Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #60 on: October 22, 2017, 02:05:57 PM »
John, thanks for your reply. I've read through it but am also drunk at the moment, so I'll reply once I'm less drunk.

Why are you always drunk? I only see you post every couple of years, and you're drunk every time.
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Wolvaccine

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #61 on: October 22, 2017, 02:07:44 PM »
First of all, as I'm sure you aware, we aim to run our site democratically.

Yes, I've seen your democracy in action. 1 guy suggests a permaban for a member (İntikam) and one of your moderators replies 'Done'

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Twerp

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #62 on: October 22, 2017, 02:12:26 PM »
It's good you brought up Intikam, Shifter. That definitely needs to be included in the negotiations. If a merger occurs, what happens to Intikam?
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PizzaPlanet

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #63 on: October 22, 2017, 02:19:55 PM »
Why are you always drunk? I only see you post every couple of years, and you're drunk every time.
It's democracy in action. We all vote on what Parsifal does, and we all vote on him downing a bottle of port every time.
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Parsifal

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #64 on: October 22, 2017, 02:22:22 PM »
John, thanks for your reply. I've read through it but am also drunk at the moment, so I'll reply once I'm less drunk.

Why are you always drunk? I only see you post every couple of years, and you're drunk every time.

Sounds like a bad case of selective memory to me.

First of all, as I'm sure you aware, we aim to run our site democratically.

Yes, I've seen your democracy in action. 1 guy suggests a permaban for a member (İntikam) and one of your moderators replies 'Done'

I can see how that might look unreasonable to someone not privy to the deleted posts that led up to his ban. Rest assured that İntikam was banned for threatening to give the personal information of one of our admins to ISIS under the guise of them being for a target. While I don't take him very seriously, threats of that nature are not cool.

It's good you brought up Intikam, Shifter. That definitely needs to be included in the negotiations. If a merger occurs, what happens to Intikam?

That point is non-negotiable from our side, and for me personally. He remains permabanned.
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Wolvaccine

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #65 on: October 22, 2017, 03:04:21 PM »
Then my support (as a lowly, humble noob member of this forum) is over!

(not that you need or desire it)


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Twerp

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #66 on: October 22, 2017, 03:23:16 PM »
That point is non-negotiable from our side, and for me personally. He remains permabanned.

Everything's negotiable. How about this: If Intikam ever commits such an act after the merger, he gets perma-banned. And as part of the merger you get a free bottle of port just for being so agreeable!
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hoppy

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #67 on: October 22, 2017, 05:03:35 PM »
I support a merger, it would be good to see old friends again.
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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #68 on: October 22, 2017, 09:22:08 PM »
That point is non-negotiable from our side, and for me personally. He remains permabanned.

Everything's negotiable. How about this: If Intikam ever commits such an act after the merger, he gets perma-banned. And as part of the merger you get a free bottle of port just for being so agreeable!

Nah, he was truly engaging in some dangerous and bizarrely obsessive behavior. We don't need him.

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Wolvaccine

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #69 on: October 22, 2017, 09:58:01 PM »
He was antagonised and made fun of for your entertainment and when he reacted you banned him on account of 1 members dumb suggestion.

If you converse with him in a respectful manner then he will extend the same courtesy

You should be on the same side as you both agree in a flat earth right? Unless you are as he said 'controlled opposition'

Build a bridge. For you to suggest his permaban as a 'condition' of a reconciliation, it just shows the kind of people you are and that this side could easily do without you. Seriously I had support for you admins getting along until I read that.

İntikam has just as much right as anyone else to be here. Stop disrespecting people and you may find they are much nicer to deal with.

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #70 on: October 22, 2017, 10:04:53 PM »
To be fair, I recall Thork from the other site did something very similar to me and threatened (or actually did?) to get me reported as a terrorist to several legal bodies including the FBI. As a foreign national, at the time, this was pretty concerning. At the same time he also tried to recruit PP to hax our pagez. Thanks again to PP for instead doing the right thing and letting us know back when all this happened.

