I feel like I'm lacking

Raw and Random
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After looking back at some of my old threads/replies, I’ve now realized something.

When I had initially joined MessengerGeek, I had opinions to share and ideas to pass along. With my opinions, I’d be as reasonable and transparent as possible. With my ideas, I tried to push them into reality, with the mindset that nothing would get in the way. When people praised them, I’d be proud that I did the people a favor.

Fast forward, I feel like I’ve wasted my juices and burned out. While I still post here, the experience doesn’t feel the same. No further ideas can be generated with what we have and while I wouldn’t panic about not finding things to share my opinion on, that kind of made up the joy of watching this forum almost on end to read what other people had to say about each thread that was published.

I don’t even know if that old MSN webcam server I had planned to finish is even needed anymore, considering that WLM has webcam support. Who even knows about MSN Messenger’s webcam support. And even though implementing real accounts on the Escargot server IS possible with the right amount of effort, I almost know that a good portion of the dev team will probably rag on me for “doing the impossible,” and neglect the idea as if it were nothing in the first place, even after I’d bring up convincing arguments to the table.

And while the tone of this thread makes it sound like I’m feeling down, it is not that. In all honesty, it’s just boring staring at this forum waiting for something at the very least interesting to come up. Most of the time, it’s either filler, stuff I’m not interested in, or in certain cases, asinine opinions or statements that lead to unnecessary drama. Very rarely, is there anything that could drive those passionate juices of mine back up and pitch in the conversation.

Before you start worrying, I am not bored to the point where I need a break, but I feel very lacking and uninterested in what this forum has to offer. While I still enjoy some remnants of what people share here, I feel that it would take a very big miracle to fully get my spirits back up and make me the person I used to be: a mediator with a very big heart and mind.

I hope you enjoyed reading this thread, as much as I enjoyed typing this up to get my feelings out. :slight_smile:

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I fill the same in this part

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I feel it too. It is not often that topics appear that are of interest to me, so I just keep reading.

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The problem is that no one is coming up with ideas, or asking for help for a project or something like that that we can use to improve MSN.
Oh, also, another topic we could talk about is that: MSN/WLM. I think it lost that nostalgic feel that it had when I first discovered Escargot

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It’s not just you, really. Back in July I remember MessengerGeek to be a very decent place to follow the news regarding Escargot updates or useful MSN-related softwares finding.

Around the WLM 8 release it started to become a mess because of it’s own userbase. People were blaming all kinds of stuff on the kid Leo_historias some months ago, but it is interesting how they continued to make tons of useless threads about him even though he was already gone. Even before he was banned lots of people were already making their own random and disposable threads more than once a day. Leo_historias was the scapegoat because he was over the top and used to write in a funny way, but he was only a reflection of what the userbase had become, I believe. And, come on, he is a 8 year-old kid, I think. You would expect that from a kid. Now when teenagers or even adults are acting similar, you know there is something wrong.

I think the problem with addressing this issue is that it’s somewhat subjective. What I think to be “useless” might not be to someone else, and it goes on and on. I for one am not interested in other messengers besides MSN/WLM, but some are. So deleting all of these threads would probably not work because every time someone would find it to be a wrong move. And, well, you’d feel less freedom in MessengerGeek as time goes.

What I’d suggest (to @TReKiE , I think) is to somehow implement into the website a mechanism that allows us to be able to list threads by our personal prioritized categories order and to hide categories that are not interesting to us at all.

A quick sketch:

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Of course, if such mechanism were to be implemented, it would be more practical if it allowed us to get the threads ordered also by Date, and if it showed only the threads updated within the last month (with a button at the end of each category saying “show more”?), otherwise we’d need to be scrolling for a long time to get to see the next category’s threads.

Maybe re-shape the the current categories we have available and be more strict admin-wise if needed with the correct use of them would help too? Just my 2 cents.

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I get you. Ever since @Leo_Historias has come and gone, everyone started “trashing” the forum and eventually it just dumbed down, to say the least.

As for personalized categories, I am not personally seeking that kind of solution. What I would want is at least someone to step up with something that could rekindle my interest in making ideas reality, MSN-related or not. Just someone out of the shadows to make the forum more of a gathering where we can share our opinions and give our two cents on things we can do to improve MSN Messenger/Escargot and other things instead of a forum with some scummy and questionable users alongside the threads not being of any worth to read. Now that would be helpful to me. :slight_smile:

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True, I get you too. The thing is: seeing the forum full of interesting threads created by kind and productive people is something I’d also like to see, but in cases like this it’s usually either hard or impossible to come up with a change that is 100% to our liking. That’s because it often relies on measures that are not really democratic, or do not mantain the ambient open as it is. If we chose to go through this path, I think we’d end up shutting people’s mouths or having them straight-up kicked out.

I wouldn’t even call what I have suggested a solution, really. If it were to become one, only time (a lot of it, probably) would tell. Being able to order the forum’s threads by categories that I, personally, as a user, prioritize, would at least make me able to not have to look at a bunch of stuff that I do not find to be interesting. My experience would be a more pleasent one without affecting other users’ experience at all. I believe it would save people’s time, to say the least.

Now, as I said, it is not a definitive solution because a social environment relies on people. How they act and what they say. The way I see to be able to address this as a complement to such mechanism (and still not be a complete solution), without going through drastic measures (as deleting everything, banning everyone) is to organize people’s discussions in a strict way.

Write guidelines to each category and remove threads that do not follow them, or move them to categories that fit them more. Suspend or kick people that insist on making threads in wrong categories (specially the more important, development-related ones). I don’t even need to say that users that show bad conduct such as constantly calling names should receive warnings up to getting kicked out. This would all be admin-wise. Since JK is the only one afaik, I don’t know how doable it would be because it would rely on his free time (being able to report users’ posts would probably make it easier for him to spot problematic users). So having the mechanism I described, at least, would be a first step without the need of admin intervention. :smiley:

In the end, we can never really solve this problem without people - the userbase - voluntarily willing to behave in the way we find to be productive. We can’t really force it on them, but we can encourage it. My categories suggestion is just to try to help us to get a little closer to having a more pleasent time here, without changing other people’s experience on the forum to our liking, but only our own :smile:

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Well, I know that there is no definite solution to this problem. Not really counting on it, either. All I hope is for time to pass and that right person will get my spirits back up (and hopefully I can find something of topic that would be useful to bring up). I also agree with everything else you said.

And just a note, @TReKiE is the only active mod on this forum. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Let’s hope it happens. There’re good and capable people everywhere, including in this forum. We’ll see your spirits back up with time! :blush:

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