The Future of ADD

[nuke]

As people have probably noticed, there's been an exodus of intelligent people from ADD in the short past. It's been an unfortunate thing, and many of the remaining posters who are "advanced" (have experience in the field of chemistry, medicine, pharmacology and biology) seem frustrated with the content here.

So my question is: How many people want us to start killing all the threads that do not pertain to data with scientific integrity (either their own or from the literature) and to try to elevate the general intelligence of ADD through that route?

 

[NeighborhoodThreat]

I'm mostly a lurker here on ADD because I lack the higher chemistry/pharmacology/biology experience but I do agree with you, nuke, it does seem like a lot of people with that experience/knowledge have left recently and ADD has become a place for threads the belong in OD or BDD.

As far as how to resolve this issue I don't know, I just wanted to let you know that I enjoyed reading the research articles and commentary that ADD used to have a lot more of.

 

[...]

Is there an open-access usenet that you can point to as an example of what you'd like ADD to be?

I know of one for grad-level o-chem:

http://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=fa1d2496add87a862e02f27b39bafd9c&board=35.0

Don't know of any for pharmacology and neurophysiology though.

Should find a way to encourage more threads like this and this.

 

[egor]

I think a big part of "the exodus" is that other venues for high level discussion are becoming numerous and the others don't have the constant stupid "how does (insert branded mystery substance here) work?" type threads.

 

[atara]

Another big part is the frenzy that was created by the posts about 5-IAI, 2-DPMP, thienylpropylamine, N-methoxybenzylphenethylamines, MDAI, BTCP, naphyrone, and several others. Vendors stealing ideas for products from online forums forced one forum to move and another to severely restrict access to content.

Posting about speculative pharmacology here, as is a hobby of many posters, including me, has proven multiple times to be dangerous to the health of unsuspecting RC customers and hyped-up stimulant marketing has once again endangered the entire research chemical industry, as has happened many times in the past. As the RC market has grown, the online neurochemistry community has become increasingly wary of reckless and predatory vendors willing to risk themselves, their customers, other vendors, and willing to put the whole community at risk (think Web Tryp, think Dateline's "The X Files") in order to make a quick and ultimately fleeting profit on the "next big research chemical". So, for our own safety and more importantly the health of the naive and curious, there's been a sort of moratorium in many circles on mentioning any new and promising compound or even mentioning the places where they are discussed on large public forums like bluelight, reddit, d-f.co.uk, 420chan, etc.

Already a new public sourcing forum has grown to astonishing size, with scams and tales of fake or dangerous products being ever-more-common as of late. I think many of us would simply prefer to avoid contributing to the whole mess.

 

[pofacedhoe]

As people have probably noticed, there's been an exodus of intelligent people from ADD in the short past. It's been an unfortunate thing, and many of the remaining posters who are "advanced" (have experience in the field of chemistry, medicine, pharmacology and biology) seem frustrated with the content here.

So my question is: How many people want us to start killing all the threads that do not pertain to data with scientific integrity (either their own or from the literature) and to try to elevate the general intelligence of ADD through that route?

do it, or this part of bluelight will dumb down rapidly e.g.

http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?t=551563

and yes vendors stealing ideas from here has become excessive, with the knock on effect that people cannot talk about new drugs for fear of seeing them sold a month or two later to a stream of guinea pigs (for instance methiopropamine as it has become known)

as this is a very public forum there is therefore a limit on what you can freely talk about , yet it doesn't mean that what can be talked about should be the onslaught of drivel that is currently happening

 

[/navarone/]

I think we should make a pubblicity of massive proportions to all the bio-chem nerds all'over the net.

Like uni mates, competitive friends, people from other websites.

The big disadvantage about ADD is that synthesis and any other criminal discussion is prohibited.

Thats why many went to the Dark side of Bluelight (or drugforum.com).

Guys we need a bloody good fucking idea to keep this forum to it's dignity encouraging the big minds (hopefully not arrogant like someone) and keep the dummies off limits unless they have a semi plausible reson to post here despite their minimal knowledge.

I'll see if i can get some of my ex-biochem uni mates and some other friends who studying pharmacology here in Italy. Thoguht most don't speak great english nor are fanatics of drugs so i'll se what I can do.

 

[Hyperthesis]

Suggestions to keep the level high in ADD:

- Censore any thread that smells like advertising ... and enforce this strictly! The reason was explained by atara (ie. I agree with him in this respect).

- Close threads that do not follow the official (!) rule "Present a 'problem' that you are trying to answer. Include what you have come up with so far and ask for assistance completing the solution."
The 'problem' of many recent threads added up more or less to "Please help me to decide what to buy next!"

