Home of the Snarkmaiden

Primarily, bringing some of our conversation time back over to Rasseff, but all going at once. Start threads, play together, hell, cross post what we're sticking in LJ for starters, and reify the culture of rewarding interesting conversation and starving political wanking. RASFF has been being Greshammed for a while, now, and it would be good to get it back to being a sustainably interesting place to go have a conversation again. It used to be my local, what I could drop in and out of at will, and it would be nice if it could be that again.

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I never left rasff, but I'd be pleased to help.

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davidschroth.livejournal.com

that you mention, by name, the person who Greshammed MnStf's Natter.

Not that I have anything useful to say on your proposal.

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Oh, sure you do (have something useful to say). You can tell me aye or nay as to whether you'd be willing and able to come play on rasseff for a while to up the ratio of fun and house-trained yuman beans to raving psycho libertarian loonies. (And I hasten to add that yes, I know, not all libertarians are of the raving psycho loony variety, but there are lots who are.)

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annafdd.livejournal.com

I've never left, and I'm even posting, so count on me.

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thatwordgrrl.livejournal.com

Years ago, Himself got stuck on a panel about privitization of space. He was sitting between Joel Rosenberg and Neil Schulman when they damn near got into a fistfight.

It was...uhhmmmm...entertaining.

Yeah, that's the word.

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I dip in and out, but I rarely have much to say and I've never been really recognised as a regular as such.

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filkerdave.livejournal.com

Hey, *I* recognize you as a regular!

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Only because you recognise me from elsewhere, I reckon. If I were to never post to rasseff again I can't imagine anyone within the next 10 years saying "Hey, whatever happened to Max?". That's how I'd qualify a regular within an online social group.

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filkerdave.livejournal.com

Actually, I recognized you here because of RASFF.

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minnehaha.livejournal.com

OK, OK. I could be up for re-kill-filing a lot of people. If nothing else it will amuse me.

When are we going? (Please let it be after Sunday.)

K.

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When are we going?

~~Real Soon.~~ Haven't figured out a whether yet, so when is definitely up in the air. But after Sunday sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

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beamjockey.livejournal.com

I can't bring myself to killfile people. I can't give up on the possibility, however faint, that a person may say something worthwhile in the future. It may be my Christianity... gotta believe that repentance and redemption are always possible.

(As an engineering decision, risking that one will miss .1% worthwhile thoughts when discarding 99.9% useless ones, killfiling makes sense.)

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Okay, you're a good Christian and a bad Engineer, on that choice. It's your choice, tho. Not everyone needs killfiles. I've never actively used them, really, since I can generally just not read posts by people I don't want to be reading, and would still get traces of their stuff captured in quoted segments in the replies of folks I *do* read, even if I did use killfiles. Killfiles ~~like motorcycle helmets~~ are for those who need them.

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I think we shouldn't wait until June; there's what looks like a fair amount of momentum right now. OTH, I can post updates on the state of the campaign here. And possibly we could find someone with sufficient wizardry to get you set up with a newsfeed and reader before then, out your way. Isn't Graydon back out your way? I feel certain that the assembled genius of RASFF in exile plus sundry LJ fandom must be able to do something for you if you are interested and just ask.

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spacecrab.livejournal.com

Jo, do you use either nn, tin, or trn? There's a page here (http://www.faqs.org/docs/linux_network/x-087-2-newsreaders.html) that tells where the configuration files are for each of those.

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filkerdave.livejournal.com

I'm still there, so count me in!

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pecunium.livejournal.com

I guess I can do the diddling required to restart a newsfeed, so when I get home, I'll try jumping in.

TK

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dd-b.livejournal.com

I'm still there. But then, I'm willing enough to talk politics that some people may view me as part of the problem, rather than as a potential part of the solution.

Well, find something more interesting to talk about and you can at least distract me. Or get people not to start political threads; I don't believe I *start* them, I just join in.

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It is not going to be possible to stop people from starting political threads or diverting existing threads in political directions. (And yes, DDB, I'm afraid that I do see you as more part of the problem than the solution.) One thing you could do is take a "Nicoll Pledge" such as was seen in rasfw once upon a time -- no more than n political posts a day, with n fairly small.

