Bluelight Social - is it really that important?

[rikidozan]

I'm not trying to be un-sociable but when this forum obstructs the real reasons Bluelight was established, I think something has to be done.
Let's analyze the current crop of topics at the heading of the Australian/NZ/Middle East Social Forum.

• Girls with Glosticks
• Rave and Ecstacy Culture - Book List
• SAY NO TO BREAD!
• Piercings
• Church of PLUR - believe it or not??
• Funny ICQ chat.. You'll all have been in this kinda situation!!
• Fire twirling - how did you learn?
• Happy Birthday PeterPoppa
• Can You Fax Acid?

These threads serve no real purpose and only obstruct other proper forums such as the Australia/Asia/NZ Drug Discussion to work effeciently.
Bluelight Social doesn't only end at the Australian/NZ/Middle Eastern parts. One look at the American Bluelight Social forums gives us a wealth of important information in such threads as:

• Nokia Snake..
• The Thread with No Name???
• jerkin-off shrink yur dick
• Do you believe in God ?
• Best insult
• I AM PROTESTING!!!
• Hello to the world of Blue Light!
• What is 1 word that will describe you?
• Hello peoples
• I'm proud to be an American.
• Hey Look At Me!
• Friends
• how the FUCK did i get here..........
• Welcome angel kisses
• JungLists pLayin DressuP
  

Ask yourself, are you here to become educated through bluelight or to be mildly entertained, remembering that this entertainment is also helping to obstruct those other people who need real information. Keep the Meetups forum, this should only be the "social" part of Bluelight and this way the Bluelight community is able to keep intact. Is it really that hard to keep these conversations restricted to phones, or even e-mail?
And to the moderators who read this, can you please do your best to discuss this post in your meeting? This is such a big issue, with an easy solution... I don't think personal entertainment in the form of social forums has any right to cause strains on these servers and obstruct Bluelight from operating the way it should.
Thankyou and Peace Out.
[This message has been edited by rikidozan (edited 06 March 2001).]

 

[Pleonastic]

On the flip side though, if we take away social, how many of us would still be here once we got our drug education? I came to bluelight to learn what the hell I was putting into my body, and what it was doing once it was in there. During this stage, I really didn't post much, and just read other peoples stories and information that they offered.
Once I found out just about all there was to know about quite a few drugs however, I gained the confidence to start posting myself. Now I am a regular poster in the following forums:
New to XTC
Bluelight Discussion
Bluelight Social
Medical Q & A
Media, Busts, and Legal Issues
Australia/Asia/NZ/Middle East
Australia/Asia/NZ/Middle East Drug Discussion
Australia/Asia/NZ/Middle East Social
In the social forums and in the Aus meetup forum, I post anything really. In the other forums, I post serious information which may or may not help people make an informed and safe decision.
My point is though, that I've gotten just about all the serious information that I can out of bluelight. The reason I'm still here is because of Social. If it were not for these forums, I wouldn't check this board quite so often. And soon it'd be once a week. And soon it'd be virtually never.
The reason that there are so many knowledegable people around is because there are so many people who've been on this board for a good while now. I know that there are knowledgable people who don't post in social. But I think that if social was removed, then a lot of people would leave. And with them would go a lot of information which could have been shared with people who have just arrived.
I think a black and white attitude of "Remove social to save the other forums" is very closed minded. I aggree that something must be done, and social by far the least important of the forums. But you can't get rid of it.
Remember, you're asking to ban something becuase it's percieved to be causing a problem. The government is trying to do that with drugs, and look how that's working.
Do you really think that people wouldn't post their shit in the other more important forums if social was removed?
(Disclaimer: Not a flame, just the other side of the arguement)

------------------
"The love in your heart wasn't put there to stay...
Love isn't love, till you give it away."
[This message has been edited by Pleonastic (edited 06 March 2001).]

 

[Pleonastic]

Oh, and by the way, isn't it ironic that the social forum is being used to discuss, in a social manner, the important issue of whether or not we really need the social forum...

------------------
"The love in your heart wasn't put there to stay...
Love isn't love, till you give it away."