- Suggest tasks to be solved by the community, tasks which fit the purpose of ADD.

- Encourage more monographs like BilZ0r's "Are Cannabinoids Neurotoxic?" and his "Erowid/BlueLight Neuropharmacology Text", both a very good read IMO.

Better to have a smaller number of threads with high quality than a large number with lots of bullshit-topics. Just my 2 cent...

The big disadvantage about ADD is that synthesis and any other criminal discussion is prohibited.

I think it is actually not a disadvantage to disallow discussion of criminal resp. prohibited activities.

 

[/navarone/]

I think it is actually not a disadvantage to disallow discussion of criminal resp. prohibited activities.

Yes but most of the people on this website also want to grab the forbidden apple. That is what drove MurphClox and Hammilton to the the dark side of bluelight.
The drug discussion there has no boundaries.
This is mostly a forum for curious druggies amd expert pharmacologists in some way.

 

[biocloudy]

I would like to see ADD take more of its traditional direction. I often times read the list of threads and just shake my head. Yet there are some real gems in here that keep me checking daily. Perhaps a lot of the sub par stuff belong in focus forums.

One of the things that I encounter is the ethics of answering some questions. When I see a question that I think would result in a unsafe condition, i err heavily on the side of caution. I don't want some kid reading this a year from now, applying what I say moronically and ending up dead. Its really a conflicting issue at times to balance good discussion with the morals of doing such (as we have seen in ADD).

ADD gives the us the right place to post things that require a little background to understand. As I learned when I posted a essay on food-drug interactions on mdma/4mmc in the ecstasy forums, it was perhaps a little over many of the participants heads. Another thread recently that really inspired me was the discussion on creating life. I was mostly inspired by the people who said they were inspired to study science.

my research interests are drug metabolism as it relates to food-drug interactions and prodrugs.

 

[negrogesic]

While it is unfortunate that there's been significant brain drain, this forum still serves a purpose. Once again my emphasis has always been harm-reduction, but it is important to have intelligent discourse on theoretical or compounds with poorly understood SAR as well as subjective in vivo reports of the activity of these compounds. I believe there is a good degree of hope.

The real issue is differentiation from Other Drugs. Again, in the early days of OD, this subforum did not even exist, and phreex and I did our utmost to field questions of an advanced nature. As a result the level of discourse was much higher than currently observed in OD, yet we still had a huge amount of traffic. We did NOT allow social activity, which has now dominated OD, and leads to senseless babble.

A few suggestions for the future ADD:

- do not allow social activity

- develop some sort of" standard" that a poster must read beforing posting in here

- keep the numbers of moderators LOW, again dave and I operated a tight operation on OD as well as the "underground version (ODU, no longer in existence) and for a short period I was the sole moderator in OD when dave left, and while it took time, it was feasible. My point being; dedicated and FEW moderators, and careful avoidance of "cults of personality".

- allow for the moderators interact directly and take suggestions from members that contribute high quality posts/content. While inherently this forum leads to elitism, mods need to be discerning and keep access open

-do not expect moderators to know "everything", hopefully the few moderators will have a good balance of respective strengths

- low tolerance for flaming and trolling

- unfortunately, many people believe their problems are always "advanced", and repeat offenders should be
warned/disciplined.

This can be done, it will just take a bit of work.

 

[onmyway]

i think it is a great idea to encourage ADD threads that respect logical thought and the scientific process. blatantly ridiculous or ignorant threads should be moved or closed, just like in any other forum. trolling and flaming should be strongly discouraged with warnings, thread locks, and bans.

most importantly, shouldn't the people that frequent ADD take a little responsibility and self moderate? if you notice things that aren't right, why not bring it up in the thread or send PMs? social pressure works. we should all consider and evaluate intelligent criticism from our peers, since that is vital to the scientific process.

finally, all questions pertaining to harm reduction should be answered in some form before threads are locked and/or moved.

something i have learned here and elsewhere: most people should lurk more, myself included.

 

[Transform]

Perhaps hiding the very existence of this forum to those who have recently joined or have a very small number of posts would help. Just to allow them to warm to the idea of the other forums available, instead of coming here as soon as they have an "advanced" idea.
Seems like that is against the open-ness of bluelight though and is much more extreme than the other suggestions.
I think neogresic has the right idea, although I don't think less mods achieves a lot, and is counter-productive if they can't afford enough time.

 

[mgrady3]

Would it be possible to implement a system such that all new threads be filtered, ie. someone reads the thread before it is seen by the public. Something like all new threads are initally locked.
Then there are a few options for the filter, either the post is simply deleted and the poster informed that his/her post does not belong here, the poster is asked to clarify his/her exact question and re-post it, or it is cleared to be an active thread and unlocked.

