Rick's b.log - 2025/03/10
It is the 13th of March 2025 You are 18.118.26.27, pleased to meet you!

The end of an era

This was fairly easy in the case of TheRegister because in recent times the comment section has become quite ridiculous, what with Russian trolls and MAGA trolls, and climate/vaccine/reality deniers. I go there very infrequently these days and I post even less.

But I didn't keep that resolution with the RISC OS forums. I should have.

Things are changing on the forum, in particular regarding the "Aldershot" part that is a place for all the off-topic stuff. Which, all too often, included quite a bit of political discourse. Some I was involved in, others less so.

Now, I liked and appreciated the social aspect of the ROOL site. There were plenty of fora for the technical things, and one place that was sort of like a pub meet. Given how often real-life meetings occur in pubs, this isn't an unprecedented opinion, but maybe it's a uniquely British one. And, yes, sometimes it ventured into grown-up topics because, well, we're grown ups.

Following the introduction of The UK Online Safety Act, things are going to change. The Powers That Be also want to tidy up things a little and pull back the amount of political discussion. As is, of course, their right. Do not think I'm walking away in a sulk because of this - my opinion here is that "it was good while it lasted". I think the idea now is that if people want to talk about Trump or Ukraine or Brexit or whatever, they'll be pushed off to someplace like Reddit.

Unfortunately, as part of these changes, a few select individuals decided that the best way to help push change was to be... unkind.

David Pitt wrote:

So let's call it out. 14079 posts and rising. Whatever is that about.
Discussion of RISC OS as it developed used to be such fun. It's less so now.

Yes, he is talking about me. My post count is 14,079. Now I cannot tell how long David has been a user of the forums because his current profile was created in January 2023, and the previous profile was created in September 2017. Are there others? Why does one person have multiple profiles? Why does the forum software even allow multiple profiles to have the same name?

Whatever, something that I can tell you is that I have been a user since the 17^th of May 2012. Twenty twelve.
Now, I famously suck at maths, but I think I can manage this. Thirteen years, multiplied by three hundred and sixty five and a quarter days...is 4,748 and we'll forget the extra quarter. Now let's knock off seventy one days because it isn't the 17^th and it isn't May.
This leaves us with 4,677.
Divide 14,079 posts by 4,677 days and it is 3.01026blahblah. In other words, an average of three posts a day. That's not a lot, and over time, yes it can add up.

But, moreso than this is the implication that "it used to be fun, now it isn't" said to somebody who has been around thirteen years, maybe longer than the person who said that, and is visiting the forum less now than before.
Maybe, you know, if it isn't so much fun these days perhaps it's because things have changed everywhere, and not for the better, in these past few years. I don't know. I just don't appreciate being "the reason for all the ills".

Now, one person shouting "get off my lawn" I could cope with. And, yes, I could even cope with the eventual changes being made to nicify the forums. We don't need to point out how the techbros are screwing up everything, which is one of the reasons this dumb new law exists and will do sod-all to fix. If I want to talk about that, there's this blog. There's my own forum. I don't need to talk about Trump ambushing Zelenskyy on the Aldershot forum, but somebody else did so I joined in.

But then came a post by one of the site/ROOL managers/owners which said the following:

The tone and language is bordering on hostile at several points.

I understand that I can be a bit blunt and tact is not something in my repertoire, but hostile? And make no mistake, he was straight up accusing me of being hostile, just using weasel words. If the thought hadn't occurred, it wouldn't have been written.
It was never my intention to be hostile to the site management, or any other user. It is a service that is provided for us for free. What would I, or anybody, gain by hostility?

But, alas, when a site admin responds by suggesting that I'm being hostile, in addition to somebody pointing out that "it used to be fun", well, okay. I get it. My input is no longer wanted. I am no longer wanted.

I think a lot of these problems actually stem from the forum system itself. There is precious little in the way of moderation options other than deleting messages.
Certainly, there is nobody willing to step in to quieten things down if anything gets a little rowdy, it's more of a "complain vociferiously about it later" kind of deal.
And the forum is far far too braindead to support potentially useful things like tossing messages into a different thread. If something goes off topic in, say, Announcements, it would help a lot to be able to select those messages and move them over to Aldershot. As it is, it relies upon the users to move the discussion there, and sometimes even that doesn't work. Also, it would help if the more contentious places like Aldershot were an elective that you had to choose to want to join, otherwise it simply wouldn't show up. All the off-topic stuff could be dumped there, out of the way. Oh, and for dealing with spammers, the ability to pick an account and delete both it and all of the associated posts.
These are really basic forum management sorts of things. MyBB, phBB, they make this sort of thing routine and fairly easy. But, alas, the Beast forum was written in Ruby and proudly promoted at the least number of lines of code necessary to create a functioning forum. A barely functioning forum, because a lot of those extra lines of code in other forum software is for exactly the sorts of things that Beast lacks. Having to delete spams one by one is ridiculous. You can't even "tick all" on what's showing on screen. Nope, it really is one by one by one by one.
The forum software is being maintained by Andrew in his down time, and there are some nice changes on the way so please be certain to thank him for his time doing this for all of us. Elsewhere, sadly, it seems as if Beast is an abandoned project.

