2010: A Fresh "Restart" for The Forum?

The purpose of this thread is to engage all of the members in a discussion. Is the current state of the forum meeting your needs? Is it all that it could be/should be? What are the opportunities? What does tomorrow look like? How do we get there?

I believe that if you are not constantly re-inventing yourself - you lose - your endeavor dies. There have been recent comments referencing the "glory days" of this forum and a suggestion to re-open those threads. I would propose that you can't live in the past. Why not start all of those topics anew - get a new generation's perspective (fortunately some are on here!) as well as the current perspective of now even more seasoned senior members? I am ever more cognizant of the significant intellectual capacity on this site - it is being underutilized!

What is the scientific, medical, spiritual and societal view of barefooting in 2010? Why is it good for all of us? Why should someone be recruited to barefooting?

What is fun for the members? What will make you want to sign on everyday, post a response and send private messages to the other members? There has got to be more than "where did you go barefoot today" - even though that was hopefully very good for the participant!

Happy New Year!

 

Scientific/medical = natural posture and gait
Spiritual = individuality
Societal = vulgar

OK. Two out of three....... "Other people" need to learn to put up AND shut up.

Why is it good? Evolution made us what we are. Take advantage!

 

Please read the initial message and give your opinion on how to improve our forum.

 

I think the forum is pretty good the way it is. Folks post their opinions or comments and if I find one interesting, I'll post a reply.
Other then that, I'm not sure what changes can be made.

 

The only thing I can think of would be to receive a notification of some sort if someone quotes and responds to one of your posts.

 

Good thoughts, all. "Fun," though, is a many-splendored thing and doesn't appeal to everyone equally. There have been signs of new life here, and I assume that will continue as we all move toward the warmer months. Some may object to starting "anew" as repetitious. Oh well. Going barefoot is pretty good fun. There's WAY too much social disapproval here in the U S of A. And angry posts go a LONG way to dispel any sense of fun. Lighten the fuck up!

 

Not quite the same, but you could subscribe to a thread (under thread tools).

Many of these questions have been answered in the forums over the past years. Someone with time on their hands (unfortunately, not me) could search and review past posts and create a sticky with a categorized link listing and synopsis which addresses these specific issues. Links to outside sites could also be included.

Clearly enforced rules and aggressive "out front" moderation make for the best quality forums in my experience. Unfortunately, this model may be perceived as too constrained for the free-wheeling environment which is the Hip Forums.

Some good general rules for forum etiquette may be found at the very well-run OC forums. Pay particular attention to "Taking Your Posting to the Next Level" and "The Whats and Whys of a Quality Post"

 

Clearly enforced rules and aggressive "out front" moderation make for the best quality forums in my experience. Unfortunately, this model may be perceived as too constrained for the free-wheeling environment which is the Hip Forums.
That's why, boys and girls, this forum is probably doomed. This ISN'T the fucking United Nations. It's a forum about going barefoot! Freewheeling, individual expression! POWER TO THE PEOPLE POWER TO THE PEOPLE blah blah shit..............

 

This forum is showing every sign of middle age (just like the incredibly cranky Society for Barefoot Living)---where a few self-selected individuals hope to take over and try to run the show. This site isn't for personal convenience or personal management---it's a PUBLIC forum, with all the messiness and repetition that being a PUBLIC forum invites. The flagrant flaming and personal attacks that have occurred in the past few months bear witness to a cranky aging site that needs a shot of Viagra to "get it up," socially and spiritually. Whoever wishes to play "Physician, heal thyself" is hereby invited. This site is sorely in need.

 

Here's my thinking. There have been some nasty retorts that were very uncalled for. If asking should we be educational, I am assuming that is in response to some recent "why go barefoot...ick" type questions. If so, that appears on and off and is usually posted by someone who is (or thinks) they are fastidious but in reality are prudes. When I go barefoot, it is my hope to really provoke them. They probably have no problem with blowing their nose and then handling doors at work or a mall or whatever. Why bother responding? And yes there appears to be a few self selected individuals who hope to take over and try to run the show. Glad you recognize yourself. There is nothing wrong with reviving old threads since it invites new comments from someone. And that invites further discussion....Anyone wanna talk about barefooting in subways? Is it cause you are searching for the place where your feet will get the dirtiest? Anyone want to discuss why hippie Whole Foods is so anti barefoot? Have at it.

 

By the way, with rules and moderation besides being a fascist state....who gets to play god? The loudest one?

 

I used to be a regular member of this site for about 3-4 years under a similar name. Due to some personal issues I left for a while, but after some soul searching, I found I missed the community. That being said, I love having the old threads to look back on because it brings me back to a time I that was more special to me than I can describe. Looking back on these old threads is almost like reading a journal and a wonderful reminder of what things were once like. Things have changed, but you can never forget the past. My vote is to keep it the way it is

 

what about a second mod? does the one and only mod even come here?

 

Great discussion!! I didn't mean to suggest removing the old threads - I enjoy reading them as well and have reopened a couple. By starting some of the topics anew - I would hope that newer members would be encouraged to join in the dialog - actively contribute as a thread unfolds - hard to do from the "archives". I think this could be rewarding for all of us. But that is just my opinion and it may be that I am misguided?

I have no idea what is feasible from a site architecture perspective and would expect senior members like seohsveren to weigh in as he has.

It is not my intention to set a direction for this forum or in any way to control it. I just believe it could be better and I am trying to "open up" the forum. No one should play "God". Although that sticky poll may be annoying it does prove that we have the capability to vote!

We could even vote on what represents bad behavior and make recommendations to moderator 1 and/or 2.