My response at the time was "I'm leaving it up to you guys how to appropriately punish Thork, if necessary, or award PP, other than me just owing him a favor. I'd like to see some situation in which Thork doesn't get punished, but I don't take lightly being reported to the FBI watchlist then catching him dicking around with the idea of hacking the front page.  I have a family and a life and that is a real dick move.  As an immigrant it takes not a large stretch of the imagination to see how this could affect me and how this has crossed over the line.

I'm going to send him a message and see if he wants to work through this like adults."

This ended up I believe with him requesting to have his account deleted via Wilmore.

Thork was then later elected as part of your council thingy. While I know he is no longer with you, I think this highlights the need for each of us to run our own little worlds. Even with similar behavior, we see we both would and have made different decisions. Its not entirely fair for me to compare Thork to Intikam, but hopefully my point still stands.

I'd like to see our two forums coexist as autonomously as possible, including ban lists etc. I feel like our moderation does a good job, and the Intikam discussion has come up a number of times on our mod board and I believe they responded appropriately and will continue to do so. I imagine you guys feel your team does a good job as well. Our two groups differ on a number of points, including how we moderate and run our forums. This doesn't seem broken, and I'd like it to continue like it is. This is a further benefit of a 'chapterized' approach to the forums, and a further example of how they will be differentiated.

I see no reason why he would be unbanned from your site, or why we would want to mess around at all with any decisions you made concerning your own forum. We don't want to run your forum, and we don't want you to run ours. When all is said and done, you are free to even ban myself from your forums. Point being, having two societies simply divides many of the efforts we both put towards the Flat Earth Society. It also puts both of our societies in a weaker position on a number of fronts.

That said, if this is truly a deal breaker, I'll go along with it so long as moderation agrees and the user base does as I don't moderate and this would be a moderation activity.

I'll likely not have as much time as I had this weekend to discuss this during the week, but will check back as I can. This should give both sides a bit of time to think things over and come together a bit on what something like this might look like in their ideal and more pertinently realistic worlds.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2017, 10:07:28 PM by John Davis »

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Parsifal

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #71 on: October 23, 2017, 06:09:49 AM »
It is less confusing than two societies. They will both be linked. I would compare it to how there are many sub forums on some sites, such as 4chan. The differentiation can be by the 'chapter' of the society, if wished, and eventually our forums will be replaced by a more 'social' sorta beast that does not use smf. This difference in the end will differentiate them. I agree it is not ideal, but I feel it is better than what we have going on now which is essentially the same problem but multiplied by an order.

I don't think it is an improvement. Right now, the situation to a newcomer is fairly clear: there are two distinct Flat Earth groups, with distinct branding and distinct communities. Our respective branding is used everywhere, so that it's fairly clear to a newcomer which Twitter account is associated with which society, for instance. They aren't always clear on the relationship between the societies, but at least there is no confusion about the fact that they are separate.

With this proposal, there is one unified society, but if they want somewhere to ask a question, they have to choose between two communities. There is no way they can be properly informed about the differences between those communities in a way that is concise enough to aid their choice, which means that in practice whichever community is linked first from the homepage is going to receive the majority of new users. Whichever ends up receiving new users is going to be more attractive to regulars who want to answer those questions, sapping the life out of the other one.

In effect, we would end up with a slow, painful merge of our communities rather than a quick and controlled one. Not to mention the likely arguments this will create over whose community gets to be more prominent on the homepage once we both have access.

One die off quietly.

In that case, how would we coordinate access to the unified Twitter feed? Would we be able to tweet things under the unified banner, as we can with our own social media right now?

Ok, will you talk to him for us then?

I think it makes the most sense to do this the way we did previously, where we come to some tentative agreement and then I post it in a thread on our forum for everyone to comment on.

I believe this will be resolved by the other assurances you mentioned. You will have access to the servers and git to resolve any problems you wish.

I'm not sure this adequately covers it. Part of our approach to setting reasonable expectations for our members is that we aim to communicate non-trivial changes in advance and give users the chance to comment on them. Over here, the homepage frequently has changes silently applied, often ones which break the layout for months at a time. Having the ability to fix this when it happens is better than nothing, but with our current site, we can ensure it does not happen at all.

