that I would lose relatively little by walking away. In fact, posting on newsgroups takes up probably a minority of the time I dedicate to this hobby. The name of the game is exchange of information and it is fundamentally unrealistic to expect the knowledge base to troll-proof itself before it sets foot in MTR. This, combined with the support for rich content, is the reason I think AARoads bids fair to pull ahead of MTR over the long run.
In regard to Scott's post about moderation on this forum, I would not characterize it as overly aggressive. I have some experience as a moderator since I served as SABRE Site Manager for 1 1/2 years and was also President for one year, which meant I had to supervise a formal complaints process which, among other things, was designed to address members' complaints about the moderators' performance (or, more commonly, lack of it). I found that the easiest moderating decisions to make had to do with closing down open quarrels, and I think the AARoads moderators have done well by this standard. The really difficult moderating decisions have to do with shutting down the dimwits, idle drivelers, and other low-value posters who are not bad-intentioned and are often not even that obnoxious but are dragging down the forum for everybody. (Jake gets at part of this problem when he talks about the "Ginger factor." In SABRE we also had to contend with what might be called the "Motoral factor" . . .) I think the AARoads moderators have also done well by this standard. However, in some specific cases such as the banning of simguy228, I think my opinion is probably in the minority.
One thing to consider as the forum grows bigger is whether benevolent dictatorship is a viable model for forum management. Many roads-related Web forums have introduced external mechanisms for accountability as they have grown. SABRE started out as privately owned (much like AARoads is now), but eventually became a sort of constitutional democracy with checks and balances. AARoads may not want to go down that road (our decision-making processes are often unwieldy, and the Philosopher King approach has good credentials--Plato,
The Republic, all that), but one option might be to introduce an ombudsman, elected by board members at large, who would be able to review controversial moderating/banning decisions.
How many free third-party Usenet servers are there out there? Eternal September is about the only one I know. I used to bounce around quite a few of them when I first got on Usenet, seems the ones with free access to both read and post got shut down on a frequent basis. Usenet in total is worth $100 a year to me, which is why I subscribe to a pay service. The only time i really used my ISP's server (I'm on BellSouth/AT&T DSL at home) is when I had the need to "sock up" and post something.
As for moderation, I started to type a big rant here but decided against it. Suffice it to say that if you want to see my philosophy on moderation in action, watch how I handle the Roadgeek group now that I'm in charge of it via winning the election among the members. I was not one of the ones who was opposed to a moderated MTR (in fact, when the NASCAR Usenet group got filled with junk, I voted "yes" on rec.autos.sport.nascar.moderated) but there is still good ol' RASN to look at. (And I've honestly quit reading that group because I've lost so much interest in NASCAR since February 2001.)
I guess it's just the "open marketplace of ideas" concept that sticks with me ever since my Mass Communications 101 class oh so many years ago.
The news server I used for about two years (after I decided to killfile Carl and had to move to a different platform to make that possible) is news.ett.com.ua. It was reliable and allowed me both to post and to read. It was also free, with no special signup procedure required. I will grant you, however, that it was not the first Usenet news server I tried. I think there were one or two others I tried for about fifteen minutes before I discovered limitations on the service offered, such as reading only (no posting) and the like.
$100/year is somewhat larger than my annual budget for collecting traffic signing plans, which these days is my main road-related activity. Keep in mind also that many users are accustomed to Usenet as a free service and are therefore unwilling to spend large amounts of time troll-proofing their newsreaders, whereas people such as yourself who actually pay have more of an incentive to make best use of the sunk money cost.
There are many different conceptions of the "open marketplace of ideas." MTR and unmoderated Usenet newsgroups in general are one model, which is predicated on open access and zero trust among the users, and is therefore susceptible to trolls. But freedom to contract is also part of the "open marketplace of ideas," and that includes the ability to establish a trust-based contract between users and moderators whereby access to a venue for communication (say, a Web forum) is open, but supervised, and continued membership is contingent on an expectation of good, meaningful, on-topic posts. I agree that the "walled garden" model of content provision is objectionable, but that is not what we are doing here. Nor are the moderators imposing prior restraint.