 

[rikidozan]

Once I found out just about all there was to know about quite a few drugs however, I gained the confidence to start posting myself. Now I am a regular poster in the following forums:
New to XTC
Bluelight Discussion
Bluelight Social
Medical Q & A
Media, Busts, and Legal Issues
Australia/Asia/NZ/Middle East
Australia/Asia/NZ/Middle East Drug Discussion
Australia/Asia/NZ/Middle East Social

I doubt you know just about everything about quite a few drugs - thats a pretty broad statement. And in the above list I only wanted two of those forums removed. Social discussion can still be continued to an extent in the Meetups forum, as the Social Forums are used now to post all sorts of meaningless stuff (as shown by my examples). The Social aspect in the Meetups forum far exceeds the same aspect in the Social Forum, in my view anyway.

In the social forums and in the Aus meetup forum, I post anything really. In the other forums, I post serious information which may or may not help people make an informed and safe decision.

And that my friends, is EXACTLY what I mean.

My point is though, that I've gotten just about all the serious information that I can out of bluelight. The reason I'm still here is because of Social. If it were not for these forums, I wouldn't check this board quite so often. And soon it'd be once a week. And soon it'd be virtually never.

I can't judge whether or not you will continue to visit Bluelight after all the information you have gathered, but I assume you would, because there are all sorts of pill reports that come out weekly in your area. Intelligent conversations still exist in the other forums.

I think that if social was removed, then a lot of people would leave. And with them would go a lot of information which could have been shared with people who have just arrived.

I highly doubt that knowledgable and intelligent people would stray from Bluelight altogether because the Social forums were removed. I figure that for every person that stops coming to Bluelight because there are no more social forums, there would be at least 2 more that have gained knowledge and will stay here to express their views in other intelligent conversations. As you said, you post ANYTHING in the Social forums, and so do 90% of other people... about 75% of these conversations lack any substance at all. If they did, alot more people would see it fit to keep them. Otherwise there just wasting precious space with countless diatribe which relates to nothing worthwile.

I think a black and white attitude of "Remove social to save the other forums" is very closed minded. I aggree that something must be done, and social by far the least important of the forums. But you can't get rid of it.

No your argument is very close-minded. Your using it as a cop out to defend your personal stance on this issue. You said it yourself, it IS THE LEAST IMPORTANT OF THE FORUMS, so WHY CAN'T WE GET RID OF IT? Something has to be done, and that is it.

Remember, you're asking to ban something becuase it's percieved to be causing a problem. The government is trying to do that with drugs, and look how that's working.

Now this statement is silly. What has the government's prohibition of drugs and its effectiveness got to do with removing the Bluelight Social Forums? I'm asking to ban something because it's percieved to be causing a problem??? I'm not even going to bother with this part of your argument, not too be harsh or anything, but if you re-read it I'm sure you'll know exactly what I mean.

Do you really think that people wouldn't post their shit in the other more important forums if social was removed?

They might, and thats why the moderator's clean it up. This will probably happen for a week. Then people will realise there's no point for them to write inane babble. As I have stated before, there are more intelligent conversations which relate specifically to the Bluelight objective in all the other forums. You can get involved.

Oh, and by the way, isn't it ironic that the social forum is being used to discuss, in a social manner, the important issue of whether or not we really need the social forum...

No, the thread relates directly to the Social Forum, so I deem it only worthwile to post it in the Social Forum.
------------------
It's the Cyclops 4000 All-Stars...

 

[entropope]

Well said rikidozan
Pleonastic if things continue the way they are it is going to become near impossible for people to access that info that brought you to bluelight (bluelight's purpose) and there'll be no way to contribute to any other forums!! I see you have a strong opinion on the matter, but I beg you to consider the reasons why I think the social forums should have access restricted.
There are a lot of people that have been on bluelight since long before there was a social forum, or even a meetups forum. And they're still providing info. Johnboy hasn't gone anywhere cos there was no social, nor BigTrancer. There are not many bluelighters that provide more info than these two. And they're not an isolated example. Information keeps coming, so long as it can actually be posted.
If people are being held here by social, and not a will to gain and give back information... I don't so much mind if they go away

But the information flow is constant. ie whenever a new pill comes into town, it's reported on here, and you can get a little more info than your testing kit will give you.
If anything the socialness of bluelight is turning away people that may have a lot to give. It's becoming less and less an information based site. Many of the people that I refer that have provided a lot of info have left due to the increasing socialness of the board.
Seriously we need time to fix the problems. Right now we don't have that time, and deleting or temporarily 'turning off' the social forums (at specific times of the day, or for 1 day in 3) would give us that. Social would spill into other forums a bit, we have to expect and accept that, but if the moderators just let it go unchecked... there'd be no point to deleting or turning off social. So if it all spilled into other forums, it would just mean a lot of deleting/locking work for mods for a while.
The situation is that the social aspect of bluelight is preventing users from accessing information which may save their life! Or their money, or their great night they have planned. And although social is great fun for those that like it... it is preventing bluelight from performing it's most vital functions. And hence it's positive effects are well outweighed by it's good imo.
Yet it seems we can not delete the social forums because there are more people on this board that are simply here for a pointless banter about raving/glowsticks/binkies/My best night ever!/complete utter mindless drivle than there are people that are purely wanting info. And the masses rule, and it's human nature yeah? to be self destructive.
If you have an opinion either way, please post.