If you want to interview us for competence before we gain access to make changes, should we not have the right to interview you?

Yeah. I assure you, you can. We can figure this out I think. A botched execution of this will be a huge burden to both of us for the foreseeable future, so trust would become a vital necessity.

I would really like to believe that we can, but the past 9 years of experience with this site's administration isn't encouraging for me personally, and I suspect it also won't be enough to be assured for our other members. Even now, you are refusing to remove the word filter preventing people from linking to our site. What level of trust does that imply?

I want to be able to provide to your side a unified post history as that is important to you, but means nothing to us. We don't want our forums to be merged however and our user base and moderation agrees.  This seems to be the way to do that with the least resistance, especially as we move towards the new platform.

A unified post history is not very important by itself, particularly nowadays. As I said in my previous post, we are now in a much better position than we were two years ago. The discussions we once had here are getting older and less relevant with time, and I personally think that unifying them in this particular way is not worth the maintenance cost.

What is more important is the ability to reliably cross-reference between threads on both fora. We fairly regularly reference old threads on here which have valuable content. This is currently made difficult by several factors:
  • This forum has had semi-regular purges of old content ever since I joined, leaving it in doubt whether a given thread will continue to exist indefinitely.
  • The frequency of outages on this site makes it hard to be confident that a given thread will be available to read at any given time.
  • The word filter on our forum URL makes it difficult to reference back to our forum from here.
We will be moving away from smf and decentralizing our systems, partially through use of rest interfaces. Also, the size of our database will cause several issues you may not yet be aware of. This will allow us to hide the cost and infrastructure of a real search system such as elastic or solr.

Semi-tangentially to the reunification discussion, I am (vaguely) aware of your plans in this regard, and to be entirely honest I do not think it will end well. Correctly maintaining a decentralised infrastructure held together by APIs is a challenge even for companies that specialise in web development, let alone a society which should be focused on Flat Earth science. This is either going to be a huge time sink, or it won't be done correctly and everything will end up horribly broken, or both.

We are also not huge fans of SMF, but maintaining an entire discussion platform is not something we have the time or inclination to be doing ourselves, which is why we're sticking with it. It is important to know one's limits.

Unifying data from two sources always has a huge host of issues that come with it, and ultimately will end up destroying or mismatching data it shouldn't. The appropriate way to deal with this, imo, is to provide a service that will handle it and hide it from whomever is using the data. While you are right that one is a one time cost, it is a one time cost you can't reverse. By hiding this cost behind software, we instead are able to modify that one time cost through changes later as well as maintain our data sources integrity.

To the end user and developer, it will appear as a unified history.

Rather than being able to modify it, we are instead required to modify it every time we make a change to the database schema of either platform. This would immediately double (at least) the cost of any large-scale changes to either forum. For instance, were we to upgrade our forum to SMF 2.1, we would also need to modify and test this shim API to deal with that database change.

I do not currently have the confidence that anyone on either your side or our side has both the time and the competence to justify that cost for what small benefit it would bring.

If you would like to choose another person to be the point of contact, I'm happy with that too. I realize this came out of nowhere and you might not have the time you'd like to devote for it.

I'm not sure we have anyone else with the time to devote for it. I'm happy to proceed for now, but I'll let you know if that changes.

I do not want this to become too long drawn out or complicated in its nature.

Similarly, we do not want to rush into a bad deal. As it stands, you are asking us to shut down our site and make a bunch of concessions to you without anything in return. In particular:
  • You want us to move our forum to a domain you control, despite having no interest in merging communities.
  • You want to have some say in our wiki content, despite not wanting a wiki of your own.
  • You want us to go along with your platform for the homepage, with you handing out access as you see fit.
  • You want us to give up at least some of our social media accounts.
  • You want us to give up control over our own branding.
  • You want us to give up our homepage with links to all of these things that we have worked hard on for the past four years, during which time you refused any attempt at reunification, effectively forcing our hand to compete with you.
What exactly are you giving us in return, apart from limited access to do things on your site that we already have in full on ours?

