Starwars.com closes its forums — Page 11

Going slightly off topic for a moment, does Ladyferry still post on here?

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

David, you're mistaking lack of sympathy for outrage.  After reading your description, I didn't have much sympathy (if any) for your situation, but I wasn't outraged.  We have people here who post much wilder stuff.

Sometimes mods delete posts and ban users because they don't want a significant base of their readers to start leaving, or for the discussion to degenerate and cause new readers to shy away.  Sometimes it is to keep a few people from getting offended and leaving.  I delete some feedback posts from my YouTube videos precisely because I don't post those videos so that my friends can be insulted.  Freedom of speech doesn't apply to private sites on the internet.

Everybody understands the difference between censorship (government-enforced silence) versus simple suppression of ideas.  The reason that the U.S. Founding Fathers mandated freedom of speech (and assembly, etc.) was because they understood this to be a Natural right.  So even though media PC police or power-tripping internet moderators are clearly not breaking that right itself, they are breaking with the underlying idea.

The lesson for me here is that Star Wars fans are rabidly politically correct (by 2012 standards) as a group.  Hey, maybe this is just normal nowadays, but I've been spending too much time in the world of MMA where they're mostly devoid of pretense and phoniness, and so I just project that kind of social innocence onto others.  I don't know. 

I wish more people would stand up to these bullies.  But I understand the instinct to just shrug your shoulders and move on.  It's like Tom Wolfe wrote once, he asked students in some useless college course why they all submitted to their teacher's command that they spell women "womyn".  He said that they all agreed it was stupid, but better to just get through things than make waves and risk your grade, reputation, or sparking the name-calling wrath of their bullying professor.  That same shoulder-shrugging acquiescence to all the phonies has continued, and they and their bullying ways have obviously just grown.  Now, the word "effeminate" to describe a dude is the latest word on the blacklist.  Okay, duly noted.

It's funny, I like the Joe Rogan podcast, and he always complains about this sort of shit and how they're prohibiting more and more words and ideas, working for NBC and UFC (although the latter is obviously very lenient).  He just substitutes "cunty" for "faggy" nowadays, but he always fears that you people are gonna throw your hysterics about "cunty" pretty soon, too, and muzzle him still more.  You'll just keep demanding more words to the censored list until there's just the word, "The" in the vocabulary.

What hilarious phoniness.  I don't want to talk about it anymore, either.  What they did to me was wrong, as is their secrecy about it and their lies, and their refusal to punish people who called me names.

Please create a thread for people who'd like to talk about other forums.

For those who may have participated or read any blogs.starwars.com, what information is important to you.  [For example Leland Y Chee (continuity keeper) has a blog and many other official Star Wars authors and writers like J.W. Rinzler.]

Trying to get it all but will selectively preserve.

thanks

none

DavidBrennan said:

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

David, you're mistaking lack of sympathy for outrage.  After reading your description, I didn't have much sympathy (if any) for your situation, but I wasn't outraged.  We have people here who post much wilder stuff.

Sometimes mods delete posts and ban users because they don't want a significant base of their readers to start leaving, or for the discussion to degenerate and cause new readers to shy away.  Sometimes it is to keep a few people from getting offended and leaving.  I delete some feedback posts from my YouTube videos precisely because I don't post those videos so that my friends can be insulted.  Freedom of speech doesn't apply to private sites on the internet.

Everybody understands the difference between censorship (government-enforced silence) versus simple suppression of ideas.  The reason that the U.S. Founding Fathers mandated freedom of speech (and assembly, etc.) was because they understood this to be a Natural right.  So even though media PC police or power-tripping internet moderators are clearly not breaking that right itself, they are breaking with the underlying idea.

The lesson for me here is that Star Wars fans are rabidly politically correct (by 2012 standards) as a group.  Hey, maybe this is just normal nowadays, but I've been spending too much time in the world of MMA where they're mostly devoid of pretense and phoniness, and so I just project that kind of social innocence onto others.  I don't know. 

