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Let's Make ADD a Better Place For Everyone

nuke

nuke

Bluelighter
Joined
Nov 7, 2004
Messages
4,190
What do you think belongs here? What doesn't belong here? Other suggestions? Comments? Concerns?
 
Step 1. Ban people like me (especially those dumb / demented enough to start a thread about injecting chocolate into their veins.)

Step 2. Cajole and strong-arm intelligent and knowledgeable people into participation.

Step 3. Profit!!! ... I mean better ADD.

All joking aside, the real problem with ADD - the reason that it's so boring and ghost-towny - appears to be that those who have a truly deep and advanced understanding of pharmacology are able to answer the majority of their own questions or they don't have questions in the first place, leaving ADD mainly as a place where people like me whine about their problems or ask stupid questions that they could have answered with a quick google search.
 
I've been mostly lurking and lately posting since 08/2004. It seems to me there are way too many posts lately that seem to either belong in PD or OD. Even though I don't understand half of the truely advanced discussions, I enjoy trying to learn new things. There's seem to have been an inordinate amount of I've got this phsychological problem that can only be fixed with drugs and I abuse these drugs so how do I fix my problem with another drug blah blah blah!
It also could be that the really interesting people went to the "other" site.;)
 
PsychedelicPeptide said:
I think it's for the most part fine. Are you concerned about something in particular?
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Well, I have trouble sometimes being able to classify threads as ADD material or not. For instance, some of it like this loperamide stuff leans more towards OD.

What I would enjoy more of is people referencing to books and articles (and in some cases bothering to go through the full text rather than just the abstract). There's a lot of threads like, "What will this random thing I made in chemsketch do?" rather than "Does the genetic and mammalian ancestry of the 5HT2 receptor give any insight as to possible functions in the brain?". I understand that some not everyone does research and sometimes requires explanations for things that many scientists may think are basic (we all did at some time), but some of the threads are pretty off the wall.

I also have problems with people power tripping, although I know at times I can be but I try to actively avoid it. Because someone is wrong does not necessarily mean you must berate them. This is a community for the advanced discussion of psychoactive drugs, not a frat party.
 
I think a lot of posters with advanced knowledge who want to discuss advanced topics have moved to "the other site", because the level of discussion and posts is much higher there and "the other site" doesn't have the restrictions imposed on Bluelight.

The nuisance of ADD already starts with posters not even being able to give a new thread a meaningful title without misspellings. Off hand I have two suggestions: 1) delete posts which don't have a meaningful title or which have misspellings in the title so people think first before posting, and 2) delete or move posts which are not offering information which are scientific or innovative in some way, or ask scientific questions, particularly posts which only ask for ways to consume trivial drugs. Such topics belong in BDD or OD.
 
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Allow threads that:
require medical knowledge to answer
deal with obscure or research chemicals beyond trivial questions
pharmacology and nueroscience related questions
Do NOT label it synthesis unless it is a FULL SYNTH! (IE no deleting lisdexamp conversion etc..)

Disallow threads about:
basic topics
am I fried threads
injecting threads
just plain stupid questions

And most definitely allow people who post false information to be berated and insulted, it is potentially very dangerous.
 
I would suggest that we make ADD a little more specific to topics of theoretical pharmacology/biochemistry, drug design / SAR discussion (random ideas for novel interesting chemicals) and general information about rare and esoteric compounds.

(1) Move questions of "I take compounds X, Y and Z; are there potentially hazardous interaction effects if I take compound M?" and other clinical pharm questions to Other Drugs. It seems like the singal/noise ratio and discussion quality/variety in OD has dropped in recent years. Perhaps throwing them the more basic topics of ADD will help boost their quality as well, help them move away from "how can I sn0rtz my XaNaX?" type questions.

(2) Enact an official moratorium on SWIMming and usage of wikipedia block quotes in ADD. We too have access to those tubes of the internet, so no need to vomit an entire 4 page wiki entry. Also, wikipedia is not exactly the world's most authoritative source when it comes to pharmacology--use actual references from journals if possible, not just wikipedia.

(3) Allow pasting/uploading of chemical structure images again. It is tough to talk about a chemical & its SAR if no one can easily visualize the chemical.

(4) Throw questions like: "I like drugs A, B and C, will I respond well to compound X?" to Other Drugs--see above.

(5) Suggest that people maintain a bit more technical of a writing style. Academic journal style jargon is in no way required, but a complete sentance with a little punctuation is nice. We're not in middle school, so there's no need to write like m3g4 l33t h4X0rz tXting 3ach oth3r.

Edit: One more.

(6) No 'chemical vomits.' I propose that if one has a chemical they want to discuss, they should have a little backstory as to why they are interested or some sort of rational statement concerning the chemical; can be as simple as only one line, but it will prevent posts like: "Are the following active: 1-(4-ethyl-2,5-dimethoxy-3-methyl)propyl-X, N-methyl-dihydrofuranyl-methoxy-Y, 1-acetoxy-N-(propan-2-ol)-3-methyl-Z, etc...?"