If you don't want this to become drawn out, you'll have to stop acting like joining you is some sort of privilege. We do not need you, and while we are interested in unity for the good of the society, it has to be under fair terms.

What would make you trust us?

Removing the word filter to show that you trust us would be a good start. Aside from that, asking us what we want out of a merger instead of lecturing us about your grand vision would work wonders.

Personally, I think we need to do this incrementally in order to work out trust issues over time. There is no way we are going to trust each other well enough to merge the societies in one fell swoop.



He was antagonised and made fun of for your entertainment and when he reacted you banned him on account of 1 members dumb suggestion.

Again, this is not what happened. One of our moderators engaged in arguably questionable behavour, but before it could be dealt with properly, İntikam demanded attention by resorting to threats against an admin who hadn't even been online for the entire event, and couldn't possibly have intervened. That is not the kind of person I or anyone else wants on our forum.

And please stop saying it was "on account of 1 members [sic] dumb suggestion". The decision to ban him had already been made independently; the reply to that member's suggestion was just a way of communicating the fact.

To be fair, I recall Thork from the other site did something very similar to me and threatened (or actually did?) to get me reported as a terrorist to several legal bodies including the FBI. As a foreign national, at the time, this was pretty concerning. At the same time he also tried to recruit PP to hax our pagez. Thanks again to PP for instead doing the right thing and letting us know back when all this happened.

I have no recollection of this event, so I can't really comment on specifics, but I searched for the phrase "appropriately punish Thork" on our forum and came up with nothing. Did this happen on this forum, or in private, or...?

Point being, having two societies simply divides many of the efforts we both put towards the Flat Earth Society. It also puts both of our societies in a weaker position on a number of fronts.

While true, I maintain that unifying the society while leaving the forums separate is not a good solution. It will inevitably lead to one forum being considered more "official" than the other, as new members will want to know where to go to ask questions. This is as good as a demand for us to shut down our forum entirely, it just takes a little longer.

That said, if this is truly a deal breaker, I'll go along with it so long as moderation agrees and the user base does as I don't moderate and this would be a moderation activity.

I am still not convinced that having two fora as part of a unified society is a workable approach, so my statement was from the point of view of a unified forum community.
I'm going to side with the white supremacists.

Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #72 on: October 23, 2017, 08:02:14 AM »
He was antagonised and made fun of for your entertainment and when he reacted you banned him on account of 1 members dumb suggestion.

If you converse with him in a respectful manner then he will extend the same courtesy

You should be on the same side as you both agree in a flat earth right? Unless you are as he said 'controlled opposition'

Build a bridge. For you to suggest his permaban as a 'condition' of a reconciliation, it just shows the kind of people you are and that this side could easily do without you. Seriously I had support for you admins getting along until I read that.

İntikam has just as much right as anyone else to be here. Stop disrespecting people and you may find they are much nicer to deal with.

Pretty much everything you just said is incorrect. Intikam was pretty zealously doxxing and impersonating a member of the other site. That's a serious violation of both society's rules.

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #73 on: October 23, 2017, 08:52:23 AM »
I'm busy building a rest client that does exactly what you describe for a client. It looks like it should take about two hours with good enough test coverage. I'm doing so again for a client of the firm I work with this week to mitigate their odd filemaker implementation and scheduling tickets for amstar - this is around 14 hours, with no maintenance planned due to sexy test coverage.

Likewise, I have implemented CMSs and have a good graps of their timeframe. Reworking much of smf is indeed a new undertaking, but it has few if any real technological challenges. I think you over-estimate how long it takes for a software engineer to complete the tasks you talk of as well as the time for maintenance. On the other hand, I appreciate the worry that I may be 'hit by a bus' and unable to work on it myself, thus making the cost exponentially higher.