 

[Pleonastic]

To rikidozan:
I accept most of your points. I wrote most of mine to spark debate before people just jumped on the "social bagging" bandwagon. Please don't take anything personally, I just believe that there is a place for social.
I could pull your arguement apart piece by piece too, and take each individual sentence out of context to refute your position, but I think what has been said above has been thrashed about enough, and I'd be repeating myself. Besides, the internet is not a good place to agrue like this - nobody ever backs down, and very little is achieved after the first few posts.
And I'm sorry, but dismissing my arguement on the basis that I am using it to defend my opinion is not valid.
To entropope:
Thankyou for your post. I agree with everything you have to say in it. It is the attitide by some people that social is the root of all the problems and it should be removed entirely that pisses me off. I know that a comprimise is required. And I know you recognise that we cannot remove social entirely.
I think what it comes down to is that people use bluelight for different reasons. Some only for the drug information, some for the drug information and the social aspect. I think that rikidozan has me confused with someone who only uses the board for a social reason. Those people are the ones who are wasting bandwith, and I think you'll find that most people at some stage (even in the wrong forums) have used bluelight in a social sense.
Why my back is up is because I use bluelight the way it was intended... look in New to XTC and bluelight discussion. I think that down south in the Aus forums I don't post as much drug related material becuase it is where I am more social with the people I know. And for that reason, people don't see my serious posts (which are 50:50 with the social posts - and I post regularly), because they don't go up into New to XTC very often. And that is where people need the most guidence.
If it has to be restricted, then that's OK. If it is down for 8 hours a day, then fine. But this whole arguement (which has gone much further than it should have) was based on the proposal to remove social entirely because it's useless.
That is the only point I was ever arguing against.
[This message has been edited by Pleonastic (edited 06 March 2001).]

 

[Xtine22]

Ok I have only skimmed through all your arguements but I have to say if you remove the "social" aspect of Bluelight then I think a lot of people would stop using it. Bluelight goes further than what we read on this Bullitin (sp) board, I mean when I go to meetups and socialise with friends I have met through the social pages of Bluelight I learn just as much through sharing real life experiences. I mean for 1. Pleonastic helped me over come a problem I encountered Friday night of last week. If I had not been socialising in Social I would never have met him therefore I would not have been out with him therefore my friday night could have become rather f*#cked as I don't always have a computer and modem with me to dial into Bluelight to check up about a particular drug. Maybe some of the threads are pointless but I do think there is a need for Social on Bluelight!!

Now thats just my .20c worth at 5.15am in the morning

 

[entropope]

from the About Us page... the page which describes the intention of bluelight as a whole.
"The main point of this site is to help people to get the facts and make educated choices so they can choose for themselves, and offer a free place to chat for a community that is interested in ecstasy."
but that said (or cut and pasted) one is taking over the other. It's become a lot bigger than first imagined.
Personally I'd love to see the social forums turned off until we get software to accomodate our current format. But that's one opinion of many thousand. And turning each one off for just 4 hours a day during their busiest times would probably suffice to keep all the forums functional.
And also taken from the About Us page:
"Wanting to experiment is part of human nature. We don't need false rumours, we need information. You can find it here. Discuss, talk, get conscious. Feed your mind with the truth."
"The New Bluelight website is an effort to help people interested in MDMA (Ecstasy) by enabling them to openly talk about MDMA and related issues, and making information about MDMA available that is as objective and factual as possible."
The site is mainly intended for discussion of ecstasy. And the community aspect of it that has inadvertently developed and become loved by so many... if threatening to destroy the whole thing, and is already preventing efficient dissemination of information.

 

[haste]

Or maybe we can employ a system of user pay for many forums as me and Johnboy have suggested in the past - proceeds going towards keeping Bluelight afloat..... so what do you think Rikidozan, time to get serious?
..........where's everyone going...hello???

