Would it be reasonable for the aforementioned long conversations between 2-3 people to be taken to e-mail or IM or something when they start to make long blank white spaces on the Board? Or, at least wrap the conversation back to a new line from the original post to limit the horizontal stretching and resulting blank whiteness?

If nothing else, is there maybe a setting that would limit the stretching?

~Neshomeh

Communities change over time. Sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. There are reasons that the Board doesn't have those large longspanning conversations anymore.

The board isn't equipped for this sort of numbers. Look through the last few pages. At any given point, an extremely large portion of the threads are newbies posting a thread to say hi. Or posting another new badfic thread. There isn't much room for actual discussion or conversation or games in all that with how we are currently organized.

The PPC is unique. Or at least, it was. We can't have those sort of conversations due to how many newbies are around that have no idea what's going on or what it'd be about. We can't get them involved before another pack shows up! There's no time or space for a round of Fill the Plotholes, or a seasonally appropriate fight with water or snow or mud.

Beyond that, most of them aren't used to operating with something that allows for multi-linear multi-person conversations. How are we supposed to have any long conversations about anything when there's so many new people around? We don't know them. They don't know most PPC stuff. Fandoms in common are becoming increasingly rarer.

A nice long discussion about LotR? Barely any LotR fans around anymore. The first part of the Hobbit is going to likely be in theaters by the end of this year. There's been a vast flow of articles, trailers, and shots from the filming. None of this has been on the board.

A long conversation about the PPC? How are they supposed to take part? So many of them are so green they are still asking stuff that would be answered if read the original series, or even the newbie stuff on the wiki.

I would love to see actual discussion on the board, but there's so much that we can't really do anymore because there's not the necessary base of knowledge.

It also prevents those long fun things, too.

Snowball fight? Well, that's not going to last very long. It'll drop off the front page within a couple days because of newbies wandering in.

Shipfic fest? The last one didn't last very long either, between the aforementioned newbie thread swarm that seems to be a constant these days, and the newbies being reluctant to take part.

Traditions can only be maintained when there is a sizeable enough group to continue it and that know about it. You can't argue about things no longer happening when people barely know each other or know about things that are in theory held in common.

The PPC's current system is obsolete. We cannot have this many people and have it be rules and order minimal and be on a single board like this, but still expect everything to go on perfectly fine, because things are not actually going on perfectly fine as it is.

I just spent the last few hours looking through the last several pages of the board. The criticisms you had about the board as it is now are very minute. They don't address the real problem. If we don't make some changes, rehaul where we have the PPC set up and how the writer side of it is handled, this will be a shell of a fictional organization without a good community of writers and readers behind it.

Things need to change. Whether it needs to be with actual rules and order, or a new board, or even both, I don't know, but looking back and thinking to Ye Golden Days- any of ours- and complaining how it should return to that will not fix the problems.

July, now with 100% less bee guns, but still grumpy because this distracted her from finishing the survey up for this year, and now she is going to have to add even more questions to it and remove the starfish.

I'm somewhat amused that I'm one of the few people making the long conversations, haha~
I knew I rambled, but... XD

It seems slightly... depressing, I guess, to see that the board is slow compared to what it apparently used to be like.
I hope the board picks up again, despite having never known what it was like back when it was really busy.
...I might try and recruit people to the cause, maybe. I know I'm not the only person I know IRL who hates badfics.

I don't mean to hog the entire board! :c I need to stop being so Newbie Ranger Excitement Pink-y and talk a lot less.

...It does seem like this board is slowly dying. :c

Okay. Before I being in earnest, let me apologize in advance if any part of the following post seems overly confrontational or aggressive. My intention isn't to pick a fight; I just want to air my reaction to some of the things in your post.

Regarding posts: I believe that there are still circumstances that require the guidelines regarding new threads. The Board may not move as fast as it did in the past, but you have to realize that many people are not checking the Board every day, or possibly even every few days. If someone in their well-intentioned naiveté puts up a great deal of new threads, those PPCers who swing by on an irregular basis might miss something. New missions or announcements can get knocked down the page by repetitive or redundant threads - out of sight, out of mind.

I'd also like to think that we're not "telling people off." We're not insulting or haranguing people who create a lot of new threads; we're just giving them a little nudge, is all.

Finally, what really got me steamed was the little comment about you "still having some hope for the PPC despite the fact that [your] wife says it's useless." This addition is uncalled for, unnecessary, and a little insulting. Framing it as being someone else's opinion doesn't help. By saying that you still "have hope," you portray the PPC as something in decline, a group that has fallen out of a Golden Age. The statement suggests that those in the PPC now don't compare to those writers who have already come and gone. Criticize if you must, but don't wound us with backhanded praise.

PC

I hope you're right about the board reviving; I love PPC fiction as a rule, even if some of the fics reviewed make me want to gouge out my eyes with a rusty spork.