I'll try to find some time to go over these other concerns. In the meanwhile, here are some initial thoughts:

The comment I quoted was from the admin section of our forum. I don't know where the public facing record of this would be, nor do I care much for finding it. Take my word on it, or don't. We all know how big a dick thork can be. I think we can both agree that we deal with certain things differently, and we both like how we deal with them.

Sounds to me like there is little interest on your end for this sort of merger. There is no way that our two forums can or will work as one forum, and that is a point I cannot budge on. The simple fact is nobody wants it. This is a concern of my users, and I am responding appropriately to it. I'm sure you can appreciate that.

I realize you don't control the twitter, but I had a discussion with your twitter and a fellow believer just the other day that highlighted this issue. He was similarly confused as to why there were two flat earth societies, and why they didn't share the same belief set. As someone who answers hundreds of correspondences, I see issues like this come up often enough that it is one of my few motivations to go ahead with a merger at all.

You take on branding is also similarly confusing. You think it would be acceptable for there to be two Walmart's even different logos and branding packages? The proper thing for you to have done from the git go is to create your own identity with its own trademark and name. You didn't do that, and by not doing that you crippled both our abilities to defend our brand.

Another benefit to you, aside from the ones mentioned, is that your forum is perpetually dead.

Finally, I'm fine giving you complete access, and will remove my claim to interviewing. Like you said, we should base this on trust. If post unification is not a priority, I agree the cost is astronomical and not necessary. Obviously, we will remove the filter if we join together. I'm interested in these lost posts. I'll compare our database with a backup I made previously to examine whether this is an issue or not.

It seems that without mutually assured destruction, or a lengthy process where we would end up taking the blunt of the cost, there is little room for trust to happen.

« Last Edit: October 23, 2017, 09:29:57 AM by John Davis »

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #74 on: October 23, 2017, 08:56:19 AM »
I will also notify the userbase of changes before they happen, by making a public roadmap which I will follow.

So now, we see the picture a bit more like:

You get the access you want / need for whatever you want aside from these forums and their history
You control your wiki, forum, and a good spread of the social presence.
You have complete control of your chapter and its forums etc
The brand stays in tact, as does the society itself.

I don't feel like I'm treating this like a 'privilege'. I'm sorry it comes off that way.

If you can't agree to separate forums, there is no point in us continuing these talks and we will pivot to another plan.

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Parsifal

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #75 on: October 23, 2017, 10:41:55 AM »
I'm busy building a rest client that does exactly what you describe for a client. It looks like it should take about two hours with good enough test coverage. I'm doing so again for a client of the firm I work with this week to mitigate their odd filemaker implementation and scheduling tickets for amstar - this is around 14 hours, with no maintenance planned due to sexy test coverage.

Likewise, I have implemented CMSs and have a good graps of their timeframe. Reworking much of smf is indeed a new undertaking, but it has few if any real technological challenges. I think you over-estimate how long it takes for a software engineer to complete the tasks you talk of as well as the time for maintenance. On the other hand, I appreciate the worry that I may be 'hit by a bus' and unable to work on it myself, thus making the cost exponentially higher.

I have not once expressed that worry, nor do I consider you significantly more capable than myself, so that is a non-issue. The key word in what I said is "correctly". It is obviously possible to write a replacement for SMF that kinda works in a relatively short amount of time, but looking at the overall state of disrepair this forum is normally in, it is evident that our quality standards differ somewhat.

SMF has the benefit of years of development work by a team larger than we could hope to put together, combined with bug reports from orders of magnitude more users than this forum could ever hope to have. This is the reason why mature codebases generally work better than home-grown ones, not to mention the security implications of running a totally unreviewed custom platform.

Sounds to me like there is little interest on your end for this sort of merger. There is no way that our two forums can or will work as one forum, and that is a point I cannot budge on. The simple fact is nobody wants it. This is a concern of my users, and I am responding appropriately to it. I'm sure you can appreciate that.

I can, but at the same time, I cannot foresee this working well, for reasons I have already explained.

