It's the topic of the moment I guess.
Susan Rozmiarek
Yehuda
Naturelich
DoctorJ
I just mention what Mary (aka sodaklady) said in the comments on Susan's blog entry. BGG HAD blogs, and those who were so inclined did use them a lot when they were there. Your humble weblogger here included. When the Geek went all Forums on its community, the Geek Journals, as they were called, disappeared from the front page and were relegated to an obscure corner of the Geek Forums.
The motivations in using a weblog vs the Geek forums are easy to cite: more control, no inane traffic, ability to censor comments without idiotic invocation of nonexistent "freedom of speech" in that context. Yeah, sure there's freedom of speech. Go set up your own weblog and you can say any fucking thing you want. You post it on the Geek, and Dan Karp can delete your ass any time he damned well pleases because AlDerk say he can. (By the way, I like that I can say "fuck" on here without people screaming that the Geek is a "family site". As if your 10-year old is going to be researching the advantages of Age of Steam vs Railroad Tycoon. Besides, one post of Mr. Cranky is going to traumatize him more than any four-letter word will.)
Oh, and I don't have to put up with reading worthless comments on "cost per minute of enjoyment" computations on every other thread. Good lord, the idiocy that has permeated the Geek. I long for the days of Aaron Potter.
While I'm ranting, what's with the steady stream of irrelevant pics? Girls with game boxes where the games are a fraction of the picture and the girl isn't even playing the game? Does www.boardgamegeek.com now point to www.spielboy.com? What the fuck? Miss Panda's cleavage pic was a lot more relevant than the "kitten pics" and the "meeples in strange places" pics and the "look at my nice paint job" pics. At least she was playing the damned game!
I knew I had to give up Geekmod when I rejected 14 of the first 15 pics I looked at (mostly for being too big or irrelevant - pictures of computer games? Can I submit 20 pics of the World of Warcraft PC game under that game entry?) and all but one got accepted. At least when a pic I submit gets rejected it's for "redundancy" of my own pics.
The Geek is still the supreme database for boardgames, but as a community it's steadily descending into anarchy. Jim's creation of the BGGF was prescient. Thanks Jim.
10 comments:
"I long for the days of Aaron Potter."
That's crazy talk.
Given the choice between having Aaron Potter back on the geek and having a rabid dog chomp me in the balls...I'd have to ask how big the dog was.
I loved your rant, Rick. Well said. Except that I agree with Joe about Aaron Potter even if I don't have balls.
You've been quiet way too long and it's good to have your voice back online, and in such fine form!
Excellent post, Rick. These past few days have had me debating leaving the Geek entirely.
Hey, hey. Aaron was a lot of things, but one thing he wasn't was *stupid*. There's so much *stupid* on the Geek now that you lose a few points of I.Q. just reading the forums and Geeklists.
Good thing I stopped before I lost my ability to play Die Macher.
potterama > korba1
And you are so right about the pics. "Peach"'s Lost Cities pic is the prime example. I would say more about how the recommendation system is working for other BGG tables, but I'm saving that for my own blog.
What's "BGGF"?
I like all the choices I have now. I use BGG for research and comic relief. I read blogs for intellectual reading. And I write in my own glog when I need a creative outlet or a forum to rant.
It's all good.
"What's "BGGF"?"
It's a private group that I setup off of BGG because BGG decided private forums were not valuable. There, the invited few can chat with almost infinite signal-to-noise ratio. We can also use it as a place to hook up to play online games together.
Dude, I fully expect that my 10 year old will be researching the differences between AoS and RT in a couple of years, when she's 10.
But I'm not going to complain if someone drops an f-bomb - just if she does.
There are those that think Potterama has returned as another user.
Close but no cigar in my opinion, the new version is not as consistent in his arguments. Still somewhat annoying though :-)
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