Inactive members: where are they now?

Chat about non-hiking topics. The least serious of the forums on the site!
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miah66
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Re: Inactive members: where are they now?

Post by miah66 » May 5th, 2022, 9:16 am

Hi all,

I miss my old forum buddies! I know some of you in real life, and some of you I still follow on the rare occasion I peruse FB.

Forums have been done in by quick fix social media, but I have faith that they will continue on and become popular again. I have been doing more cycling than hiking as of late, which scratches my exploration itch and cover more ground in a given day.

I still follow TKO stuff and volunteer to do trail work from time to time. Hope to see some of you out on the trails again soon, or maybe even on here!
"The top...is not the top" - Mile...Mile & a Half

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Webfoot
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Re: Inactive members: where are they now?

Post by Webfoot » May 5th, 2022, 3:05 pm

Thanks for checking in miah66.

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drm
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Re: Inactive members: where are they now?

Post by drm » May 7th, 2022, 12:47 pm

I can think of some other regular posters who disappeared. I will never never ever ever become a Facebook poster. On rare occasions I go to friend's FB pages. I do have an account, but you won't see anything if you go there because I have never never ever ever posted anything to it. :o I also used to be a website developer by trade, so aside from not liking FB for many reasons, I have always preferred the greater variability and control that a website provides. But clearly I am in the deep minority there.

Correction. Some years ago I did join a FB hiking group (no, not Portlandhikers - I don't live in Portland! Why would I ever join that? Never hiked Forest Park in my life :lol: ). I posted a couple of simple reports and both were rejected by moderation with no explanation other than I violated their rules. I couldn't see why. So I quit. I have never had an issue with moderation here.

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Charley
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Re: Inactive members: where are they now?

Post by Charley » May 7th, 2022, 3:08 pm

drm wrote:
May 7th, 2022, 12:47 pm
I posted a couple of simple reports and both were rejected by moderation with no explanation other than I violated their rules. I couldn't see why. So I quit. I have never had an issue with moderation here.
I've experienced a small amount of moderation here, and I probably deserved it. I have been moderated entirely out of the FB group! (It's fine- that's their prerogative).

If Elon Musk wanted to figure out how to create a place with free-wheeling discussion, while preserving normal rules of social behavior in an online format, he could do worse than to look at the way oregonhikers' moderators have managed this forum. Even comments quite critical of the TKO have stayed up (and received constructive response, too).

Then again, maybe some people left because they didn't like the way that conversations drift or get argumentative on here, and those of us who remain are just the angry ones. I don't think so, but who knows!
Believe it or not, I barely ever ride a mountain bike.

justpeachy
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Re: Inactive members: where are they now?

Post by justpeachy » May 7th, 2022, 6:59 pm

Charley wrote:
May 7th, 2022, 3:08 pm
Then again, maybe some people left because they didn't like the way that conversations drift or get argumentative on here, and those of us who remain are just the angry ones. I don't think so, but who knows!
Absolutely. The arguments and bickering over the central cascades permits a few years ago is one example of the type of negative discussion that turned some people off.

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drm
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Re: Inactive members: where are they now?

Post by drm » May 8th, 2022, 5:43 am

Charley wrote:
May 7th, 2022, 3:08 pm
(It's fine- that's their prerogative).
Being fine and being their prerogative are not the same thing. It's legal and it's their prerogative.

Finding the right balance with forum moderation is very hard. It is very easy to go too far one way or the other. My first experience with forums was the usenet system back in the 1990s. They were completely destroyed by being too loose.

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kelkev
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Re: Inactive members: where are they now?

Post by kelkev » May 8th, 2022, 7:21 am

I used to post a lot of trip reports, but as I get older, I am hiking less and working more, plus family obligations, health issues, and projects around the house/yard that seems to take up more time. Social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more are the easiest way for people to post pics. But the information that was provided here on detailed trip reports was awesome for sure.
"Going to the mountains is going home."
— John Muir

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wildcat
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Re: Inactive members: where are they now?

Post by wildcat » May 8th, 2022, 10:05 am

My first experience with forums was the usenet system back in the 1990s. They were completely destroyed by being too loose.
Usenet is definitely less popular today than decades ago (centralised social media websites haven't helped matters any), but never was "destroyed" or actually disappeared. What happened was most of the major commercial ISPs discontinued their usenet services around the turn of the century because they considered it "old" tech that they no longer wanted to invest time, money and disk space in (umm.... like TCP-IP itself isn't almost 50 years old?), all the while justifying their decision by positioning it as "to prevent the spread of kiddie porn"; a popular corporatese tactic of the time to gather mass support in their decisions to discontinue "outdated" services they wanted to distance themselves from.

There are moderated groups out there but they're not as common as the open ones.
Life in Chacos
nwhikers.net: thewildcat

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Charley
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Re: Inactive members: where are they now?

Post by Charley » May 8th, 2022, 6:43 pm

drm wrote:
May 8th, 2022, 5:43 am
Charley wrote:
May 7th, 2022, 3:08 pm
(It's fine- that's their prerogative).
Being fine and being their prerogative are not the same thing. It's legal and it's their prerogative.
I wasn't clear. I think it's fine that they have moderated me, because it's their prerogative. It being their prerogative is probably clear to most people and I don't begrudge them their rights under the system in place. I said I was fine with it in order to make it clear that, though I was mentioning that I was moderated, I am not mentioning it to illicit sympathy, or to express anger or disappointment. I mean that it's perfectly fine to run Portlandhikers the way they have.

Theirs were the moderation rules under which I operated, and if I preferred different moderation rules, I could very well find a different group to comment on, or start my own.

On the other hand, I'm not sure we'd get many members on Political Debates about Public Lands Management and Recreation Policy. :D

As to the legality of it, I'm not sure how legal structures relate, because Federal laws don't determine Portlandhiker's moderation rules or group membership structure.

It seems that Facebook users, in signing Facebook's rules of use when they signed up and continued to use it, would have to abide by Facebook's rules, which might have some relation to contract law (would that be Federal, State?). Finally, I believe Federal law would apply as regards Facebook's liability for content that users produce (for example, Section 230 would protect Facebook from liability if I, a user, were to use Facebook to instigate a damaging riot at a Forest Service Headquarters).

But I don't know how any of that would have any relation to the moderation policies of the Portlandhikers group. If Section 230 were to go away, maybe FB would try to outsource its liability management to group moderators, but, since that's not currently the case, I think group moderators just operate however they like.
Believe it or not, I barely ever ride a mountain bike.

Motz
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Re: Inactive members: where are they now?

Post by Motz » May 16th, 2022, 7:10 am

Charley wrote:
April 24th, 2022, 11:44 am
Eric Peterson wrote:
April 24th, 2022, 8:35 am
unnamed.png
Gosh I'm dense. Is it a black hole? I am clueless.

Welcome back Eric Peterson!
It might be a zen thing

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