I realize you don't control the twitter, but I had a discussion with your twitter and a fellow believer just the other day that highlighted this issue. He was similarly confused as to why there were two flat earth societies, and why they didn't share the same belief set. As someone who answers hundreds of correspondences, I see issues like this come up often enough that it is one of my few motivations to go ahead with a merger at all.

But your proposal is to have one Flat Earth Society with two chapters, and thus two belief sets. In what way is that less confusing?

You take on branding is also similarly confusing. You think it would be acceptable for there to be two Walmart's even different logos and branding packages? The proper thing for you to have done from the git go is to create your own identity with its own trademark and name. You didn't do that, and by not doing that you crippled both our abilities to defend our brand.

"The Flat Earth Society" is a very generic name, and what's more, it was not original to your organisation, as you well know. We have as much right to it as you do.

Another benefit to you, aside from the ones mentioned, is that your forum is perpetually dead.

This is simply incorrect. You are still negotiating as if it is 2014 and you are holding all the cards. We are doing very well on our own, arguably better than you are at this point. If you had come to us with this offer in 2014, we would probably have jumped on the opportunity. By waiting, you have allowed us to grow to the point where we no longer need your patronage. If I were a pessimist, I'd say you were only interested now because we are outgrowing you.

Since you still don't seem very interested in what we want out of a merger, I'll explain my thoughts anyway: The main benefit I see in a merger is presenting a unified front for the society. Your proposal fails to accomplish that by leaving the fora separate, and making us very likely subordinate, since one of the two fora must be linked first from the homepage. The most unified we could hope to be with this proposal is for one of us to stop promoting our ideas and let the other take over, which is not a fair deal.

Finally, I'm fine giving you complete access, and will remove my claim to interviewing. Like you said, we should base this on trust. If post unification is not a priority, I agree the cost is astronomical and not necessary. Obviously, we will remove the filter if we join together. I'm interested in these lost posts. I'll compare our database with a backup I made previously to examine whether this is an issue or not.

It seems that without mutually assured destruction, or a lengthy process where we would end up taking the blunt of the cost, there is little room for trust to happen.

I'm not sure if you expected trust to grow overnight after how the past 9 years have gone (and are still going, with the word filter issue). I wouldn't expect this to be anything other than a lengthy process.

So now, we see the picture a bit more like:

You get the access you want / need for whatever you want aside from these forums and their history
You control your wiki, forum, and a good spread of the social presence.
You have complete control of your chapter and its forums etc
The brand stays in tact, as does the society itself.

We already have all of those things as a separate society, with the exception of an intact society, and as I said above, I do not believe your proposal will provide any real unity.

I don't feel like I'm treating this like a 'privilege'. I'm sorry it comes off that way.

Try to see it from our point of view. You're offering us the exact same things we already have, just under your brand instead of ours. What do we have to gain by accepting?

If you can't agree to separate forums, there is no point in us continuing these talks and we will pivot to another plan.

Personally, I just can't see the point of "unifying" without merging the fora. Every time I see someone complaining about the lack of a merger, it's always because the fora are separate. Aside from you and Daniel, I have never seen anyone wish for unification on the basis that we have two different brands. This leads me to the conclusion that this proposal is serving your interests and not the users'.

If this is really a deal-breaker for you, I am willing to raise this issue on our site to gauge whether our members think the same way, but I really cannot see this proposal going anywhere. We want to unify, but your proposal would hurt us rather than help us.
« Last Edit: October 23, 2017, 11:01:57 AM by Parsifal »
I'm going to side with the white supremacists.

Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #76 on: October 23, 2017, 11:02:35 AM »
Any reunification plan that doesn't involve merging the two fora seems like a waste of time, to me.

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #77 on: October 23, 2017, 11:26:12 AM »
I'd go ahead and ask then, because it won't happen otherwise. Clearly, I'm open to moving my position and giving you more; what more do you want? What are your demands, as they are.

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Since you still don't seem very interested in what we want out of a merger, I'll explain my thoughts anyway: The main benefit I see in a merger is presenting a unified front for the society.
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Aside from you and Daniel, I have never seen anyone wish for unification on the basis that we have two different brands.
Except for you, just a few paragraphs ago.