 

Sorry bout the god thing. I'll never lose my hippie roots...I don't deal well with authority.....

 

Barefoot Kirsten - Would you be willing to re-post one of those topics that was so special to you and see what happens? Perhaps label it as v.2010 or - 2010 or (2010)?

 

I think it is fine as is, some really old threads would have to be found and/or restarted. I don't believe we need to restart old threads "just because" to get new blood in unless it is pages and pages long (ie10+). I am not against change but then again we don't need four different threads on "why go barefoot".

this forum is lucky because some 3D forums I go to if a thread is inactive for 12 months it gets archived.

 

I like the title of this thread, and I am all for a NEW BEGINNING. I am a hippie and I don't believe in shoes, so I don't even own any. Living a barefoot lifestyle has it's trials and tribulations and I just want some kind of forum where people can talk about non-foot fetish subjects. I wish the topic of "barefooting" would not attract so many of these foot fetsh people, because I don't like being associated with that group. When I see some of these people with close ups of nothing but their damn feet it makes me want to turn away from this forum. I wish those with the "foot shot" signature pics would make a forum of their own. YES, we know you are barfoot, but just tone down your act a little bit, people or you will scare away us "normal" people who just don't like shoes and want to talk about barefooting.

 

I guess that this thread and the opening post show a few general tendencies of what has developed on the WWW and its different forums - be they about barefooting or other topics.

The first tendency is a larger group of people taking part in the communication in such forums and/or message boards. Broadband internet access is no longer an exclusive thing reserved for universities and schools as it used to be in the late 20th century, and therefore there are more people roaming the 'net than there used to be. The price dump on the computer market also makes it possible for almost anyone to buy a computer, too. That, itself, is not a bad thing, for sure.

This larger group of people taking part in the web communication leads to the second tendency: redundancy and repetition. When I started to roam the 'net in the mid-1990s by means of my college student account using a dumb terminal at one of the college computer labs to access an old HP-UX machine (nope, no Windows ), there were not very many resources available on the topic of barefooting - and only one web site, that struck my eye as interesting: the Dirty Sole Society (as it was known back then), administered by Paul J. Lucas and one or two other persons alone. The other open discussion group was the Usenet newsgroup alt.lifestyle.barefoot - for those who don't remember Usenet: not accessed by a browser (the only ones used back then were NCSA Mosaic and Netscape 1, with version 2 just coming out) and fully text-based in a terminal window. The people discussing there were rather few in comparison to today's numbers. As soon as it was possible to purchase domains and server space at low rates, the number of web sites increased rapidly, as did the first WWW-based discussion boards. And with PHP, the miracle weapon of Web 2.0, the number increased even more... and with a larger number of discussion platforms, the topics already discussed in one forum quickly spawned their brother and sister threads elsewhere. With more and more people accessing those forums, the memory of topics already discussed switches from long-term to medium-term and might at some point deteriorate to short-term (or, perhaps, it has already...). That allows for quite many double or at least similar threads over a given period of time. Some topics tend to make it back to the surface, although they might have been discussed before. That is something not only and exclusively happening in this very Barefoot forum section - it's happening on the WWW at large.

The increased number of people accessing the internet also has increased the potential of confrontation and conflict. This higher potential is already noticeable in tendency number three: a rougher tone of discussion and an increase in flaming and trolling - again: this is a general tendency applying to the WWW as a whole and transcending into the world in general as well. I have seen such changes in e.g. general behaviour of today's typical teenagers (at least the ones I observe where I live), who seem to believe that harassing others, mobbing weaker ones, calling other people names, and in the most extreme form beat people up for apparently no other reason but boredom are normal things... attitudes of that sort (born from and nurtured by a competitive society that deems wealth higher than knowledge and wisdom) also find their way into online discussions and the way people treat each other. The good old "netiquette" that used to be the basis of internet communication seems to be on the way into online oblivion and if someone quotes it, s/he may be called a party pooper (at least) or even worse.

Asking about a re-invention of this sub-forum sounds quite easy, but IMO it takes a lot of effort to exorcise that attitude demon that has grown over the years - or at least to tame it. As other members wrote, they are appalled by spam (even via PM) triggered by fetishists - quite rightly so, I might add. There are other sub-forums here where people can discuss their sexual inclination towards bare feet and leave the barefoot people who just enjoy their being barefoot non-sexually alone. Also, the function to report such posts and PMs works well, too - as does the ignore function.

What can we do about the redundancy and repetition of threads and postings? Perhaps a little self-training to practise that long-term memory can help, for instance by reviewing older threads after joining a forum - the multitude of web forums has made the communication and discussion one of shooting from the hip, fast and easy. Also a sign of the times, IMO, since the competitive nature the mainstream world has taken on tells us to act fast, not to waste time and then haste on to the next topic, task, assignment, etc. Maybe this nature also taught us to dismiss the seemingly nonsense utterances by people who wish to share their eccentricity or weirdness, as others might refer to it, by hanging up small linguistic pictures, like funny little vignettes on this message board as merely annoying rather than amusing.

About the question on the different views on barefooting in 2010 (scientific, medical, spiritual and societal) I'd say that to barefooters, they remain the same as in 2009 and the years before... a change of view on bare feet on part of the mainstream will be a rather slow one, I'm afraid.

Let's see where this thread and the different answers to the questions brought up might lead us...

Just my two footprints worth,

Wiggling toes,

~*Ganesha*~

 

Concerning your geographical location, how do you survive the frigid winters of Pennsylvania without any kind of foot protection whatsoever? I'm curious.

Your name sounds familiar, have I seen you on a completely different forum? Does a O gauge railroading forum ring a bell??