Alright, one more, just 'cause I'm feeling sarcastic:

(*) No more threads concerning activation of loperamide by P-glycoprotein inhibitors, coating in polyisocyanoacrylate-60 nanobeads (yes, exactly '60,' a friend of my brother's girlfriend said he tried with the '40' beads and it didn't work ;)) or crushing it up and injecting it into the folds of one's scrotum. Sometimes it's time to just let go.
 
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Yea if you really wanted to make it inclusive to more intelligent posts, you could have a requirement for each new thread having a "thesis" question that it asks. Whether it be more scientific information on a substance (such as SAR or toxicity) or a novel idea someone wants feedback on. The first post itself has to have a question which needs answering from some form of scientific thought. That might be too hard though.

It's hard to tighten up a forum like this without either cutting down on thread number in general or just excluding a lot of what people are discussing that may be blurring lines between forums.
 
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Improvements for ADD would be:

- As said by others before: Delete all the pointless, typo-soaked bullshit with meaningless titles and alike. Just close them as fast as possible. If this scares away some Bluelighters from ADD than this should considered as fully intended! If you want a higher SNR, simply allow only advanced threads.

- Implement a possibility to upload .pdfs and pictures alike on-site (i.e. not via imageshack etc.). This will practically guarantuee a sophisticated discussions. I speak out of personal experience here. If storage space is a limiting factor, set an upload limit of for example 2 MB per post.

- Every thread that deals with one or just a few certain compounds should mandatorily include a picture of those compounds. That should be made a rule IMO. A significant part of the discussions here is wasted with clearing out the question, rather than providing answers. ("uh...where is this methoxy again? next to this fancy ring or something? position 1? 2? what?" blaaahhh :\ )

- I vote for slightly less tight discussion-rules. YES, synth discussion should stay verboten, but sometimes even the slightest hint of some reagent resp. method is censored. Allow a bit more chemical details. For my own sake, I avoid purely pharmacological threads more and more, and I can imagine that I'm not the only one.

- I seriously think that it would advance the over-all level of discussion, if some topics were presented by the admins. Not just the usual abstract from a peer-review journal, paired with such a meaningful phrase like "Now what do you think about this?". I rather have in mind some dedicated topics, with precise questions (...open for discussion); everything already spiced with some background info on the topic and so on. Don't get me wrong: That is NOT the way how folks are discussing right now here; I think more about some kinda directed moderation, if you get my point. Imagine it like self-made short reviews on a certain topic, which are then discussed.

In this context I remember that somebody brought up the idea of a "journal club" some months ago. That would be a useful addition, too.

Peace! Murphy
 
I think largely it is hard to really direct the forum that meaningfully other than what is obvious, but Murphy's suggestions are the most dead on and practical to realize so I concur with his suggestions and thought process therein
 
nuke,

I would really appreciate a provision for easily drawing and posting Kekule molecular structures of various organic chemicals.

Thnx.
 
please please please can I cull the crap threads?

then we can use natural selection, if the thread is fit enough it survives here, if not it goes to basic drug discussion or gets euthanised here.
 
^who are you asking?! Just Nuke or the general public? For the latter case: Cut the crap!
 
Indeed. I'm always surprised when more threads aren't pulled. I've been reporting the sorts of threads we're talking about here but lately 99% of them are left untouched.
 
vecktor said:
please please please can I cull the crap threads?

then we can use natural selection, if the thread is fit enough it survives here, if not it goes to basic drug discussion or gets euthanised here.
Click to expand...

I would say yes. This forum has been frustrating the last few months with the amount of irrelevant posts.

F&B, we need you to chime in here...

The reported post section itself is kind of problematic in that reported posts from all forums go there so it's easy to miss some of them.
 
Riemann Zeta said:
Move questions of "I take compounds X, Y and Z; are there potentially hazardous interaction effects if I take compound M?" and other clinical pharm questions to Other Drugs. It seems like the singal/noise ratio and discussion quality/variety in OD has dropped in recent years. Perhaps throwing them the more basic topics of ADD will help boost their quality as well, help them move away from "how can I sn0rtz my XaNaX?" type questions.

(4) Throw questions like: "I like drugs A, B and C, will I respond well to compound X?" to Other Drugs--see above.
Click to expand...
Replace "move to Other Drugs" with "move to Basic Drug Discussion" and you have a deal. OD doesn't need those questions, and anyway, basic combinations question are for BDD. So please don't move any stupid shit into OD. I say either BDD or delete it.



Also, I'm with Ham. I've reported dozens of crap threads in the past month(s) and haven't really seen the mods nuke them (no pun intended).
 
I would recommend PMing us (or at least me) if you see anything really ridiculous. I am immediately alerted as to PMs.
 
heres an idea...

people come to ADD with non-advanced topics because they want an experts opinion. elsewhere on BL it can be difficult to get a straight intelligent answer. we all know this. perhaps you should sticky an "ASK ADD" thread so that people can ask their dumb questions and get smart answers and anyone here who wishes to contribute to it can, and those who wish to ignore can do that as well. then everyone is happy.
 
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