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Parsifal

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #78 on: October 23, 2017, 11:30:37 AM »
I'd go ahead and ask then, because it won't happen otherwise.

I will do that.

Clearly, I'm open to moving my position and giving you more; what more do you want? What are your demands, as they are.

One of my demands, speaking only for myself here, is that we unify the fora, which you have already indicated you aren't open to moving on. I would be willing to work towards a merger without that condition if a majority of our users feel differently, but until then I don't think we can progress from here.

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Since you still don't seem very interested in what we want out of a merger, I'll explain my thoughts anyway: The main benefit I see in a merger is presenting a unified front for the society.
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Aside from you and Daniel, I have never seen anyone wish for unification on the basis that we have two different brands.
Except for you, just a few paragraphs ago.

"A unified front" means more than just branding to me. It is equally, or perhaps even more, important that newcomers enter a discussion forum where they get exposed to all Flat Earth ideas, not that they get slotted into one of two partitions.
I'm going to side with the white supremacists.

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #79 on: October 23, 2017, 11:37:22 AM »
I agree, but it is inclusive of branding.

I'm sorry I (read our users and moderation that I've talked with) can't budge on this point, but we are happy to budge on almost any other one; it seems silly to be worried about it if our eventual plan is to move the forums to a more social beast anyways.

My care for the brand to be unified is one with my care for the society to be unified. I wouldn't be talking with you if this wasn't my main motivation here. We can get along fine without you, as we have been. The only thing that you bring to the table for us is this one thing.

I care what your wants are, as I have shown by shifting my position on just about every single thing I said to attempt to show I do -  but you don't seem to care what ours are. I have one, that I have shown any real resistance to.  Thank you for bringing this to your guys site and discussing it, and being so kind as to be a point of contact.

Perhaps there is a third option we can look into, and I'm open to hearing it.
« Last Edit: October 23, 2017, 11:41:08 AM by John Davis »

Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #80 on: October 23, 2017, 11:48:11 AM »
JD, what would the disadvantages of unifying the fora be, in your mind? Unless I've missed something, the closest thing to an explanation you gave is this:

There is no way that our two forums can or will work as one forum, and that is a point I cannot budge on. The simple fact is nobody wants it. This is a concern of my users, and I am responding appropriately to it.

which just isn't true. Plenty of people from both communities want it, and there is lots of documented evidence for that which I can pull from both sites if necessary. Can you tell me how you came to the conclusion that "nobody wants it"?
« Last Edit: October 23, 2017, 07:00:17 PM by Particle Person »

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Parsifal

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #81 on: October 23, 2017, 07:23:46 PM »
Perhaps there is a third option we can look into, and I'm open to hearing it.

There is, actually.

I would be willing to discuss an arrangement where we keep the fora separate, and provide you with a subdomain under tfes.org for your forum. You would be free to continue to develop your forum into the social platform you want, or however else you see fit, as your chapter of the society. We can also provide access to post content to our homepage for anyone from your side who needs it, as well as access to the code so you can set up a membership register or whatever else you need.

As we are happy with our existing branding, you will adopt the logo and style Blanko designed for us in order to provide a unified branding for the society. We can also discuss how to share social media duties, and if there is interest, provide wiki editor accounts for members of your chapter.

This would, of course, be under the condition that you shut down your current homepage. Standard disclaimer about it being subject to approval by our members, of course.

Let me know if this sounds reasonable to you.
I'm going to side with the white supremacists.

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Rushy

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #82 on: October 23, 2017, 07:26:44 PM »
I would like to voice support for Parsifal's most recent suggestion. I feel this would allow us to benefit from the strengths and weaknesses of both sites.

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #83 on: October 23, 2017, 09:10:56 PM »
I doubt this is something Daniel would agree to, or that I should agree to in his stead; or our members and staff will for that matter. I can ping him about it, but I wouldn't hold my breath. I do see your point though - that we wouldn't agree to the same deal.

