Pictures will slow down load time - but I find it takes a boatload of them on one page to make a significant impact - and believe me - if you wanna experience it, head over to my Citadel - I get image happy.
Mon Jun 21 2021 20:09:03 EDT from zooerAt first I thought maybe it was PD's picture.
I have rooms that are rss fed for discussion, very photo heavy and I haven't noticed a slowdown. Although, I am using a host account with 2 vitrual cores on a 3.3ghz slice and 16gb ram in the VM, so I never see swap use. It helps that I don't have ANY FUCKING TRAFFIC so there is not much for the caretaker to take care of. Stop swingin' the bat. Put the bat down, Wendy. Wendy? Give me the bat.
Mon Jun 21 2021 23:19:28 EDT from ParanoidDelusionsPictures will slow down load time - but I find it takes a boatload of them on one page to make a significant impact - and believe me - if you wanna experience it, head over to my Citadel - I get image happy.
Mon Jun 21 2021 20:09:03 EDT from zooerAt first I thought maybe it was PD's picture.
I learned that fb's image indentification algorithm was flawed, early on.
One day I saw a big curly weave with pink and blonde streaks... but it was abandoned in a parking space at sam's club. I posted a photo of it, and it was flagged as this image may be disturbing to others.
That got me to thinking.
I found an image of about 6 or 7 crows perched on a phone or electric wire, and did the meme thing with block letters.
Up top it said A MURDER
and under the image it said... you guessed it, OF CROWS. It was merely a photograph of crows sitting around shitting on cars.
Now of course, any of us that had any sort of edumacation knows that an observed grouping of crows is called a murder. That photo was censored also. I decided to play with this... I had chicken parts all hacked up, the chickens were clearly victims of organized mass murder. I had photos of Perdue wings, and thighs, and breast pieces. All I did was take them out of the packaging that said Wegmans on it photograph it again and remark about dinner and the following recipe.. but the images were censored for inappropriate or sensitive content.
Soooo... Every time you get "bored" and feel the need to interact with the other sheeple that contribute to this weakly coded bot called facelessbook... think again. Your content belongs to you. When you choose to share it, it belongs to everyone. Fckbook is not a someone. Might suggest reading (or, hopefully re-reading) Steal This Book written by the late Abbie Hoffman.
Stop providing an evil empire with your thoughtful, witty, and nothing short of ingenious, original content. You are part of the problem or you are part of the solution. We are (attempted to) being forced to accept mediocrity as a goal. I really don't enjoy taking a political soap box. It just kind of bothers me watching my friends and countrymen herded like cattle, imagined liberties in hand, walking willingly yet unwittingly headfirst into slaughter. Maybe there won't be any blood spilled, but when rights are diluted or otherwise made ineffective, we won't need blood as evidence of defeat.
I need more memory for my VM... but expensive German sports cars have me strapped for disposable cash at the moment.
I enjoy screwing with Facebook's algorithms.
But, I shared my content creation tonight on my BBS with Uncensored, because even YOU had one more new user this week than the Sanitarium got - so I'd kind of like SOME interaction with the content I create - even if I hate *everybody*. ;)
We've got to break these Uncensored users out of *just* visiting Uncensored - because if we get this kind of content and traffic generating on several different Citadels, I think it will be good for ALL the Citadels.
But they're a very loyal group, these Uncensored users.
Images DO effect loading time for me. Dramatically.
Mon Jun 21 2021 08:09:03 PM EDT from zooerAt first I thought maybe it was PD's picture.
Subject: Re: I was never kicked out, I left on my own
Stop providing an evil empire with your thoughtful, witty, and
nothing short of ingenious, original content. You are part of the
problem or you are part of the solution.
Amen to that. Zero tolerance is the only acceptable answer. Every post, every photo, every page load, feeds and strengthens a regime that is bent on your destruction. Give them nothing.
There are a few things going on here.
Let's do a quick history refresher:
In the early 1990s, there were tons of Commodore 64 BBS systems sprouting up in clusters daily. Take central NJ for example. One "Sysop" passed around Color64 BBS like it was freeware to anyone that asked him for it. As a result, the boards that popped up sometimes even had customized menus with the name of the BBS the software was copied from. The very same phenomenom happened in the DC metro area, except the BBS software of choice happened to be Cbase, and DMBBS.
All the same users could be found on all of these boards, and roughly 95% of the users were "cosysop". The boards all had the same message bases, sub boards, etc.
