Getting rid of the water cooler.

Water Cooler
#41

Same for me. I don’t have a desire/energy to go to other forums. Don’t kill WC. Please

#42

Part of the issue is that we don’t really have much idea of what we want in the WC.

Investments and careers stuff is elsewhere.

So what are the good discussions that happen here: I can think of a few, but what else

im visiting city X, what’s good to do??

lets meet up for a beer on Friday in NY

what restaurants are good.

Some of the relationships threads are fun but they tend to get mysogynistic fast

music I’m listening to was interesting

How do I get excel to do X

what else??

#43

The Power of Oneness

#44

One of hte problems is that the general forum used to have investments, career, general, some WC so it was a fun and active place to post. Now, you have to click between each forum and each is inhabited by less qualified people. IE, none of hte people in careers have one. So I’m saying eliminate WC, maybe move careers and investments back together under general forum and have some moderation.

#45

I support you doing that, maybe AF facilitiates migration. Everyone wins.

#46

“No fap” and “power of oneness” come to mind.

In all seriousness, I like(d) Ohai’s Wierd Post of the Day, but he doesn’t seem to do that very much.

I like all the political banter and current events. Also enjoy talking about sports.

I’ll add more as I think of them.

#47

Water Cooler should be for everything outside of Exams, Careers, & Investments. Easy. Random stuff.

#48

I get Reddit at work, so I’m down. WC is mostly why I come to AF since obtaining the charter.

#49

So SRK’s abs is fair game.

#50

Why not? Discretion is needed, just as you have advised. I think you are doing a great job bchad. Multiple spammed threads of SRK within a short period of time would be questioned. I echo the call for the up/down vote.

#51

I’m ok with it, though would probably skip reading those threads.

It’s just that people seem so upset with “low quality stuff” that I’m trying to get a sense of where people want to draw the line. Or maybe people just want to vent.

I do think up/down voting on posts/threads would be helpful. Like/dislike/(spam or rules-breaking) buttons would be good.

#52

up/down vote ftw

#53

do you really not get suspicious when a new guy joins and starts copy pasting about abs, r@ping women is ok, and other bs?

#54

Yeah, I mean I know I’ve been all over the place the last few days. More moderation needed to clean up spam and some oversight of the trolling, to basically saying we should have no rules in the WC and just let nature take its course.

Without additional functionality, which seems clear we’re not getting any time soon, I think the best bet is to go back to being 99% hands off. We, as a community, need to do a better job of ignoring the spammers or take their threads off course and make them our own.

In short, we (myself very much included) need to stop complaining and put this drama behind us. Leave our little leper colony alone and see if we can take care of ourselves. If spamming gets so bad that we start complaining again, it’ll be our fault for feeding the trolls (spammers).

I agree we need more threads per day. But that’s going to mean some seemingly stupid crap. I may post something like “How often do you go commando to work?” just to get a whacky conversation started. I don’t think we should define what a “good” thread looks like in the WC. If CvM made any contribution, it was that you never can tell what threads are going to blow up.

#55

That abs thread was hilarious and created a nice little meme for our WC community. We don’t want to restrict that sort of creativity before it gets a chance to bloom. (Crediting bchad there). Truly offensive stuff is a no-brainer to delete.

I agree that policy should be mostly hands off. If a flame war starts, then that’s when mods should step in to snuff it out.

#56

CvM and Gabe were just flaming others way too much at the end. Even if provoked, there are better ways to respond.

rahul roy may be the ultimate subtle troll, but we as a community should be able to handle those kind in a better way.

#57

The current rules are fine.

Just don’t feed the trolls. Don’t like the topic, don’t post.

#58

so to be clear… your opinion is 1) upgrade the entire forum with all these new functions or 2) let it all run wild - racism, defamation, an entire cesspoll of garbage?

if those were the only 2 options, honestly I’d rather just kill WC

#59

I’ve been on AF since enrolling back in '04. At this point the water closet is and has been the only reason I come to AF, though I hardly matter. I feel like the biggest contributor to the current state of things is this position of victimhood that everyone seems to have. When did everyone become a bunch of pu$$ies. Has it always been this way? Have I turned into my father? Fvck me.

Off Topic was shut down in 2009 only to come back as WC because there has to be an outlet for this.

The biggest thing, I think, would be for everyone to get over themselves and their delicate sensibilites.

#60

This is what a group of others did when they close Off Topic back in the day. That became an incestuous charlie foxtrot. That group is still around: http://www.fnaag.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=2