Oh well! While it does seem I continually adjusted our wants to your concerns, the base premise is untenable. I have promised not to try again if this fails, and I will keep my word to that. Cheers.

Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #84 on: October 23, 2017, 09:40:04 PM »
The negotiations were short

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Wolvaccine

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #85 on: October 23, 2017, 09:51:55 PM »
Actually John from my perspective, while I have seen both sides try to make amends here to be honest from your last post, it has made all your previous ones look rather disingenuous. Quite frankly this is a very important issue. Unifying the flat earth collective would go a long way to strengthening your guys position and credibility in the world. Fractured and divided, you open yourselves to constant mocking and ridicule.

It should not matter how long it takes or who capitulates to who. Get it done. Its not going to be an overnight process from posting back and forth on an unrelated thread. Did the North and South states of the US get back together overnight? Has the North and South Koreas unified after nearly 70 years already? No. So this wont be a simple matter either

John. Remove the f-ing filter. Bygones be bygones. Bury the hatchet. Be a man and make the first step. It is a trivial thing but the symbolic gesture would really go a long way. Both forums and societies are legitimate in their own right and there should be no censorship or any hint one is taboo.

Other forum - Intikam and all active members of this forum should be welcome members and given the chance to contribute just like anyone else in whatever happens. Build a bridge. As someone who was previously on Intikams ignore list and now no longer on it I can tell you hand on heart, he is one of the reasons I can actually respect flat earthers because he has something many so called flat earthers don't have, and that's conviction in belief. Since he has not been viciously antagonised here lately he has mellowed out and is very productive and helpful. For you to suggest that he would not be welcome in a unified forum is contrary to your mission. He is one of flat earthers most dedicated and best.
 

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Twerp

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #86 on: October 23, 2017, 10:20:26 PM »
Having two fora is dumb. This site is more popular and funner. The other site is better at site management. I don't really mind much how this goes down, but I think it would be very smart for the two sites to join and let their strengths complement each other.

Obviously there are too many FE models to have one official model. There should be one wiki that gives recognition to the more credible models.

« Last Edit: October 23, 2017, 10:26:58 PM by Boots »
“Heaven is being governed by Devil nowadays..” - Wise

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #87 on: October 23, 2017, 10:56:40 PM »
Perhaps you are right.

I'm fine with continuing to discuss the matter. My posts have been genuine, though what I read as Parsifal's point is valid. Even when our side feels like we are making ridiculous concessions, they are still not terms we would happy taking if the shoe was on the other foot. Likewise to their side, the concessions seem equally ridiculous.

I have already given my word concerning the separation of the two forums and the autonomy of this one before starting these discussions. It is such a crippling point though, that it is unsurmountable, apparently weighing as much as every single other point of conflict put together judging by the counter offer.

Ultimately, its not up to me, but without my involvement I don't see how this would happen.

In the meanwhile, I'm not terribly available during the week - especially this one. I've cause myself a bit of trouble day to day by spending so much time on this already.

I'll check back infrequently, but likely will hold my tongue until this weekend if I can help it.
« Last Edit: October 23, 2017, 11:03:14 PM by John Davis »

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Wolvaccine

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Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #88 on: October 23, 2017, 11:05:07 PM »
Well how long does it take to remove a word filter? Start with that and maybe the other side can be put at ease and real negotiations begin. It would not only be a good will gesture but show a genuine interest in attaining a common goal. Whatever needs to be done seems like it will take a lot of planning and work. As long as that filter is in place what reason does the other side have to believe all that work will bear fruit?

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what website did you use to buy your wife? Did you choose Chinese over Russian because she can't open her eyes to see you?

What animal relates to your wife?

Know your place

Re: Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?
« Reply #89 on: October 23, 2017, 11:07:40 PM »
Perhaps you are right.

I'm fine with continuing to discuss the matter. [...]

Since the forum unification is obviously the crux of the issue, I'm a bit disappointed that you ignored my questions about it. I genuinely don't understand why you're so resolutely opposed to combining the two databases, or how you came to the conclusion that nobody wants that to happen.