The "rooms" were predictable. 1. The Lobby or Main Room, etc. 2. Buy/Sell/Trade 3. TV and Movies 4. blahblahblahetc etc asdf asdf...OH and every now and then you would hit a bbs that had a sub board/message board for Dungeons and Dragons. It got to the point where new messages posted in the Main room were things like "just passing through" and "happy weekend". Shit like that.
THEN... some sysops got creative and added dozens or so "Rooms" with finely granulated discussion topics. Sometimes the rooms had opening messages (a sticky, if you will) that warned everyone something like "this room ONLY is for the discussion of pre-1980 interim postage increase stamps designed by Bradbury Thompson and all other posts will be deleted"
That worked for about 20 minutes.
Right around when AOL started to lose users to myspace.com, these original BBS's were then packed with lightly, if at all utilized sub-boards of obscure topics, sometimes with "rooms" even more numerous than items on a Chinese food takeout menu. The sparse traffic and contributions they were getting was all posted in the room that occupied the #1 position. The content contribution on BBS's declined further.
The parallels: Fckbook's app comes preinstalled on smartphones. Large organizations use Fbook as a means of information dissemination. Think of how many PTA's use FB groups. The FB user experience is purposely engineered to subliminally cause a user to feel like they are less popular, and less of a human being, unless they contribute more and more. The ux has been engineered to be for the most part, idiot proof.
Now, look at citadel. While on one hand, consistency is good for the user experience. On the other hand, unless I read the url at the top of my browser, I could be very easily confused as to whether I was currently visiting uncensored, the sanitarium, or disboardia. They are all 931 citadels, and with the exception of what content is inside the message bases, they are kinda pretty much in the same plain vanilla default config wrappers.
In my opinion, humans as a whole are experiencing a constantly decreasing attention span. It is extremely challenging for a BBS to remain fresh and relevant. So, the only ways that I can imagine to be solid drivers of traffic to other citadels are the time tested ones.
1. Advertising. Don't rely on webcrawling bots to bring your site to the attention of anyone else. So, find a way to advertise your site to those who might visit. Advertise where you have a known audience for this sort of thing. Otherwise, its not much different than winking in the dark, or skywriting at night.
2. Create need. Have content that your audience wants to be constantly updated about. Give users a reason to want to visit that goes beyond us as sysops just hoping for whatever the tide washes ashore.
I think those 2 things are the most important.
One "trick" that gets the most engagement from online or even offline communities is controversy. AM drive and PM drive talk radio has been using the point/counterpoint technique for decades because it works. One trick I learned, to cause interaction from an online community I was moderating, was to intentionally cause arguments and conflict. In fact, I even managed to give myself an acute case of Multiple Personality Disorder. I deliberately created another user with a different persona, and that "person"'s only purpose was to insult other users, including myself. It worked like a charm, It caused the rest of the user base to want to join or defend sides. The whole time, It was only me placing the other users like bugs in a jar to watch the fight.
OH- the easiest thing.... this one always generates traffic. PORN. If you decide to go this route, you will want to obtain your own legal counsel and be guided accordingly.
At the end of the day, this submission belongs on citadel.smashbot.com yet I chose to contribute it here, just as you have done. :)
Tue Jun 22 2021 01:54:34 EDT from ParanoidDelusions
But, I shared my content creation tonight on my BBS with Uncensored, because even YOU had one more new user this week than the Sanitarium got - so I'd kind of like SOME interaction with the content I create - even if I hate *everybody*. ;)We've got to break these Uncensored users out of *just* visiting Uncensored - because if we get this kind of content and traffic generating on several different Citadels, I think it will be good for ALL the Citadels.
But they're a very loyal group, these Uncensored users.
2021-06-21 10:17 from Nurb432
True.
But we all get along well, and always have. Even with our differing
political opinions. Family comes first.Mon Jun 21 2021 10:06:23 AM EDT from IGnatius T FoobarProblem i have is most of my extended family is only there.
Some people would consider that a bonus.
My policy is that if somebody won't talk to me unless I use their prefered communication platform, they are not worth talking to.
I am reachable through lots of communication systems, many of them mainstream, but I always have some sucker in my social circle that won't bother to talk to me unless I show up in his Facebook, or his Discord, or his niche mobile IM platform of choice.
I used to compromise when I was younger. Then I discovered that I ended up paying the price of joining these shitty platforms, only to not get much social interaction out of them anyway. It was a lose-lose situation.
Nowadays my policy is very strict. I am not going to be the guy making extra efforts to talk to people. If people needs me, they always know where to find me. It is a great way to know who your friends are and who only show up at your IRC or phone you when they need a favor from you.
