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Remember the old days? I mean do you really? Those guys, those designers and software engineers were on a mission. They forged a legacy.

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Yes. But they didn't do it by promising a computer that was hard to use and an unpleasant experience, and then if somebody accidentally bought one the buyer would discover that it was actually fun and easy to use.

Brad's right, thalo; it's your site and your dime. But you've been limiting your potential with this Fight Club face to the world. No one who doesn't know us is going to know what really goes on here from that Battle Royale front page.

The Free and Open Discourse heading belongs up front, not just on the inside pages that casual visitors may never see.

If you WANT a limited, exclusive, elitist membership, just say so. Don't try to disguise it with some sort of cutsie contrarian philosophy.

Markle

Am I missing something here?

Where on the home page does it say come listen to the wacko's?

Zealot's are us?

If people are reading such things into the thalo.net homepage is pure injector on their part.

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Am I missing something here?

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Yes.

Oooh shut up you whacko.

We develop patterns, stock soliloquies, and attitudes and never go much beyond them. We just keep thinking up new and ever-more novel (and tedious) ways of saying pretty much the same thing.


Gawd! We sound like a bunch of middle-age guys. You sure we aren't actually our fathers?

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Gawd! We sound like a bunch of middle-age guys. You sure we aren't actually our fathers?

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Omigod... you're right! LMFAO.

we're tha-mudgeons.

I always roll my eyes when the revisionist vocabulary thing rolls around. It happens in the arc of discourse over and over. It happened at MFI... when things got hot, they had to rename and redefine, as if changing a few words was gonna change US.

Alls I can say is, I'm not AGAINST changing the home page. I've always said, any of you brothers can do whatever you want on the home and I'll put it up there. We can try it your way. The only thing I want to stay is the logo with my fists "Less" and "More". Other than that, you can try to drum up membership (if that's what you want) any way you want to. If you want to make us seem kinder and gentler, ga head, write something obsequious and wussified and PC, see if I care. Rope 'em in. But if they wig out when they discuss anything with me, they're going to feel like we misled them. I'd rather any new members be pleasantly surprised that we're not as bad as they assume we're going to be.

Meanwhile, the only member drive that actually ever WORKED was me going to Apple delusions and just posting normally... and then putting the URL in my sig. Unfortunately, I can't do that any more as I got shitcanned.

I wonder if a letter to the editor of a shill rag might do the trick... give us some exposure, lol.

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ga head, write something obsequious and wussified and PC, see if I care.

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Always nice to encounter someone with an open mind.......

Yep, those are our choices. Fight Club or the Woody Allen Fan Club.


Markle

I think thalo has a point. If it's membership we're looking for than a few well-placed sig lines in the posts of some missionary-type posters visiting other forums will do the trick. All we need is someone who appears to give thing-one about actually improving OS X instead of just talking about it. You know, someone armed with a bunch of charts and graphs and mock-ups and enough technical expertise to get by. Sort of like if we took the combined knowledge of this crowd here and put it into one person. That would draw them likes flies.

But let's be true to ourselves. Let's be authentic. And for goodness sakes, let's be less is more. I can envision a very minimalist home page where, along with the thalo.net logo, all it says in clear, bold type is:

Come inside and see how the dumb-ass 14 to 30-year-old nose-pickers are ruining the world for people of good taste.

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Come inside and see how the dumb-ass 14 to 30-year-old nose-pickers are ruining the world for people of good taste.

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And the funny thing is that in the early days, Steve Jobs' big criticism of Bill Gates and Microsoft was that they had no taste.


Markle


P.S. Thalo, the "open mind" line seemed like a joke to me at the time, but now even I don't get it. Never mind.

I can envision a very minimalist home page ...

This is my preference as well, Brad, almost stark.

Trying to explain thalo.net on the front page probably won't work anyway. It's like trying to explain the original Mac OS, or it's like trying to tell a stranger 'bout rock and roll. There just isn't any good way to explain it to those who aren't going to get it anyway.

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Come inside and see how the dumb-ass 14 to 30-year-old nose-pickers are ruining the world for people of good taste.

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WOO HOO! I love it.

Sure, we can go stark and minimalist on the home page. That's EASIER, lol. I'm all for that. You still want to show excerpts from the forums? Why don't you guys rough out what you have in mind and email it to me. Don't go nuts, just attach a rough sketch, or email me a bullet point list of what you want.

Hey, brother Markle, don't worry... you forget who you're dealing with. I got the joke. You know if it was up to me I'd vote fight club

Thalo, when I have time I'll do a mock-up, but generally speaking I was thinking of something patterned similar tothis.

I might have small black & white bow tie graphic next to an "Enter" button and then below it draw some type of back-alley-like door with a few Pixie Stix and Pepsi cans strew about along with some garish Aqua-ish coloring and label this link (which takes you to the same place) Rear Entrance.

Then you just have a fairly simple column of other links as needed somewhere on the page which includes the login function.

yeah, that's friggin' wonderful. Doesn't get much more um, less is more than that.

I could do a simple Flash intro for shits and giggles, which people could turn off.

Flash intro. Perfect. I can think of several devilishly clever (and slightly insulting) animations but I recognize that I am but the apprentice and you are the master.

Looks good to me.

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Originally posted by mAxximo:
Who are you on Ars, jay?

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I was darkgamorck. I spent most of my time in the Battlefront. Today I have no affiliation with Ars due to the small matter of a ban that I purposefully provoked and received.

I will say this - life without the BF is better. However once I realized that I was simply falling back into my old BF habits in this thread... I had to leave. In the BF nothing constructive was ever accomplished. Until the moment I left this thread nothing was being accomplished here either. It was a situation that needed to be resolved.

Jay, I'm glad to see you are back despite the business about your cussing and swearing at me. I expect you will do more in the future as we discuss matters at hand, but keep it to a minimum. You'll receive no break from me. If you try to get by with pure bullshit you will most likely hear from me in no different a voice than in the past.

Tell me, what are your suggestions about the matters we have been discussing in this thread. You are the closest to an outsider that we have. We are serious people; quite substantial people with a wide range of experiences and broad educations. The stuff we discuss is serious stuff. This idea that we are group of foolish zealots, although partly our own making, is just plain wrong. What do you, as a newcomer, suggest we can do to counter this mistaken image? Keep in mind that a goodly portion of our present membership are actually OS X enthusiasts and the only thing we all have in common is an aversion to bullshit, whether Apple's, or a politician's, or even our own. What are your suggestions? No crap bullshit now--whattya say?

Honestly I feel that the front page is misleading. In my own experience it didnt make a difference as my initial impressions of this place were entirely the product of my observations of and interactions with maxximo on Ars. However I think that the term "Battle Royale" on the front page is pretty much an open invitation for people who like to take their shot at poking and proding.

Bottom Line: It's your site thalo. Do what you want. I don't particulary care either way.

It still cracks me up that we pretty much HAD a classic thalo.net "battle royale" in this thread, followed by people suddenly not wanting to call it that anymore, lol.

Hey, I only pay the bills. All anyone has to do to change anything around here is go after it. You want something done your way, show me what you want. The homepage has my jive on it, because I was just winging it, doing what I wanted. But you want to put a different face forward, I'm willing to shake things up and try some different things. As long as nobody writes up any restrictive rules and regulations, or turns control freak, I'll be OK.

I don't particulary care either way.

You don't care?

I see that you are posting here. Doesn't that make you a whacko as well? Some would think so, don't you agree?

Or is it other forums that invite discussion then cajole or ban people for saying what is on their minds that are actually slightly whacko? Isn't that behavior rather odd? Did mAx seem a bit out of place in other forums?