I wish more people would stand up to these bullies.  But I understand the instinct to just shrug your shoulders and move on.  It's like Tom Wolfe wrote once, he asked students in some useless college course why they all submitted to their teacher's command that they spell women "womyn".  He said that they all agreed it was stupid, but better to just get through things than make waves and risk your grade, reputation, or sparking the name-calling wrath of their bullying professor.  That same shoulder-shrugging acquiescence to all the phonies has continued, and they and their bullying ways have obviously just grown.  Now, the word "effeminate" to describe a dude is the latest word on the blacklist.  Okay, duly noted.

It's funny, I like the Joe Rogan podcast, and he always complains about this sort of shit and how they're prohibiting more and more words and ideas, working for NBC and UFC (although the latter is obviously very lenient).  He just substitutes "cunty" for "faggy" nowadays, but he always fears that you people are gonna throw your hysterics about "cunty" pretty soon, too, and muzzle him still more.  You'll just keep demanding more words to the censored list until there's just the word, "The" in the vocabulary.

What hilarious phoniness.  I don't want to talk about it anymore, either.  What they did to me was wrong, as is their secrecy about it and their lies, and their refusal to punish people who called me names.

Man, is your soapbox full of booze, because you must be loaded.

Well, to be fair, the reaction of a few months banning is a bit extreme. I can see how some people would be a little...I'm not sure if "offended" is even the right word, but put off maybe. Basically, you don't like David Filoni and you call him effeminate in a way that is entirely not neutral, let's be honest. Even here, it was intended as an insult, or something to knock him with. So, why is being effeminate so bad? No, really, why is it? Does that mean being gay is bad?  The two are strongly associated; most people's idea of a gay guy is someone who is effeminate. So why is being effeminate something to be mocked? And whatever the reason, that would open up the majority of gays to being mocked, wouldn't it? You see the slippery slope you are on? I realize you were just trying to undermine his masculinity, and on the surface that may seem like not so terrible, but that train of thought has other implications, and it also says a lot about what is respectable or not respectable in men. You value more traditional masculinity qualities, and that's fine because so do I and many other guys, but not everyone does, and mocking someone for lacking those qualities marginalizes a lot of people, including many who have been historically persecuted--killed even--for having them, and that continues to this day. It promotes an atmosphere of homophobia, and that's really all it comes down to. It may sound oversensitive, but it's different if you are on the receiving end of that. Normally it wouldn't be a big deal, but people are persecuted for acting that way in very real ways, so it has other implications and basically promotes that, even if you weren't intending to, so it shouldn't be so surprising that some people have issues with that.

I worked on a gay television show on a gay network for two years so I know that some of the gayest dudes you will ever meet are also the most sterotypically macho, the kind of guys that listen to heavy metal, work out everyday, practice tae kwon do, and enjoy a round of pints at the pub. A lot of naive women mistake them as super-straight (until you look a little closer that is), and I enjoy hanging out with guys like that because I'm kind of like that. But the stereotype, and lets face it the more visible, are the kind of guys that are the sort one may characterize as "effeminate", at least by your standards if all you need is the hint of a lisp (I would not have characterized him as effeminate, personally). So, you see how there is the connection. Making fun of someone for having a hint of a lisp, and just barely any other vague qualities, like a gesture or something they do? Why does it matter if they have a lisp, or speak effemenately? I get it though, you are just looking for something to nail him on because you don't like him, whatever is outside of social norms. But if you are a person like me who has gay friends that have been threatened with death, who have been picked on, even beaten up, who have been genuinely hated (which is something few have actually experienced), and whom to this day even in one of the gayest, most open cities in the world (Toronto) , there is still an undefined stigma to just being born gay in certain parts with certain folks...well, that's total bullshit isn't it? You are right, life is filled with bullies and assholes and people who are offended by shit that they have abolsutely no reason to be offended by. And increasingly people have been standing up against these fuckwits. So, you can maybe understand, if Dave Filoni is someone you respect (e.g. a SW forum...and even if he is not someone you respect it wouldn't change either), when someone comes bashing him and makes fun of the fact that he strikes that person as effeminate...that basically IS gay bashing. Who cares if he is effeminate? Why is that bad? It would be like saying you don't like Sam Jackson, but include a reference to his skin colour. It's like, what? Was that racism? Maybe you didn't even mean it to be, but you can't be so stupid as to not see how that comes across. It would seem that way to me, and I'm pretty chill about PC stuff.

