The future of babble

..it's amazing you lasted 12 yrs meg. i enjoyed you as a moderator. it as a learning experience for all of us here on babble.

..i would like to see more folks join in our conversations. younger folks. more indigenous folk, more women, more people of colour. who can generate the energy and new visions to help move us towards better world.

..sadly, i believe we are stuck where we are. which is a polarised left with no clear way to move forward. to this i can't say i have any solutions.

I vote for continue as we are and thank you for sticking around for so long.. 

I wish Meg well in her future endeavours. As a significant continuing historical archive of Canadians posting their thoughts, observations, politics and preferences, babble remains important. And worth saving.

For the same reasons a politician might wish to erase their historical record as out of place with their present, there may be those that wish to see babble disappear also. Such things can be inconvenient, embarrassing and not for everyone.

I suspect a decision may already have been made. If so, a pity and a loss not only for us here today, but for those here yesterdays before and tomorrows yet to come.                        

People's histories are precious. As has been said, you cannot know where you are going unless you know where you have been. Perhaps that's the point of all this.

epaulo13 wrote:

..it's amazing you lasted 12 yrs meg. i enjoyed you as a moderator. it as a learning experience for all of us here on babble.

..i would like to see more folks join in our conversations. younger folks. more indigenous folk, more women, more people of colour. who can generate the energy and new visions to help move us towards better world.

..sadly, i believe we are stuck where we are. which is a polarised left with no clear way to move forward. to this i can't say i have any solutions.

I'm with epaulo13 on this. Keep it going and let's try to get out of the stagnation somehow.
And thank you for all you've done, MegB- you are a voice of reason in an often unreasonable time, and you have been unbelievably patient with all that has been asked of you.

Meg, you deserve a lot of credit for surviving 12 years of moderating babble! I appreciate the great influence you’ve had here!

As far as the future of babble goes, I think it would be great if babble continued on basically as is. (If babble migrated to another site I would recommend it migrating to RT since I think RT probably appreciates many of the post’s routinely posted here.  ; )  I’m sure other posters here think our posts would be appreciated more by the so called “legacy media” AKA the lame stream media.)

Aww, I've missed you too, ll—I haven't made it back very often in the past five years or so, but I think often of this place and the amazing minds that have come in and out of it (skdadl is someone I think about quite often). I agree that it is a true (Canadian) people's history—but it's true that the community potential has been really displaced by corporate social media places. I don't know the way around that, but I hope there is one.

I followed your link and it states explicitly that the labs are not bioweapon facilities. 

The labs in Ukraine are not bioweapons facilities. The US government maintains that they are public and animal health labs operated by host countries. Although a long-running Russian disinformation campaign has painted a picture of a network of US military labs in Ukraine, Georgia, and other former Soviet republics involved in bioweapons or risky research, Pope said the labs conduct peaceful scientific research and disease surveillance. Outside experts have also said Pope’s program is not a covert bioweapons operation.

The message forum is not a news site. This is a board for adults. It is up to us to form our own opinions and I don't think there is any danger of babble turning into a board of conspiracists. When misinformation on Covid got too rampant Meg stepped in. Other than that board members themselves challenge information. 

When I read the mention of bio-weapon labs I immediately thought it sounded like bogus Russian propaganda and I don't have an indepth understanding of it all so I don't think a whole lot of people are going to come here and believe some random misinformation from one or two posters. 

I don't feel there has been any increase in conspiracy theories on the board and I don't see why there would be.

You stated this:

 it is difficult even for major news outlets, which have wound up spreading false information like the report of Kyiv being surrounded?

So why would anyone expect message board comments from random people to be more accurate than news sites? 

I agree with 6079_Smith_W. Looking at babble through the viewpoint of rabble I would feel that babble, to a too great extent, has a negative impact on rabble. I think most people on the left who come to babble probably are dismayed that the site seems to be dominated by propaganda from dubious sources. Currently on babble we are debating whether Ukraine deserves to be invaded because it is a NAZI entity. A week ago we were debating whether the occupation of Ottawa was justified. I think these are not the kind of political positions rabble wants to be linked with. The vast majority of people on the left oppose Putin's invasion of Ukraine and supported the end of the Ottawa occupation. They sees Putin’s actions as being authoritarian,. They also see claims that the Ukrainian government is a NAZI regime as just being a pretext Putin has used to violently subjugate Ukraine. Most people on the left see through Putin's propaganda campaign. They probably don't want to participate in a web site like rabble engulfed in very dubious propaganda.

I agree with most of your post. I think it is an example of "spirited debate." But I also think there is too much propaganda on babble from sources that have no regard for the truth and exist to purposely misinform people. Having said that, I like the debate on babble even though it is inundated with propaganda. That’s why I post here. However, I'm not sure if rabble appreciates the propaganda inundating babble.

Prepare yourselves...

'A chunk of the historical record removed in the blink of an eye'

https://twitter.com/AbbyMartin/status/1502769007602008066

"Knowing this was coming still doesn't prepare you for the loss. Wasn't able to get the full archive. The channel hosted a community, with a time capsule of comments and embeds in countless articles that are now dead..."

 so having been part of rabble's past for 20 years 7 months, it looks like I shall be continuing this ride into the future.  Starting tomorrow, I will be co-moderating with Meg for an undertermined time.  Look forward to being part of the "wither babble" deliberations.  While I generally don't post a great, I am a regular reader, so I do keep up.

Thanks Pondering.  I was thinking about the PM spot, butt I'm holding out for something better than the cottage at Rideau Hall.  Mebbe move the capitol to Toronto and fix up Casa Loma.  In case that does work out, I've had my morals and ethics moved to an external drive for easy disconnection.

This is good news. The discussion board is not closing, Meg is not leaving, and Old Goat is returning on a more regular basis.

So, something of an update.  After a number of  delays, I joined a rabble staff meeting to discuss babble.   Bad news is we're gunna be looking at this beta version for quite awhile yet.  Good news is we're not going anywhere for the forseeable future.

Some concerns I raised was the comparitively few number of regular participants on the board compared to years past.  When I say this I'm taking a pretty long view.  I was going through the archives, having been asked to contribute to a history of babble, and noted that near the beginning, we were growing at a rate of up to 100 babblers a week, although most were never heard from.   New babblers at this point are very rare.  A lot of bots and spammers apply, but Meg set up a pretty good system for dealing with that.  I would really love to see the population grow.

I'm not to sure of the demographics here, but I suspect there are a disproportionate number of babblers who look like me.  Love to see the whole human rainbow better represented.  Also, boards like this don't appear to attract younger people.  Any thoughts on that would be great, but meanwhile, lets try to get our grandchildren and their friends to sign on.

I fear babble has become a bit of a forgotten relative in the larger rabble community.  I've suggested more of a presence on the main page linking to whatever threads are most current on any week, with a link to a membership form.

Thoughts and comments are welcome.

It's sad that discussion forums have fallen out of favour in the last decade. But Paladin does make an interesting point. Reddit still seems to thrive as a discussion behemoth covering every topic under the sun.

I love discussion forums and find the interface far more interesting and thoughful than commenting on blogs, articles or Facebook groups. 

I feel like what I am going to suggest is kind of crass marketing appeal but when ever I look for recaps and discussions on Canadian television fare be it dramas, comedys or reality, there are so very few places that provide discussion options. Perhaps curate the programs you choose to start under new topics but maybe that will drive new traffic. The tech people can figure out how to get hits.

It's just a suggestion for getting a boost in traffic. Hopefully once here, new users will explore other topics.