Another model is the Wikipedia way of doing things, which is for potential moderators to be nominated in front of the community, which conducts an up-or-down vote on the promotion. That way only trusted members of the community are made moderators.
The problem is determining a method for removal of moderators that are no longer making good decisions. Moderators cannot exactly serve at the pleasure of the community, as moderators that put themselves in the midst of controversial decisions can easily upset a faction of the community that disagrees with their decision, which could result in them taking action to have the moderator in question dismissed. On Wikipedia, administrators cannot be easily removed once elected; they are generally only removed upon executive decision by Jimmy Wales or by a finding of wrongdoing by the Arbitration Committee, the "Supreme Court" of sorts for Wikipedia.
Regardless of whatever type of mechanism evolves in the future here, it is likely that Alex will always retain some type of executive override authority over it, as the "AARoads" brand belongs to him and he would like to keep the forum focused on topics that fit in with the name. This is why after the regime change you saw much fewer game-related and off-topic posts–Alex did not feel comfortable with these type of things existing on a forum that carries his brand name.
from another thread...
Quote from: agentsteel53 on December 24, 2009, 07:26:37 PM
no more bickering about the van. any other discussion on the topic is greatly welcome (for example Joseph's post) but any further back-and-forth about this one example will be deleted.
Exhibit A for the plaintiff.
In a situation such as this, a moderator can either let the situation possibly degenerate into people shouting the same things over and over at each other, or they can move the conversation forward by limiting debate on a particular point. The question is the difference between whether you feel the community's sense of freedom or a quality debate is more important. Obviously this is a subjective decision on the point of the mod involved. You would probably handle it differently on your list than we would here because you have a different moderation style and different values than we do.
I normally read MTR on a regular basis to see if I've missed something not posted here. However, I haven't actually posted since June and I only made an account to comment when the forum was offline thanks to Cody.
Just curious: What's the average age of the moderators here?
Quote from: Scott5114 on December 25, 2009, 03:04:56 AM
In a situation such as this, a moderator can either let the situation possibly degenerate into people shouting the same things over and over at each other, or they can move the conversation forward by limiting debate on a particular point. The question is the difference between whether you feel the community's sense of freedom or a quality debate is more important. Obviously this is a subjective decision on the point of the mod involved. You would probably handle it differently on your list than we would here because you have a different moderation style and different values than we do.
In SABRE we typically sidestepped the censorship question (which arises when posts are deleted) by adhering to a rule that posts would be deleted only in exceptional circumstances, but by locking threads for preannounced cooling-off periods when we felt discussion had become too heated. This worked well, although we had to be alert for situations where a moderator became involved in a heated discussion and then locked the thread to shut up an opponent; obviously that is a glaring conflict of interest.
In regards to H.B.'s question, I think emotional maturity rather than chronological age is the key variable. It has also been my experience that people vary in their ability to keep changes in their personal circumstances (such as the death of a close relative, chronic illness, etc.) from affecting their moderating style.
Usenet's accessibility was a challenge for me when I first started researching highway systems several years ago. I can't remember how I got started, but m.t.r was referenced in several pages that my research had led me to (and I want to say froggie's Minneapolis-St Paul pages was one of them, but I'm not sure). It took a good amount of effort to find and access m.t.r, and once done, figuring out how to participate in the discussions, particularly since I was (am) very active in the phpbb board scene.
Who was the troll du jour when I finally got in... Bukovich is the name coming to mind, but he had a bone he kept picking at Chris Bessert; and then there was the 'One above the [speed] limit is a criminal!' Kathy... Point is, the trolls were active then, though those two were tame compared to the flame wars that erupted on m.t.u-t over Portland's Yellow MAX line. It came to the point where m.t.r and m.t.u-t were pointless to participate in (I managed to miss most of Carl Roger's shenanigans), save for doing searches through Google to find any relevant topics, and even that's become more and more difficult.