The other thing is that, you are right, TFN is very PC, too PC, and I suspect that has to do with the business side, because it's not just a fan-run forum, it makes money for the people at the top and it makes LFL look bad as a corporation if they allow certain things, so I'm pretty sure they have a finger in the pie there. But also, because TFN is so over-policed, whenever someone does something a little un-PC it seems more shocking and outrageous. So, you have an issue that is one of contrast too, and that's not your fault.

Not caring to read the thread, it sounds like some people may have been a bit harsh, probably because of the above reason. But its not some PC-police thing. Like a lot of dickhead right-wing radio hosts who are in denial about their prejudices and fight imaginary enemies of freedom of speech you have to consider what you are REALLY saying. Because what ARE you REALLY saying? That acting "effeminate" is something to be made fun of? I guess that means 75% of all gays should be made fun of too? So you haven't really thought about the implications of what you are saying, and it reflects really, really badly on you. Obviously, you don't go around oppressing gays as far as I know, or even straight men who have qualities in sync with gay stereotypes like being "effeminate" (personally I never thought Filoni was gay at all so I'm putting him here), but yeah, if that's something mockable I would agree that you have masculinity issues. I mean, I get it, I realize people don't mean anything bad, but it does reflect the way that gays, or people with qualities associated with being gay, are thought of as second class citizens, the way women were fifty years ago, because you would never mock his brown hair, right? Yes, "womyn" and shit like that is idiotic, it's easy to point to that and say "this is feminism?" and laugh. But it's not as hard to point to the 18-year-old girl I trained on a film set who left the industry because a cinematographer said to her that girls can't work in the camera department because it's a guy thing, and maybe she should find work somewhere else. So, if you realize bullshit like that actually happens, and you make a comment about women not being qualified for something because of their gender--it's not just a joke. It's real. I mean, yes, all guys and all women make fun of the opposite gender, I think it's in our DNA or something. But that's between friends, unless it's really clever and you may get away. But in a public forum with strangers, I don't see how you can be surprised that out of the hundreds of people reading it, a dozen will be rubbed the wrong way enough to comment. Part of the reason people act sexist is because people talk sexist, it endorses it and makes it seem a social norm.

I would agree, you are naive, because when you spend the day sparring with guys in MMA, you get the right to be candid and people won't be as offended because you have an intimate relationship, like when you make a sexist joke with your guy friends, which probably every single straight male who has ever lived has done on a semi-regular basis. But that only works if you are all in the same boat--by that I mean the (erroneous) assumption that you all are straight guys, so it's no big deal to make a joke or comment that may come across as gay-bashing to the PC police. But if one of that group was black, how far would you take a criticism about a guy that included his black skin colour as part of the criticism when it had no relation to the job you were mocking? And while the black guy in the room most likely won't say anything, would he not say anything if he was just an anonymous guy on the internet, and he had never met you? So you see how the trust and self-censorship of real-life does not apply online, or even in the general public. I do know where you are coming from about just stating observations--some people are so uncomfortable if you describe a black guy as being black, or a gay guy as being gay. Why? He's black and gay. It's not a bad thing--it's just a description. You don't bristle at being descibed as white and straight. But this is not really one of those cases, because you applied a judgement. That's the difference.

In many ways, it would be better if Filoni was really flaming--then, most people could agree, he IS effeminiate. But he's not, not really. I certainly don't see it--at most I would say he may have a mild speech impediment. So a large part of the problem comes down to the second anyone has any sort vague, super-mild, highly debatable "effeminate" quality, they get made fun of for it. That's probably a big part of it. Like, unless you fit right into traditional stereotypes of masculinity, you get mocked. If he was super-gay it would be okay to say he was effeminate as a description--although again, the bottom line is that you applied a judgement to that.