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supergee.livejournal.com

Deal me in.

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bohemiancoast.livejournal.com

possibly. I need to find a newsreader. give me a day.

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Squeeeee!

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Oh, gawd... I hesitate because it's so hard for me not to be political these days. I can't see myself being able to avoid making things worse.

I ain't looked in on RASFF but one or two times in the last few years. I'm afraid I've totally got my RASFF freak off.

Sigh... I'll promise to look in on things and crack-wise a couple of times, if I can, in response to others involved in the invasion. It's hard for me to imagine not getting political on my own, though. About the only way I could do it would be to read for a few days and fill to the brim my kill-file before I even think about posting anything.

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Well, I do *not* want you to do anything that will make you crazy. The whole point of this exercise, if there is one, is to restore some of the rough-and-tumble Comedy Intellectual silliness to the old 'hood, and to have some fun doing it. We are the Comedy Intellectual Front, the United War Monkeys of Balance and Moderation. If your head isn't there, do not sweat it, old comrade.

Or, possibly, innoculate yourself with the likes of fafblog and Rude Pundit and The Poor Man so that you can say something brilliant and funny and political and then move on. Like I say, to me it ain't the politics, it's the light-sucking singularity of the politics, that is the problem.

Anyway, you'll be welcomed and sqeeee-ed at if you show up, and no blame if you don't.

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It's a deal.

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Heh. Come to think of it... I seem to recall a previous invasion of RASFF at some distant time and place...

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Return of the Killer Bontlings! We have met the enemy, and all your base are belong to us! Yesssss!!!!

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samildanach.livejournal.com

I have little idea what the "old RASSF" is, but I dip in and out of the current RASSF as I have time. So throw me a bone here -- what are approximate dates between which the Google archive might best represent the spirit of old RASSF?

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I'd say that for me the peak of rasff as a community was in the range of 1998-2001, culminating in my first trip to Minicon. You might also look for individual people; I'd suggest Jo Walton, Graydon Saunders, and Ray Radlein as places to start.

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I think 911 did a lot for the downfall of rassf. I don't think it was nearly as political beforehand.

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Yes, I think several people mark the fall as dating to 9/11. Being on the group then made the events of that day much more intimate, somehow. The first I knew that something was happening was when I fired up my newsreader that morning and started seeing similar reports of flame and explosions from people in both New York and DC area. PNH and Keith Lynch, I think, or maybe Marilee. And even once I'd turned on the radio, most of the news that intimately mattered to me of the events of that day, I got on or because of RASFF. I'm not sure that feeling of shared crisis contributed to the way things spun apart afterwards, but sometimes it seems like it.

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More than 911, I think it was the runup to and the early days of the Iraq invasion that did damage. That was very polarizing for a very long time.

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That makes sense, though I'm not sure how much I was there for that part. As I have just been reminder, my activity fell off a lot in July of 1999, when we got the dog, and again when pnh wandered off to the world of blogging. Patrick was long my primary filter for what threads I wanted to read.

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As I remember it on the day itself it was a good source of news both good and bad and the community spirit was there. But then the community became less important because people had Things To Say about the situation and there were more political angst and political policy posts in general and it seemed to get more and more concentrated on US politics - many, many threads gravitated in that direction and the world community was discussed much more than the local (fannish) one. I don't think it's ever quite recovered the balance. The Iraq war just fuelled that situation. But how do you work against that? It's a place for fans to say what they want, and a whole lot of them want to say things about politics.

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I re-discovered RASFF around 1995 (I say rediscovered, because back in '87 or so I was reading its parent group, rec.arts.sf-lovers), and I would say it was good then but maybe picked up in tone and group ethos over the next couple of years. David's suggested range of 1998-2001 is a good one, imho.

But much as I like and admire Graydon, he has a writing style that is sufficiently compressed and idiosynchratic that he takes some getting used to, and may be a bit opaque to the uninitiated. Ray Radlein was always good for taking a thread funny. So, was Kip Williams. Patrick Neilsen Hayden was usually a very good filter for interesting conversations, though threads which develop a dynamic of posts ping-ponging back and forth between Patrick and Gary Farber are probably not so worth your time.

