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June 14, 2006
Save FlashCoders Tshirts
So I was just called out by Tom Lee in his post A sad day on flashcoders. His post reverberates my sentitments when it comes to the state of my once beloved flashcoders. In April, I actually had some t-shirts made, and if I need to explain it, you simply do not get it.
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Yes, I went that far. And now that Tom outted me out, I suppose I might as well say my two cents, something I have done in the gotoAndSay podcast I do with Leif Wells, and something I just generally do when anyone is willing to listen. I'm such a chick :)
First, let it be known, I came to the flash community from Director. I am sure the Director community at one point was a wonderful, loving, supportive network of people. But as for my experience, it was very closed, very independant and well, any kinda resources for Director development were limited to perhaps 2 decent books and a couple of websites ( my beloved Director-Online, thank you Darrel Plant). Posting to a list ( Direct-L) and getting a good response was a rare occasion to celebrate as the list was like a ghosttown.
I started off as a lurker on the Flashcoders list. Not a bad thing, in my opinion. Most of it seemed over my head at the time and I just kept on to absorb what I could. Flashcoders became a great resource for me, chances are if i was stumbling with a problem, someone else had too, and if I searched the archives I would more often than not find what I was looking for. Granted, searching the archives has never been beautifully executed in the history that I have used Flashcoders, but heh, it was there, and there to be used.
I'm sure I posted my share of stupid questions. I'm sure I was quick on the draw in hitting the submit button. But I learned, and I learned what the line was, because often Branden Hall would post a " OT- the end" type of warning and the list be like hushed children in a library and back to being productive and focused.
Now, OT is pretty much an everyday occurance on Flashcoders with people posting responses back to questions/postings that are more Craiglist than Flashcoders. Seriously. That made me giggle re-reading that, but I can't think of a better description. I'm still on Flashcoders, I still try to help out and respond where I can but I'm going to be right up front for the reason that I more often than not - don't reply. I don't enjoy getting 600 emails a day in inbox where many of them just have LOL!, or HTH! or some other random web etiqutte one liner response that does nothing but fire off a " You've Got Mail" signal to however many thousands of people are subscribed.
I also don't enjoy the intellectual jousting that turns into a my wang is biggger than your wang, bring out the ruler to prove it, type of behaviour that seems to happen. Maybe I am particularily sensitive, since I don't have a wang, but it seems like I respond and actually put time and effort into my response and someone has to respond with the " you forgot this and this " and not in an " in addition to what someone said " tone, but in a " that last gold star is mine" kinda way. Fair enough. I think its great people expand on topics and add their thoughts/experience - but people forget, with emails, come tone. Its another form of communication - it will be interpreted. So when someone responds to a flashcoders post with a " right from the docs
After many discussions about this very topic, even one very late drunken debate at FITC with Ryan Matsikas ( www.chewtinfoil.com),Lanny McNie and Tony MacDonell - the conclusion was that you simply outgrow the list because at some point it no longer aids you in learning. I don't totally buy that either, there are still people posting interesting questions and challenges that stimulate great conversation. I just think people need to be told to shut it. Maybe not in those words, which is why i don't offer to moderate it...
So we created tshirts. We being I kinda came up with the idea and Ryan did the illustration. I have some if someone is interested in picking one up. But the only way to save it is to banish the OT which will hopefully make room for interesting questions/problems etc.
Posted by bitch at June 14, 2006 04:25 AM
Comments
Hi, I found my way here from a thread somewhere where you posted about how great svn and trac are... I've set up svn on my own iBook but I thought I'd ask you what service or how you're hosting it somewhere connected to the internet... bet you never thought you'd have to say RTFM on your own blog!
Which is a double-segue for my other reason for posting... developing a way to save flashcoders (and the world) is, in fact, the reason I need to set svn up for remote access. Myself and at least one other person so far are out to develop open source software to allow for democratically moderated mailing lists / forums... (it's not that exciting, posts would go to a random jury and be sent to the e-mail list only if meeting a custom-set threshhold of approval, though everything would be archived on the web site half). This I think is a much-needed option between unmoderated lists like flashcoders and moderated lists or, which is my real target, the one-way lists used by most large social movement and political organizations...
My secret plot is to get all People Who Give a Damn - http://pwgd.org/ - into one network, but the software will be free and available to and I hope used by groups like flashcoders.
Um, so I was asking how you've got your svn and trac set up and if you know any ace PHP coders with overactive social consciences.
http://bemweb.com/contact/
Posted by: Benjamin Melançon at June 14, 2006 01:05 PM
I love the t-shirt!! Can I buy one? You're so dead-on with the 'wang' stuff. Add 'wangsman' to the list along with 'newbie' and 'help vampire'. :)
Posted by: Tom Lee at June 14, 2006 03:22 PM
Sure can, i'll post and email me yer deets!
Posted by: stacey at June 14, 2006 03:31 PM
Sad to admit it, but on the rare occasion that my question can't get answered by a more specialized list (amfphp, ARP, etc) and the archives don't yield anything, I subscribe to FlashCoders, ask my question, listen for a few days, and unsubscribe again for the very reasons you're outlining here.
Another thing I've done is to create rules in my mail client to immediately delete any FlashCoders messages that aren't from :: fill in the blank with your favorite actionscript gurus :: Sure, you miss a few needles, but at least you eliminate the haystack...
Posted by: Jed Wood at June 14, 2006 03:33 PM
Funny, thanks. :)
Seems like all lists, forums, online conversations change. They're made up of people. A successful discussion attracts more people. Flashcoders isn't isolated and unique, no worries.
If there's a lot of work then the mix changes. New software changes the mix too. In some discussions you can see the conversation change with the academic school year.
If the overall content changes month by month, then I think the way each of us uses such discussions will likely change in response, too. I still use Flashcoders, but in a different way than a year or two ago. I guess most folks do the same, in trying to get the most value out of what the conversation actually is.
What do you do when you see a litterbug? There's a couple of ways to handle it. Making a t-shirt seems as good a way to me as any.... ;-
Posted by: John Dowdell at June 14, 2006 03:52 PM
Cheers to John, and Jed...I came in a bit late from Director since I waited for AS2 to get heavily into Flash so Flashcoders was a little too high bandwidth for me. Solution? I set up a gmail account just for Chattyfig. It's got plenty of bandwidth to hold the messages and makes for easy searching when necessary. Call me a leech, but frankly, I don't have time to parse all those messages. Jed could apply fancy filters in gmail as well.
Cheers,
Brentholio
Posted by: Brent Bonet at June 14, 2006 04:01 PM
By the way Stacey, it was good to see you on Flashcoders the other day. ;)
Posted by: Tom Lee at June 16, 2006 05:29 PM
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