(I guess this puts more work on the mods and slows down the process of providing good information, but potentially keeps out a lot of garbage)

 

[theotherside]

I came to bluelight and joined because of you guys and the content here at ADD. Please delete any thread you feel is necessary to keep this forum the pride of bluelight. Losing one our star mods was hard enough..your next one has some HUGE shoes to fill.

 

[negrogesic]

^^^Logistically it would be difficult; those who moderate this forum have other things going on, and can't "filter" every message. Plus there are some ethical issues with that.....

And I don't mean ill-will about the no-social threads, I just think that this not the arena for such talk, and most of us don't have time to have extended conversations on some instant messaging program.......

Oh.....and I suggest for fellow readers to go easy on the reporting function, I remember this used to be a big headache in OD, all this "tattle-telling" simply wastes time......use when appropriate - not vindictively or because you personally disagree with someone.....

 

[atara]

What ADD is needed to do is provide some sort of harm-reduction benefit to the drug using community. There isn't much of a point to discussing esoteric psychoactives on a large forum when a smaller forum will suffice and is better from a security standpoint. It's still important that real and serious information can reach the larger drug using community, be it about the use of dissociatives in treating opiate withdrawal or the effects of MDMA on the brain, etc.

Therefore, I suggest that threads which detract from the goal of harm-reduction be removed.

 

[...]

Therefore, I suggest that threads which detract from the goal of harm-reduction be removed.

I think threads that are not directly related to harm reduction are ok so long as they're advanced. Why must this forum carry more of an HR burden than Cannabis Discussion does?

Perhaps hiding the very existence of this forum to those who have recently joined or have a very small number of posts would help.

41% of visits to Bluelight are referred by search engines. "Based on internet averages, bluelight.ru is visited more frequently by males who are in the age range 18-24, have no children, received some college education and browse this site from school."source

most importantly, shouldn't the people that frequent ADD take a little responsibility and self moderate? if you notice things that aren't right, why not bring it up in the thread or send PMs? social pressure works. we should all consider and evaluate intelligent criticism from our peers, since that is vital to the scientific process.

spot on

A few suggestions for the future ADD:

- do not allow social activity

- develop some sort of" standard" that a poster must read beforing posting in here

- keep the numbers of moderators LOW, again dave and I operated a tight operation on OD as well as the "underground version (ODU, no longer in existence) and for a short period I was the sole moderator in OD when dave left, and while it took time, it was feasible. My point being; dedicated and FEW moderators, and careful avoidance of "cults of personality".

- allow for the moderators interact directly and take suggestions from members that contribute high quality posts/content. While inherently this forum leads to elitism, mods need to be discerning and keep access open

-do not expect moderators to know "everything", hopefully the few moderators will have a good balance of respective strengths

- low tolerance for flaming and trolling

- unfortunately, many people believe their problems are always "advanced", and repeat offenders should be
warned/disciplined.

I think these are FANTASTIC ideas, and none too radical.

 

[Hammilton]

that is what drove MurphClox and Hammilton to the the

It's more complicated than that, I don't care about synthesis all that much.



I know a lot of us thought for a long time that more information would lead to better, safer people. That hasn't been the case, really. Many people just aren't smart enough to make use of that information. Many are just too lazy to be bothered.

Pretty much every thread on a new compound is devoted to whether it'll a) get you high and b) will it produce a more enjoyable intoxication.

We should have been devoting the energy to intoxicants that are a) safer, b) less addictive than their illegal counterparts.

Instead of pumping out highly addictive stimulants like mephedrone people should have been looking for stimulants that should produce less cardiovascular stress (minimal effect on HR and BP, for starters) that aren't vasoconstrictive in nature. Mazindol analogues, maybe.

Not highly potent full-agonist opiates but partial agonists with mid range potency that aren't analogues.

I think there should be a rule against the chemical masturbation threads that aren't looking at new compounds with safety foremost, and recreational value second.

Then everything that negrogesic said.

 

[/navarone/]

However I believe sometimes 'we' (if I can be considered a worth enough member of this forum) are being a bit too grumpy and arrogant on those few retards who post poor, uneducated theads/posts or who's only interest is to speculate on what new drug will get you more fucked while narcisistically enjoying the fact that they are discussing about ADVANCED drugs.

We should let nuke and vektor deal with those people and warn em to 1) UTFSE and 2) share constructive thoughts or questions.

ADD will still be rolling for a long while.
Still sad to see Hammilton F&B and Murph leave the forum, they where of great contribution.