 

[Miss Peks]

Actually Haste I wouldn't mind paying for membership for BL. If BL started charging fees for the social forums, this would ultimately mean that yes you would have a lot of people leave BL, but still there would be some people left that are more than willing to keep BL running at the pace that it should be running at.
Now we could always make the excuse "Oh yeah, but who would pay it?". Well to that I answer this. Remember why we all came to BL in the first place. I was a lurker for about 8 months before I even signed up to BL and before I signed up I was mainly intrested in the drug discussion forums. Yeah sure I would look at social occasionly, but I didn't feel a need to post anything. Now I feel a bit more of a sense of belonging so I post a bit more in those forums, but that doesn't mean I don't look at any of the drug discussion forums anymore, because I do, which brings me to my next point.
Now as we all know the social forums are clogging up the whole board, and it's getting harder everyday to access some of the drug discussion forums such as the AUS one and the Other Drugs forum. If newbies / lurkers came along here to find some information about MDMA, or other substances, does anyone really think they'd stick around if they couldn't get into the desired forum they wanted to find info off?? Of course not.
Look I don't know what the answer is, but I've suggested a couple of ideas in the past, and so have a lot of other people on this board, which should be in some of the older posts. I'll try to find the links and bump them up to the top of the page.
Please everyone we should all be working together on this, not as two separate groups.

 

[pinger]

firstly i'd like to see comments from more people who use social
myself, i think bluelight is suffering an identity crisis. it started out as a resource and harm minimisation site for e use, now it looks more like a party site.
many forums are in danger of being destroyed by fluff.
if push came to shove i would rather see bluelight return to a narrower harm minimisation site rather than an all embracing PLUR site.
currently bluelight is diluting it's essence by having more departments than Target.
narrow the forums, moderate the ones we want to keep, and i think you'll find well cut the traffic in half and still remain flexible enough to include social discussion as long as relevant.
i know this will piss people off but where else can you get information such as you can from bluelight? and currently we cant even fucking search the archives because they turned off the search function to cater to more traffic.
i may seem a killjoy here but i'd hate to think we'd trade such a resource just so people can discuss their relative glowstick tricks
my only other suggestion (has been ignored before) is that we business partner with www.iherb.com let the money roll in and build the biggest fucking server in the world for ourselves.
can some people who use social please add input here because i think this needs sensible discussion
cheers
pinga

 

[Xtine22]

Now that its later in the morning i'd also like to add that I would pay for membership and I too used to be a lurker until I accidently ran into you people at Earthcore NYE and you all made me feel so welcome and invited me to come and post too. If people are serious about it, then I think they would pay a fair price memebership, I mean we spend enough money on other things that bring us to Bluelight

 

[haste]

I have a suggestion/proposition!
What if we took the Aussie Social forum and transferred it to another Messageboard service such as EzBoard - have it sit on their server. This way it takes alot of strain off Bluelight's server.
I already have one up and running if people want to get an idea of what I'm on about - just click on the link at the bottom. I am more than willing to set one up and administer it. We can then have the link to the Aussie Social in bluelight redirected to this alternate messageboard.
Your thoughts people?? Is this a possibility johnboy - or does it take away from Bluelight?
------------------
....SLIDE BENEATH THE CITY......feel free to visit
http://clix.to/hastey

 

[Miss Peks]

Great idea Haste, though I suggested something like that a while ago in the American Social forums, but no one really liked it, so I don't know if it would happen.
The only thing is would those EZ boards be able to hold the amount of traffic that both of the Social Forums hold?????

 

[nezo]

I'm surprised that there isn't a post in Drug Discussion sayin that it's slowing down the Social forums

My point is this : the server isn't dying because of Social - it doesn't discriminate. The server is dying under the weight of all the users reading and writing to threads (paging problems I think?) regardless of whether they are Social / Meetups / Drug discussion. Social is a bit of a scapegoat for the server problem. Yes, I agree that some of the topics are frivoulous and unneccessary but some could argue that there are useless and frivoulous topics in drug discussion - and remember, not everyone on Bluelight is interested in taking drugs.
"But Bluelight was originally created to provide information on illicit substances and harm minimisation"
Yes, it was. But you can't deny that it has EVOLVED beyond that, Bluelight is more than just providing information. I'd say it's become a community of like minded people who communicate and relate via Bluelight. So that begs the million dollar question : What do we want Bluelight to be?
Information dissemination website or Vibrant Online Community??
There are other alternative website for both (Erowid and IntheMix et al). Now here's my opinon (which is just as valid or invalid as the next persons): It can be both. But we need to do something about the server right? Well, there are other ways to skin a cat. I'm just hypothesing now but can we consider the following?
1. Alternatively disable Drug Discussion and Social on some days
2. Remove ANY html links from Bluelight that refer to another Bluelight page - make users page back through their cached pages back to the main page to navigate
3. Max number of users at a time? During peak North American times, restrict access to Aus forums and vice versa
4. User pays.
Now I'm not sure if any of these can be done using the UltimateBB Software but I think should consider something else as opposed to the knee jerk reaction of closing down a forum.
Nezo.