I was at a balance point in terms of online roadgeekery: My research (which essentially targets Los Angeles, Portland and the Twin Cities) could easily be sated through a handful of sites and by trawling my county library and now alma mater's library. I had tried doing some of the Yahoo groups, but I find the Yahoo groups, like MSN, to be very archaic and counter-intuitive. I much prefer the phpBB style of boards, but there didn't appear to be any such boards for roadgeeks at the time (and there were suggestions on m.t.r to have such boards, but the consensus was m.t.r was the way to go) save for Skyscraper City, but it didn't ping on my radar.
Ironically enough, it was the (Interstate) Clinching Project that brought me to this board and active participation on the roadgeek end. I volunteered there to add the Canadian highways (and now Oregon), and as we started to delve in Europe, Spain and Portugal proved to be real nightmares in terms of documentation of their motorway systems. Tim referred me here and Sabre, and... well, I'm here.
The true irony of all this is that trolls helped discourage my participation in online roadgeeking, yet I myself am a troll; I reserve my trolling at a troll board, specifically targeting the idiots that... As far as moderation goes, it depends on the purpose of the location. A place like m.t.r and m.t.u-t would have greatly benefited from moderation. Sure, placing a troll on ignore/killfiling them might work, but where I troll, placing someone on ignore is considered 'letting the trolls win' (don't worry, that's troll bs; ignoring a poster doesn't work in the sense that another person quoting the blocked troll defeats the ignore and the post is merely blocked with a 'Click here to see post' that ends up being clicked anyway).
Moderation-extreme boards tend to self-destruct, are filled with Yes Men or are hypocritical because they'll target the elements they don't like (trolling the trolls, in a sense); I don't really see that being the case here. I've seen a couple members here that look like got hit with the banhammer; but that's the case on even my home board, where I've done my share of adminning. This isn't a 'heavily moderated' board by any measure.
I can see this board being a good focal point and a good alternative to the behemoths like Skyscraper City. It's more focused here, but there's enough diversity in interests that people should feel at home.
Quote from: hbelkins on December 25, 2009, 08:12:43 PM
Just curious: What's the average age of the moderators here?
Someone please correct me if I'm incorrect, but I believe the moderators fall into the age range of late teens to around 40.
Quote from: J N Winkler on December 23, 2009, 09:30:37 PMIn regard to Scott's post about moderation on this forum, I would not characterize it as overly aggressive.
I haven't really noticed much moderation here at all - a bit, but not much. Looking from the outside (in both cases), it a little bit tighter than where SABRE is in terms of moderation today. I was SABRE President for a year, Secretary the year before that, and off-topic forum moderation for a handful of months before that - a lot of moderation of moderators (especially when they say they will do one thing and then do another thing that is outside of the rules limiting powers - which it turns out they hadn't read - leading to a big in-fight lasting about 8 weeks and several resignations, including the Site Manager), not much moderation itself, but I can spot the stuff.
One thing I noticed in SABRE (and elsewhere) was knee-jerk heavy-handedness to deal with a problem that happened recently, but isn't happening now. I don't blame you, but there is a slightly-aggressive desire to make this not suffer the banality and troll problems of M.T.R. - SABRE doesn't have that that much (we tried to deal with certain banality heavy-handedly, then relaxed that, and tolerate a fairly low level of banality, random hijacking/bumping of threads and so on, that we used to step down on - instead the mods let forum members act as policemen then nip it in the bud if the discussion gets nasty after that)
QuoteSABRE started out as privately owned (much like AARoads is now), but eventually became a sort of constitutional democracy with checks and balances. AARoads may not want to go down that road (our decision-making processes are often unwieldy, and the Philosopher King approach has good credentials--Plato, The Republic, all that), but one option might be to introduce an ombudsman, elected by board members at large, who would be able to review controversial moderating/banning decisions.