I won't wander over to Reddit, if you don't mind. Some things I liked about the ROOL forums were the social aspect, the lack of in-your-face advertising (or, let's be fair, any advertising), the pleasing lack of trolling and blatant misinformation, and that it wasn't a place using clever algorithms to game and manipulate users. It was a simple forum with posts organised by subject listed one after the other, not unlike Fidonet in days gone by.

Places like Reddit are far too toxic to bother with. Most social media these days is like a mental afflication that has gone somewhere to happen, and getting rid of fact checkers (who might be inclined to point out all of Trump's endless lies - don't think I'm dragging in politics needlessly, just follow the timeline of what's been going on) and replacing moderators by either faulty AI or community flagging (in other words, doing as little as possible to counter the mass of misinformation), I very much don't want to have any part of that nonsense.

And, now, I don't feel welcome or wanted at the ROOL forums, so it's time to bring my days of participation to an end. Maybe I am the reason everything sucks? Maybe I'm not. Whatever, I'm not inclined to be anybody's scapegoat so it's time to say... goodbye.

Like Tom Scott, this isn't "goodbye goodbye", I'm not deleting my account, but it is "goodbye". I may pop up once in a blue moon. I wouldn't hold your breath.

And for all of those who did appreciate my various forms of input - thank you, it was fun for me too.
Well, there were some ups and downs ☺, but generally it has been fun and, I hope, beneficial.
Thank you.

Scrollwheel bug?

But... I guess I'm going to have to continue putting up with it or figure it out for myself.

Some Spring pictures

Daffodils in the potager.

After all the flooding, it's a gentle stream again.

I looked down and saw this guy buzzing around.

Sweet almond flowers, with better light.

Doesn't that look nice?

And, finally, I said Marte could retire watching the sun set...

Happy retirement, Marte!

Your comments:

Frank, 10th March 2025, 20:58

To be honest, I wrote a rather annoyed post after reading Revill's hostile jab at you. Unfortunately, I then chickened out and deleted it before posting. :-(    At first I was just puzzled why he found bits of that particular posting 'bordering on hostile'. Must be my Dutch background, I thought. Apparently Brits are more easily offended/hurt.  I can't say I always followed the reasoning in your postings (or even understood them...), but I never felt they were out of place. I'm surprised only one person responded to Revill with a negative note.

Rick, 10th March 2025, 21:19

Thank you for standing up for me, even if you never posted it.  To be honest, probably best not to dive into that mess!    Don't worry about not understanding my reasoning. Sometimes I don't either. 😉

Frank, 10th March 2025, 21:40

Just took a deep breath and posted a short note anyway. :-)    Also, I see others are now chiming in...

Dan Matthews, 10th March 2025, 22:13

If you wasn't such an obnoxious prick all the time on ROOL, people wouldn't have an issue, there's even a script on GitHub to remove your shit from ROOL because people are generally fed up with it.

Rick, 10th March 2025, 22:49

And, yet, here you are reading the obnoxious prick's blog...    Of course, this is also a good demonstration of what is wrong all too often these days, that some people think it's quite alright to say things like that to each other. It isn't, and it shouldn't be.

A tree-dwelling mammal, 11th March 2025, 00:33

Dan - I think what you meant was to refer to Rick as a "grumpy old git", not an "obnoxious prick". He's quite entitled to channel his inner Victor Meldrew.    Going onto another forum (or blog, in this case) and calling someone an 'obnoxious prick' is exactly the kind of thing that an obnoxious prick would do.    I speak as someone who has endured another 'obnoxous prick' (someone I know locally to me - nobody in the RISC OS scene, nobody that would be known on here or the ROOL forum) that followed me across multiple forums, attempted to troll me using fake usernames, unsucessfully tried 'catfishing' me, tried doxxing me on a local community forum (and got perma-banned as a result) and even went to the trouble of setting up faked pages that appeared to be from the web site of a local newspaper claiming that I'd done appalling things, all untrue. It only stopped when law enforcement became involved. After the second time said 'obnoxious prick' got himself arrested for breaching the restraining order I'd been forced to take out against him, he finally stopped the campaign of harrassment that he'd been engaging in for years.    Not that I'm minimising the mud-slinging that seems to be going on at ROOL right now, but when it crosses over into real life like that (technically it went the other way as it was a real life acquaintance that harassed me online) that's when things get nasty.

jgh, 11th March 2025, 01:07

The Online Safety things are getting ridiculous. A forum I've been a member of for almost 20 years is having to call a special AGM and vote on resolutions to change its consititution. What is this dangerous group of subversives? It discusses *roads*.