Subject: Re: I was never kicked out, I left on my own
2021-06-22 12:58 from IGnatius T Foobar
Subject: Re: I was never kicked out, I left on my ownStop providing an evil empire with your thoughtful, witty, and
nothing short of ingenious, original content. You are part of the
problem or you are part of the solution.
Amen to that. Zero tolerance is the only acceptable answer. Every
post, every photo, every page load, feeds and strengthens a regime that
is bent on your destruction. Give them nothing.
I have always had a bit of disdain for business that rely on users to provide content for your site, so you can monetize it via data mining or advertising. You are making your users do the work for you, and then you are selling this very people.
On the other hand, the model is a display of geniality, because sheep are walking into it with a smile.
And here's a big one, which we're breaking right now:
A communications tool is proven to be truly useful when it is used to talk about something other than itself.
2021-06-22 14:14 from IGnatius T Foobar
And here's a big one, which we're breaking right now:
A communications tool is proven to be truly useful when it is used to
talk about something other than itself.
Cool. Now Undensored is already better than Matrix.
I have heard Matrix developers don't use Matrix themselves for coordinating development. Crazy.
Something I realized yesterday. My post in the Cars and Automobiles room - looked pretty small formatted on the web. A quick little read that barely filled one page.
Then I decided to re-read the post on my phone, and it was a scrolling epic post.
This ties in with the observation about diminishing attention spans by Smashbot.
Twitter, but even Facebook - have conditioned us to making multiple smaller posts that are quickly absorbed instead of deeper dives that take a while to read and comprehend. People read MORE than ever now, actually - but mostly they read shit.
Citadel tends to make you feel like you're not really saying much unless you say *a lot*.
It used to be that Citadel Aides and Sysops would get pissed if too many posters were posting too many "one-liners"... quick responses that were just idle chatter and didn't really encourage deeper, more productive conversation.
But today's social media - a Citadel one liner would be an entire page of text.
And that is a weird part of the problem. The input area of a citadel message - there is a lot of white space, and that is probably intimidating for people used to a one line Facebook page looking like an epic post.
Amateur radio (Ham) hobbyists usually converse mostly about the equipment they use and rarely of other things.
Tue Jun 22 2021 14:14:02 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar
And here's a big one, which we're breaking right now:
A communications tool is proven to be truly useful when it is used to talk about something other than itself.
Its not a requirement, its a convenience having everyone there in one spot.
Tue Jun 22 2021 01:32:29 PM EDT from darknetuserMy policy is that if somebody won't talk to me unless I use their prefered communication platform, they are not worth talking to.
That originated from twitters message char limit. Fecesbook deliberately copied the input window from Twitter for that very reason: keeping users engaged instead of the Too Long, Didn't Read thing.
You CAN War'N'Peace a FB post if you want to, but the initial cut out for the message window whether on desktop or mobile is sized for that exact reason.
Tue Jun 22 2021 14:42:26 EDT from ParanoidDelusionsSomething I realized yesterday. My post in the Cars and Automobiles room - looked pretty small formatted on the web. A quick little read that barely filled one page.
Then I decided to re-read the post on my phone, and it was a scrolling epic post.
This ties in with the observation about diminishing attention spans by Smashbot.
Twitter, but even Facebook - have conditioned us to making multiple smaller posts that are quickly absorbed instead of deeper dives that take a while to read and comprehend. People read MORE than ever now, actually - but mostly they read shit.
And that is a weird part of the problem. The input area of a citadel message - there is a lot of white space, and that is probably intimidating for people used to a one line Facebook page looking like an epic post.
In general people have a hard time reading more than one line of text.
Be it mail, media, news, whatever. Headline, then they move on. Rather frustrating at the office.
80/20 rule.
You should see me in a flame war when someone wants to have an opinion on a weighty subject, but doesn't want to read a lengthy counter-opinion. It is brutal. My cup runneth over with the tears of my enemies when they make this mistake.
Tue Jun 22 2021 18:57:40 EDT from Nurb432In general people have a hard time reading more than one line of text.
Be it mail, media, news, whatever. Headline, then they move on. Rather frustrating at the office.
You should see me in a flame war when someone wants to have an opinion on a weighty subject, but doesn't want to read a lengthy counter-opinion. It is brutal. My cup runneth over with the tears of my enemies when they make this mistake.
"should" see? ;)
Kinda makes me feel like it's a reference to "the pen is mightier than the sword"
Fri Jun 25 2021 00:15:04 EDT from ParanoidDelusionsLike taxes and death, I guess... :)