Citizens On Patrol Thread...forum rules you would like to see - Page 5

Let us count the 2010 n00bs of the Mens Clothing forum:

1. The Emergency Questioners. They search on Google. They click a link that takes them to SF. They ask their emergency question: "Help! Getting married, getting hired, getting sentenced to Federal pen, what do I wear?" These are genuine questions, with a bit of honest ingorance and often laziness. It is nice to be nice to them, but few if any of them will stick around to add interesting content of their own.

2. The Spammers. They are many, they are more, and their technique is becoming more conversational..often among themselves in groups. Not sure what can be done about this, but I have seen many a sub-200 post member treat such threads as genuine until they realize they've been duped.

3. Acrimonious Socks. Nothing new about these.

4. Tiresome Threadstarters. Every thought in head? A thread. Perhaps five, ten, twenty a day. "Use the search, n00b!" the cry goes out, a cry itself mistaken.

I admit that I have snarked all four categories above, much more in the past than now. I don't believe that doing so is the same as being unfriendly to n00bs, although it is not kind to the Emergency Questioners.

5. Real n00bs. Maybe they've lurked. Maybe they ask n00by questions. Usually, they stand in stark contrast to the first four categories because this category tends not to begin their posting activities by starting new threads of their own.

Maybe I've missed a few.

But what are we trying to accomplish? I think part of the root issue is that the critical mass of information on the site is such that noobs can lurk for a very long time without ever becoming active participants (just look at my join date and post count). If they have any questions, they can just search (and find) the answers, so what leads them to post and actually participate? I think the encouragement for noobs to search is actually counter-productive, because it discourages them from actually becoming part of the community. What we have is the classic social club problem - what we want are more highly knowledgable posters, but we don't want to do the hard work of educating/developing posters to that level. It's a little bit like my golf club, where we want more low-handicappers to join so that we can have more competitive events, but we don't really want mid-handicappers who just clog the course up on the weekends - but guess what: we were all mid-handicappers at some point in our lives.

I think that if you want to "clean up the forum" then you need to get rid of the most obvious offenders. That is, if you want to limit misogyny then get rid of the soft porn threads. The lowest common denominator becomes the defacto standard so it's going to be tough to eliminate overtly sexual posts/threads if the forum maintains multiple threads dedicated to giving people boners.

This is the biggest problem with MC (and streetwear to a smaller extent). We already have such a large database of information that there really isn't much need for ANY new threads to be made in these forums. The reason senior members stop posting in them is because you can only answer interview attire questions so many times before it gets tiresome. I don't think there is a solution to this problem.

Ok, let me throw in a potentially controversial hypothesis:
MC is getting boring because everybody who is left is beginning to think the same.
Those that do not either left or are too friendly to fire up a debate. It has nothing to do with DT or CE.

Notice, how people complain that MC's quality started to decline about a year ago. FNB was banned shortly thereafter. Coincidence?
Now, I'm not saying that FNB carried the MC forum, but everybody loved to hate him, and it created some real energy in those MC threads. And regardless what people may think of his taste in clothing or debate, he had experience in bespoke, so losing him was a loss of experience as well as of his..uh.. energy.
Nowadays, even big-timer threads are often along these lines:

"here is my new windowpane" - "looks great" - "yup" - "+1" - "what cloth is this?" - "sadly no longer made, got the last bale" - "hmm, too bad" - "yup" - "+1"

riveting.
Forums live off controversies and diverse opinions (remember the 'sartorial myths' thread?).
When these don't exist, then even if new members are groomed to take over, they still just follow group-think, without contributing their own ideas. With Manton now quasi-gone, there is yet another source of energy and debate missing. While he has his rules, he is also willing to question his practices and those of 'friendly' members, and can back up his opinions as well. This is the kind of member that drives these discussions; when everybody basically agrees or is too friendly to speak up, they quickly grow stale.

So, what I'm trying to say is that the quality of MC has to do with experience, but also with personality (and not much with DT). One single member in or out can make a big difference.

Ok, enough rambling, discuss.

As is well known, I had my issues with FNB. But I think it is absurd to say that his departure in any way harmed MC. First, the main reason for MC's decline was that we were all "talked out" on the subject years before. All that predated FNB's banning by, literally, years. Second, his posts were mostly silly. You could break them down into a small number of categories. 1) Endless "essays" intended to be profound but that made no sense. 2) Stupid class-bass rantings (e.g., hopsack is for garbagemen) with no grounding in tradition or reality. 3) Passive-aggressive trolling. Yes, he stirred things up but not in a good way. He just posted a lot of stupid crap that was so evidently stupid, people couldn't help but pile on.

I suppose tastes have homogeonized somewhat on MC; actually, I am not sure that is even true. Look at WYWN, which seems to me to be all over map, moreso than ever. However, there is a cadre of styles/traits that a number of established members share which gets called "groupthink" by those who don't like it. Its influence is overstated though. If the "groupthink" were so widely accepted, WYWN would look a lot different than it does (better, IMO).

Your analogy is flawed. There is a difference between participating in a discussion and asking for personal help questions, which there are already numerous stickies for. For example, discussing different models of red wing boots and their fits is fine and there is a dedicated thread for that; as opposed to noobs starting threads like which red wings should I buy or which would look good on me.

Who was FNB?

may be I should start a new thread

Manton, just mentioning his name got you to post here, so you see the power of a polaizing figure? If nothing else, even pointless debate helps to bridge the time until something real happens. Are the core members of WAYW really the core members of MC? I'm not sure. So your thesis is that everything that could be talked about has been talked about? That is quite depressing as the solution to this problem would be to delete the archives of MC and start from scratch. (Admittedly, this would solve the 'do a search, noob' problem)

Not quite but close.

This forum started in 2002 and AA started in 2003. They both were somewhat slow to get going. From about 2004-2006/7, AA was really full of interesting stuff. Then its focus changed, partly as the core membership got "talked out." Much of the discussion moved here. I agree with vox/corbera that in the last (say) three years very few new members with lots of experience in classic clothes have shown up. Some of the most prolific new(er) members, such as kwilk and Pio, never talk about clothes at all. So, given that the real "sartorialists" left on the site tend to be people who have been here for years, it's inevitable that we all got "talked out." It takes something new and extraordinary to get the conversation really humming again. When somebody goes on a trip or makes an unusual commission, we all get interested. But we don't tend to have the same energy any more about discussing topics that most of us hashed out at great length four years ago.

^^^ This is exactly right. Streetwear doesn't have quite the same fatigue issues as it follows trends more closely. Men's clothing is more of an encylopedia than a discussion board. It's tough for something "extraordinary" to happen to classical clothing. If it really is timeless, then there is a finite amount of topics that can be discussed.

I do enjoy reading Pio's poasts in CE and DT.

I miss Socal's presence and some others.