Ombudsman is the best way to play it, with the ability to be able to challenge mods/decisions via them. On a London Underground forum that I used to be a part of, the mods and I (and some others) got in an argument about heavy handed moderation, during which the chief admin called a sizeable amount of users something along the lines of "second class" for wanting to discuss certain legit topics - OK, some had done it the wrong way, so a 'play pen' (that I think was a low-level mod's term for it) was set up for those 'immature' (an admin's phrase) members that wanted to play in the realms of fantasy (which was mentioning anything more far off than funded improvements, or criticising those improvements by suggesting something else would be a better use of the money) rather than engage in 'proper' (chief admin's phrase) discussion - the people throwing couldn't see what was offensive about these terms, and complaining to the mods was out, as they were the mods. After a week's discussion, with no justification or apology that justified me not leaving, I could see no other course of action but to leave, which was something they supposedly didn't want.
Quote from: J N Winkler on December 25, 2009, 08:44:29 PMThis [locking threads] worked well, although we had to be alert for situations where a moderator became involved in a heated discussion and then locked the thread to shut up an opponent; obviously that is a glaring conflict of interest.
I had forgotten about that incident. Looking back, I'm surprised that didn't cause an admin war. I guess it wasn't deleting photos when you said you wouldn't a couple of hours before and in breach of the constitution that you hadn't read.
Locking threads, asking people to cool down - that's far better than deleting posts (unless said posts are duplicate).
Quote from: DanTheMan414 on December 26, 2009, 12:13:28 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on December 25, 2009, 08:12:43 PM
Just curious: What's the average age of the moderators here?
Someone please correct me if I'm incorrect, but I believe the moderators fall into the age range of late teens to around 40.
But he wanted average age, so I'm thinking in the mid-20's would be average.
Quote from: english si on December 23, 2009, 05:17:35 AM
Quote from: dougtone on December 21, 2009, 05:12:46 PM
While I would prefer one worldwide discussion forum on roads, the truth of the matter is that it likely won't happen.
There's a language barrier and that it'll be full of country cliques.
That's not gonna work as long as English will be the lingua franca on such a forum. It would mean every Anglosaxon would have an huge advance over people from elsewhere. Just try to interact with the French SARA-forum (http://forum.sara-infra.com/index.php) with just your school-French and you know why the rest of the world won't be charmed with a 'worldforum' only in English. Skyscrapercity has detailed threads in local languages, and more global in English, that's a strong feature.
Quote from: aswnl on December 27, 2009, 05:51:35 PM
Quote from: english si on December 23, 2009, 05:17:35 AM
Quote from: dougtone on December 21, 2009, 05:12:46 PM
While I would prefer one worldwide discussion forum on roads, the truth of the matter is that it likely won't happen.
There's a language barrier and that it'll be full of country cliques.
That's not gonna work as long as English will be the lingua franca on such a forum. It would mean every Anglosaxon would have an huge advance over people from elsewhere. Just try to interact with the French SARA-forum (http://forum.sara-infra.com/index.php) with just your school-French and you know why the rest of the world won't be charmed with a 'worldforum' only in English. Skyscrapercity has detailed threads in local languages, and more global in English, that's a strong feature.
Exactly - there's a language barrier, and cliques form. Skyscraper City just puts all these cliques where it's hard for cross-interaction (due to language differences) in one place, and gives a place for those who speak English (well American - English tends to confuse some people) to somewhat cross the cliques. At least their massive image threads, while taking an age to load, are effectively in every language.
My (poor - I dropped it and continued only with German) school French does mean I can get the jist of SARA, and babelfish is a great help if I'm feeling lazy (though neither help with jargon and Bablefish translates place names, so I need to un-translate them). However I'm much better at the passive skill of reading, than the active skill of writing, and I would struggle to get a post together to say anything meaningful.
The French, of course, are overly proud of their language, and hate English, even if they can speak it they choose not to (especially in Paris) unless in an English-speaking place. A friend sometimes goes to Paris, and while having OK French, tries Afrikaans and then German (which are better than his French), before the French person reluctantly tries English to have a common language.