 

[haste]

EzBoard more than easily cope with the traffic on the Aussie Social Forum - I'm a member of a couple of Ezboards with much higher traffic than Aussie Social (I-Mockery) that copes with traffic just fine.
Just an idea that will cost no money and free up Bluelight to concentrate on harm minisisation.
------------------
....SLIDE BENEATH THE CITY......feel free to visit
http://clix.to/hastey

 

[Tarsarlan]

All of this has, and still is being discussed by the mods/admins prior to the change over to BL 2... We're having a meeting on the 11th to discuss exactly how we're going to implement Bluelight and there are mods and admins who are quite passionate about Bluelight (of course) who feel the same way as rikidozan, and some who feel that social is a very important part, and some (like me) who feel that all of Bluelight is important...
This topic will come up in that meeting without a doubt...
Also up for discussion is what to do about Bluelight now to sort out the problems we are having...
Haste's proposal to move the social forums off-server is a good one, and will probably be one of the temporary solutions used until BL 2 comes around...
However, the aussie social forum generates a lot less load/traffic than the main Social forum... I'm not denying it adds to it, but moving only this forum is not enough... And we can't move the main social forum to somewhere like ezboards because that would kill ezboards a lot quicker than its killing Bluelight (ezboards has been having its own problems, I don't think we need to add to them)
Bluelight social needs its own dedicated server, nothing else will suffice (i don't think we could afford a server capable of handling the total load/traffic currently being generated)
The social forums might temporarily be shut down for the good of bluelight, but they won't be shut down for good. Yes bluelight was first setup to house and provide information, but it has grown past that and having a social part of bluelight wouldn't detract from the ability to provide information if the server was running as it should.
I came here looking for information (found the link from pillreports) but stayed for the meetups... I was the one who had the biggest part to play in getting this social forum setup (which is why I'm a moderator in this forum) If this social forum were to be temporarily shut down I wouldn't mind... But if it were removed completely, I would not be happy and bluelight would become a much smaller part of my life... I would still check every now and then, but I wouldn't spend a whole lot of time here... I know a fair deal about the drugs discussed on this board, but nowhere near enough to be able to offer advice as well as some others can... That's the main reason I'm not as active in the other forums, because there are others who are much better at it...
Unfortunately nezo, it is true, the main social forum is the main contributor to the load generated on this board, the stats show that half of the total load of all forums is generated by the main social forum...
I like your second idea tho because refreshing the thread index page is the biggest load generator and if people would use the back button, or open another window and leave it open, there would be a great reduction in load... unfortunately too many people don't know that that is possible, let alone how it would help...
[This message has been edited by Tarsarlan (edited 07 March 2001).]

 

[Psyentist]

I remember when Bluelight was a fun place to be. WTF is happening here as of late?

 

[nezo]

Tars - yep. True, Social does create the largest load on the server. But my arguement is that it's just as important as Drug Discussion and the fact that it generates the most traffic shouldn't be the excuse to close it. If the tables were turned and Drug Discussion created the biggest load on the server, would we be having a discussion about closing that forum? I don't think so.
Let's have Social treated equally like other forums as opposed to the forum that lives and dies when it suits peopele.
Nezo.
"Can't we just get along" - Rodney King
Nezo.
[This message has been edited by nezo (edited 07 March 2001).]

 

[Never Mind]

I have one word.... No I have a few points and a few words to explain my play on the situation.
Evolution.
Times change, you gotta keep up.
Imagine what the human race would have been like had we not come off all fours....
If this was only to do with MDMA, and its use, why not scrap Bluelight and just have the pillreports board, with FAQ and three or four people who reply to Emailed questions which then get posted on a BB.
Life doesn't always have to be serious, and the social forum shows that.
What's wrong with a little light hearted banter between people with simial, or sometimes very opposed beliefs...
If it wasn't for Bluelight I wouldn't have met some great people.
BASS OUT