Internet Forum Culture

We have an amazing group of smart, sensible moderators here. This place wouldn't be the same without them.

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Out of curiosity, is there a full staff list available?

The mods are listed on the Rules page. Just a few: me, Sedai, Loner, and Tacitus.

Really? Not TheUsualSuspect? I was certain that TUS was one of them.

Heh, yeah. We've got a lot of people who've been around forever are almost de facto mods since they're so sharp and diligent about reporting them.

He'd be great at it, but truth is we have way more users capable of being great moderators than we have need of moderators. The automatic spam stuff does a pretty good job. If we ever need to add a mod we'll have a ton of great choices.

Well, here's hoping that rubs off on me overtime. I've already caused one argument a couple years ago.

Heck, I run the place and I've caused tons. Fewer than I used to, though.

Nothing wrong with a good argument as long as it remains civil. That said I do endeavour to avoid them as I do have a rather short fuse and swear like a trooper anyway

I just gotta wait the nine more years before we have another horror top 100, then maybe we can exclude Imdb from eligible sights or at least include RT, but that's a whole other discussion.


I noticed, though, that there isn't a huge amount of activity unless there's a top 100 going on. It's still at least five times as active as Besteveralbums.

I don’t agree with that. Respectfully. There’s a ton of activity going on in any given moment or day. People always interacting with each other on their respective review threads. Shoutbox is always busy.

Maybe I'm just comparing it to Rateyourmusic which is always bustling worse than black Friday.

I think a big difference with Movie Forums is that so many of the more regular users have actually become friends elsewhere—on other social media sites, in real life, even. I belong to a small private writers group that started at a forum level (actually, a text-based forum in the very early 00s) and now resides mainly on Facebook. There are only about two dozen of us (on purpose), although we're worldwide (U.S., Canada, New Zealand, England, South Africa...). Our forum interaction over the years created a very tight-knit group.

And since then a handful of us (about a half dozen) have actually met in person several times. A few years ago three of them hopped on a train (once the New Zealand woman arrived in the U.S. to visit) and came to stay at my house for a long weekend. Two more locals came here too. In fact, Yoda and Mrs. Yoda got to meet two of them at a local diner. I then took a train a few years later to head their way (Texas from Pittsburgh) to stay down there with their family for a few days.

I count these people among some of my closest and dearest friends now. And it all started with an online forum designed much like earlier MoFo incarnations.

Meeting people online in various ways is pretty much the norm now. I met my husband of 22 years in an online forum back in 1998. I never trivialize the impact of forum culture. It's literally changed my life.

/endsoapbox

Here are a few shots of our writers group here in Pittsburgh (2015 and 2016):

What? No kolbossy, or "pigs in a blanket"??..
I sure miss the Burgh.

@Austruck, IIRC, @Yoda has met up with quite a few of the people here. I believe we saw photos too.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

I bet Yoda has met Austruck once or twice

I guess I didn't realize you knew/know da 'Burgh. I actually never had kielbasa when I lived at the other end of the state (about an hour north of Philly). Only heard of it once I moved out here to Pittsburgh for college (and then just stayed here). So it's definitely a western PA thing and not eastern, so much.

Not quite sure which end of the state has the worse accent, though. They're both yucky.

He has! I met ONE once (@Yoda would remember his name--he's not as active here as he used to be)... when he was in town, met Yoda, and then tagged along to a Mother's Day lunch my kids bought for me at our local Eat'n Park. So he was a one-day adopted son.

Wow, @Yoda, before you lost the weight, you looked a lot more like John Favreau or Greg Grunberg.

Yins goin' dahntahn to the show 'n that?..


I lived there from 1945 (aged 1) to 1964. Then from '75 to '78. So I was there for most of the Steelers' big wins and also the Bucs. During the 1961 World Series the high school broadcast over the P.A. the 9th inning of the 7th game of the World Series, where Mazeroski belted one over the fence for the big win-- the first time a game winning home run had won the series. The school went wild, as did the whole town. Lived in the South Hills in Mt. Lebanon.

Ah, I used to drive through Mt. Lebanon on my way to work (at a place called Business Cards Tomorrow, where I, yes, typeset business cards) way back in the mid-1990s.

I moved here in 1979 to go to CMU. That was the year the Pirates won the World Series... and then the Steelers won the Super Bowl a few months later. I'd never lived in a town/city big enough to have any major sports teams, so that was quite an introduction to the frenzy that IS Pittsburgh sports. Yes, the whole town went wild... both times.

Yoda and I (and his childhood pal and my hubby) all attended the final game at Three Rivers Stadium back in 2000.