Basically, I guess what I am getting at is that you are conflating the over-moded TFN policies with any personal criticism of you. You're getting criticized here, and we basically have absolutely no mods here, we're all self-policed, and VERY un-PC, very un-family-friendly. It's not about PC police, it's about making a comment that is, essentially, a slur against anyone that does not act according to stereotypes of masculinity, and that includes a heck of a lot of straight and non-straight guys.

I still don't think they should have banned someone for months just for that. But it's probably because you had built up a rep by that point. Let it be a lesson, I guess. You're not one man up against the world, standing up for what's right, and saying that just makes you look stupid. You're one man, like many other people in the world, who make slurs against persecuted groups without meaning to or realizing it. It's not about freedom of speech or any nonesense like that. In fact, in places where freedom of speech is restricted, comments like that have traditionally been common and accepted. You're right about bullies in small things being too tolerated by society because we are too polite to say anything against them, but I hope you can take away a bit of a lesson here that you were on the other side of the fence this time. Because that's how easy it is, and that's why there are so many--most bullies don't realize what they are doing and don't think they are in the wrong, because they haven't examined what other people's lives are like.

This David guy is hilarious.

...

Wait, he's serious?

First pass learning blogs.starwars.com to be around 2.61gb of 72,370 items.  Files with dates from 'year':

2005 - 13,755

2006 - 38,956

2007 - 8,088

2008 - 3,991

2009 - 2,118

2010 - 2,036

2011 - 689

2012 - 155

SilverWook wrote: Is that indicative of it's peak and decline?

For quick and dirty gives a sense of what was going on.  When you have a whole site and there are two posts a day (for a year), can understand the reason to halt new information being added, but taking it offline completely is not helpful to research and the concept of the internet as a public library.

One trooper who wrote a joke a day.  Over 1,400+ entries. 

Refining the numbers to just posts created in that year: and comparing that to total yearly activity (blog posts + blog posts with comments of that year) = % of new blog posts over total activity.

2005 - 7,470 (2005 - 13,755) : 54%

2006 - 24,132 (2006 - 38,956) : 62%

2007 - 5,826 (2007 - 8,088) : 72%

2008 - 2,751 (2008 - 3,991) : 68%

2009 - 1,393 (2009 - 2,118) : 65%

2010 - 1,363 (2010 - 2,036) : 66%

2011 - 429 (2011 - 689) : 62%

2012 - 84 (2012 - 155) : 54%

https://archive.org/details/archiveteam-starwarsforums

Archive Team Panic Download: Star Wars Forums (September 2011)

This item is part of the collection: The Archive Team Just In Time Grabs

Identifier: archiveteam-starwarsforums
Date: 2011-09
Mediatype: web
Publicdate: 2012-02-12 19:31:17
Addeddate: 2012-02-12 19:31:17
Language: English

Individual Files

Information	Format	Size
archiveteam-starwarsforums_files.xml	Metadata	[file]
archiveteam-starwarsforums_meta.xml	Metadata	506.0 B

Other Files	TAR
STARWARSFORUMS.2011.09.02.Possibly-Damaged.tar	55.7 GB
STARWARSFORUMS.2011.Dataset.tar	142.3 GB
STARWARSFORUMS.2011.Machines.tar	8.2 GB
STARWARSFORUMS.2011.Profiles.tar	25.6 GB

Would have happened already, it's been sitting there for years.  We overloaded the servers multiple times during the operation, that would have been the time to make a stink.  At the last Celebration mentioned the collection to one of the Lucasfilm online people and it didn't seem to register.

An article on the topic: http://kotaku.com/5674721/when-an-mmo-dies

Doesn't get into specifics of where the data goes, but would guess the servers are boxed up and stored somewhere, with the hope their value could be repurposed.  But with most of the people involved looking to cut their losses, stuff is probably moved next to the digital equivalent of the Ark of the Covenant.

But then projects like this spring up: http://mxoemu.info/ So maybe as the world is downloaded onto everyone's machines, they can possibly be re-created.