- Messages
- 6,216
- Reaction score
- 1,889
With the closure of the Random Thought thread, I think we should decide on a way to shoot the breeze with fellow members. Now I know what you guys are going to say, "Well you could just *insert method of instant messaging here* with your buddies", but the fact is, even with most of the predominant posters, there aren't that many people that use the same service for instant messaging, and the majority don't even use a single one.
What I liked about the Random Thought thread was how you could discuss practically anything, including things that wouldn't last past three posts before becoming dead and would just clutter the General Discussion forum with pretty much unnecessary topics, and it would just simply wash over to a new subject once people were done discussing a specific thing. There are plenty of people here that brought up news or bits of their personal life that they felt like sharing with other users in order to talk about it, but would find it more awkward to do by instant messaging (especially since that deletes itself every so often).
Now I'm sure that some of you are going to say, "but isn't that what a chatbox is for?", well yes, but you can only see what is on a chatbox if it's been posted within fifteen or so minutes of you getting on it, so if you miss a conversation that is still going on you're probably going to have a hard time following it. Now you could always send someone Visitor Messages if you want to discuss something with someone else, but that only works in a two-way conversation, if you want to discuss things in a group you have to go somewhere for that in order to discuss, so you end up having to "plan" a meeting at a specific date, time, place, etc. in order to meet up together. Doing something like that can feel a bit awkward especially since usually what you wanted to talk about wasn't "meeting-worthy", but was still on your mind and wanted to discuss with a random person you know. That's what was great about the Random Thought thread, you could post what you were thinking about and come back at another time to see what someone else thought about it, plus the fact that SRD shows what's been recently posted allowed you to see if someone else posted (and possibly about what you were saying). Say you made a picture or something else or wanted to share a video, odds are (especially with the videos part) you aren't going to give it a thread just for that, so what do you do? You take it to where you want to discuss it in a general topic area, and the thought thread was exactly that, an area to chat with friends. Besides, the theme of the General Discussion forum is "share interests & have a laugh.", without the Random Thought thread it's pretty much the General News forum where "Post some news article you found" describes what the forum is.
"Oh, so you're justifying that everything and anything that was in the Random Thought thread was ok?" No, we did some stupid things in it, stuff that was clearly just spam when it had no relevance to anything and was beyond ridiculous to the point that it wasn't funny due to it's overuse, you all know exactly what I mean, and that's kind of what spoiled the thread, the spamming and useless crud. It's ok to do something loony just to be funny, but it was waaaaaaaaay out of control what was going on. I think if we could get some [more strict] rules to what is ok [givens like don't spam, no <6 word posts, etc.] and not ok [like, oh wait I already suggested what . . . . ] it would be nice if we could have a new social thread we could use that would be, in essence, a spirtiual successor to the Random Thought thread (with a few, erm, improvements made) for us to discuss in.
What I liked about the Random Thought thread was how you could discuss practically anything, including things that wouldn't last past three posts before becoming dead and would just clutter the General Discussion forum with pretty much unnecessary topics, and it would just simply wash over to a new subject once people were done discussing a specific thing. There are plenty of people here that brought up news or bits of their personal life that they felt like sharing with other users in order to talk about it, but would find it more awkward to do by instant messaging (especially since that deletes itself every so often).
Now I'm sure that some of you are going to say, "but isn't that what a chatbox is for?", well yes, but you can only see what is on a chatbox if it's been posted within fifteen or so minutes of you getting on it, so if you miss a conversation that is still going on you're probably going to have a hard time following it. Now you could always send someone Visitor Messages if you want to discuss something with someone else, but that only works in a two-way conversation, if you want to discuss things in a group you have to go somewhere for that in order to discuss, so you end up having to "plan" a meeting at a specific date, time, place, etc. in order to meet up together. Doing something like that can feel a bit awkward especially since usually what you wanted to talk about wasn't "meeting-worthy", but was still on your mind and wanted to discuss with a random person you know. That's what was great about the Random Thought thread, you could post what you were thinking about and come back at another time to see what someone else thought about it, plus the fact that SRD shows what's been recently posted allowed you to see if someone else posted (and possibly about what you were saying). Say you made a picture or something else or wanted to share a video, odds are (especially with the videos part) you aren't going to give it a thread just for that, so what do you do? You take it to where you want to discuss it in a general topic area, and the thought thread was exactly that, an area to chat with friends. Besides, the theme of the General Discussion forum is "share interests & have a laugh.", without the Random Thought thread it's pretty much the General News forum where "Post some news article you found" describes what the forum is.
"Oh, so you're justifying that everything and anything that was in the Random Thought thread was ok?" No, we did some stupid things in it, stuff that was clearly just spam when it had no relevance to anything and was beyond ridiculous to the point that it wasn't funny due to it's overuse, you all know exactly what I mean, and that's kind of what spoiled the thread, the spamming and useless crud. It's ok to do something loony just to be funny, but it was waaaaaaaaay out of control what was going on. I think if we could get some [more strict] rules to what is ok [givens like don't spam, no <6 word posts, etc.] and not ok [like, oh wait I already suggested what . . . . ] it would be nice if we could have a new social thread we could use that would be, in essence, a spirtiual successor to the Random Thought thread (with a few, erm, improvements made) for us to discuss in.
Last edited:
