The Others

[Unit]

It seems the "community" is already fractured, the way it often does on tv shows like "Lost" or some such thing. Some people will follow the new leader JimM to the island of Disqus, and others, a hodgepodge of renegades that don't agree on anything will try to hang on to the old camp site, building fires now and then, and dreaming about a new vessel or some time travel machine that can magically take us back to the good old days....

[JonIrenicus]

Originally Posted by Unit

It seems the "community" is already fractured, the way it often does on tv shows like "Lost" or some such thing. Some people will follow the new leader JimM to the island of Disqus, and others, a hodgepodge of renegades that don't agree on anything will try to hang on to the old camp site, building fires now and then, and dreaming about a new vessel or some time travel machine that can magically take us back to the good old days....

I don't like the new commenting switch, but I won't boycott the new comments section.

[Unit]

Originally Posted by JonIrenicus

I don't like the new commenting switch, but I won't boycott the new comments section.

No problem.

[Ocean]

Originally Posted by Unit

It seems the "community" is already fractured, the way it often does on tv shows like "Lost" or some such thing. Some people will follow the new leader JimM to the island of Disqus, and others, a hodgepodge of renegades that don't agree on anything will try to hang on to the old camp site, building fires now and then, and dreaming about a new vessel or some time travel machine that can magically take us back to the good old days....

I tend to think of it as a natural way of sorting out commenters. There's a certain kind of commenting, which would require minimal adjustment to the disqus format: people who tend to write shorter comments, one at a time without following conversations much, don't interact with others in the free content threads, and rarely if ever, participate in the more informal, social ways of interacting (sharing music or other media, personal anecdotes and the like). Those who are short messengers, cheer leaders or brief critics, passing short lines, will naturally migrate to disqus.

And then there's the rest of us, the verbose and the obstinate debaters, those who like to include articles, quotes and graphs to support their points. Those who are capable of writing short essays, or just type away their stream of consciousness. Those who can keep the same topic going for days or weeks. Those who like to respond to five different people on variations of the same general topic. Those who like to scan comments to know which ones have been written since the last time we visited. Etc, etc, etc.

The latter will decant here, perhaps try a few times over there until it just gets too tiresome, too boring, too uninteresting to continue. It's a natural process.

[Unit]

Originally Posted by Ocean

I tend to think of it as a natural way of sorting out commenters. There's a certain kind of commenting, which would require minimal adjustment to the disqus format: people who tend to write shorter comments, one at a time without following conversations much, don't interact with others in the free content threads, and rarely if ever, participate in the more informal, social ways of interacting (sharing music or other media, personal anecdotes and the like). Those who are short messengers, cheer leaders or brief critics, passing short lines, will naturally migrate to disqus.

And then there's the rest of us, the verbose and the obstinate debaters, those who like to include articles, quotes and graphs to support their points. Those who are capable of writing short essays, or just type away their stream of consciousness. Those who can keep the same topic going for days or weeks. Those who like to respond to five different people on variations of the same general topic. Those who like to scan comments to know which ones have been written since the last time we visited. Etc, etc, etc.

The latter will decant here, perhaps try a few times over there until it just gets too tiresome, too boring, too uninteresting to continue. It's a natural process.

I wonder about the new legal forms that the Internet era might bring. For instance, say you build a public forum, free-access and all that, at what point do the participants acquire a share of the property rights? Take Facebook. What if tomorrow Zuckerberg pulls the plug: will there be legal consequences? Sure it's his site, he owns it. But can he really do whatever he wants with it? I don't know.

[Ocean]

Originally Posted by Unit

I wonder about the new legal forms that the Internet era might bring. For instance, say you build a public forum, free-access and all that, at what point do the participants acquire a share of the property rights? Take Facebook. What if tomorrow Zuckerberg pulls the plug: will there be legal consequences? Sure it's his site, he owns it. But can he really do whatever he wants with it? I don't know.

I don't know about either, and I don't think I would be all that interested in knowing or entertaining other than for pure curiosity. What would property rights mean?

Those who are more familiar with these issues should comment. For me this is a place you go to and find other people to talk to. If the place closes down, and moves to another locale, well, people can go to the new, smaller and more uncomfortable place or look for other places.

As for the conversations that took place, say, if those were recorded, they could be recoverable, but if not they would be lost, right? If this forum is eliminated, I don't know what would happen to the old comments, but they would be either lost or transferred to some form of archive. I'm not sure what we would do with them anyhow.

[Unit]

Originally Posted by Ocean

I don't know about either, and I don't think I would be all that interested in knowing or entertaining other than for pure curiosity. What would property rights mean?

Those who are more familiar with these issues should comment. For me this is a place you go to and find other people to talk to. If the place closes down, and moves to another locale, well, people can go to the new, smaller and more uncomfortable place or look for other places.

As for the conversations that took place, say, if those were recorded, they could be recoverable, but if not they would be lost, right? If this forum is eliminated, I don't know what would happen to the old comments, but they would be either lost or transferred to some form of archive. I'm not sure what we would do with them anyhow.

In some law systems there's something called "usucaption"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usucaption

In practice if you are granted the use of a space for more than say 17 years then the owner can lose that property.

I could envision a judge forcing Zuckerberg to make arrangements to sell fb rather than simply shutting it down. Likewise if Wordpress would erase all the content on all of its blogs. I don't think that would go down too well.

[badhatharry]

Originally Posted by Unit

Likewise if Wordpress would erase all the content on all of its blogs. I don't think that would go down too well.

yeah, that would suck. I just put both of my websites on Wordpress.