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While I miss Graydon a lot, on consideration I think you're exactly right about why he's not a good starting point. As substitutes, perhaps Patrick Nielsen Hayden and you -- with the caveat that PNH had a distinct tendency to go political and if you don't want politics you can abandon his threads when they do.

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oooh. I'll just go off and be flattered now, thanks.

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kate-schaefer.livejournal.com

Part of the problem is that politics is one of the most interesting things there is for human beings to discuss, and one of the most dull. What could be more important than the principles upon which people organize themselves for work, play, reproduction, food, and housing? What could be less interesting than having one's attention snagged unrelentingly upon some minor detail of those principles? Worse, what could be more dull than to argue about some minor detail of those principles with someone whose own principles or intelligence one does not greatly respect?

I like discussing politics with those with whom I also like discussing books, food, music, childraising, gardening, and what-not. It's difficult for me to discuss politics -- or anything else -- with those who don't charm me in some way. I'm willing to accept that this is a flaw in my character, but not a large flaw, nor an uncommon flaw. In person, I am able to converse for a while with those who don't charm me, and then be done with the interaction without being rude; on line, there is no particular reason for any conversation to end, even if it has long since ceased to have content.

I liked using Alison as a filter, since she never bothers with anyone she finds boring. During my busiest periods as a student, I used anyone I'd known 20 years or more as a filter, since Alison was off being a civil servant and eccentric mother.

On the one hand, I don't think this will work. On the other hand, I've always maintained that the answer to bad speech is more speech. Now, I suppose, the answer is more speech, and build thee more stately killfiles, o my soul.

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Or, perhaps more directly useful, here's a link to a thread (title:RASFF Etiquette) from mid-2000 that gives perhaps some sense of it, though possibly it's too dependent on familiarity with in-jokes and backstory to be accessible. But it's the thread where I got off my Chinatown/Hamster joke, which I'm still rather pleased with, and does certainly have that cascade-of-wit-and-banter quality which is part of what I'm trying to point at when I gesture wildly at Rassef-that-was.

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Wow, there's a lot of people on that thread whom I miss. Mary Kay and Jordin Kare; Loren MacGregor; Vlatko Juric-Kokic; Ray Radlein; Rob Hansen; Avedon Carol; Kip Williams (who still lurks, but....); PNH; Lydy Nickerson; Vicki Rosenzweig; D. Potter; even Gary Farber. Sigh.

(That was in no particular order, btw, except as I noticed their names scrolling down the thread list from the top.)

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marykaykare.livejournal.com

Well that was a lovely little trip down memory lane. You're really working hard to suck me into this aren't you?

MKK

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Not yet, but if you think it would help...

(Actually, I just went back and read a different segment of that thread. As a holographic representation of what I miss about rasseff, it's not at all bad.)

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So I was just cruising through RASFF to get a feel of its recent feel and I could not resist looking at a thread named "Rasff is no fun any more", where I find this from Bilek on April 12:

"RASFF was always pretty partisan and mean spirited. Not as petty,
though. Nor as bloody mindedly dedicated to politics as often. But
if you don't remember a lot of vicious partisanship you haven't been
reading long enough.

Patrick, Avedon, Ulrika, etc could get downright NASTY."

It All Comes Back To Me Now... The "vicious partisanship" of this remark is pretty astonishing.

Right. Well. There's some of my renewed interest drained away.

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Um, do, please, consider the source. Mr. Bilek is likely to be one of the folks who will hit my killfile immediately if I do this. If you do likewise, you won't be missing much, I swan. This project will absolutely require some selectivity, some editing, of whom we interact with and how. That's always been the case, but especially if we're going to re-grow the fun and playful parts of rasseff, there will need to be a certain amount of disciplined taking ourselves in hand.

Apropos of which, National Masturbation Month starts on Sunday. I saw a poster in Fremont, and thought of you. :)

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