Re: Moronosa is down!?
Postby PenguinJim » Today, 14:35
SuperS54 wrote:
No idea, it's good for a laugh though some people on forums take themselves far too seriously.
I don't think it's possible to take oneself "too seriously" on a forum. These are places of insight, debate, and glorious pedantry, where my Oxford commas offend exactly the right number of people. To visit a forum is to show yourself to the entire Internet, and display your superior intelligence and cunning. Forums themselves hark back to a more enlightened age, a more baudy age of 14.4K connections and terrible puns. To determine how seriously one should take oneself on a forum, consider this: do you receive attention and respect for your words in real life? No? Then come to a forum, and put your overlooked words and unappreciated advice to good use.
You should consider forums not to be simple messageboards, but, in fact, as entire online communities. There is a set of values to consider when developing an online community. Some of these values include: opportunity, education, culture, democracy, human services, equality within the economy, information, sustainability, and communication. A developer's main focus is to create a technology that adheres to the interests, as well as the social and basic needs, of the community. An online community's main goal is to serve as a common ground for people who share the same interests.
People may use online communities to keep up with events, such as upcoming church or sporting events, that are going on in their local communities. Online communities also form around activities and hobbies. They have become an important part of education; students can take classes online, and they may communicate with their professors and peers online. Businesses have also started using online communities to communicate with their customers about product and service enhancements and to share new information about the business. Many online communities relating to health care help inform, advise, and support patients and their families. Other online communities allow a wide variety of professionals to come together to share their thoughts and ideas on certain topics or issues.
For people with very specific hobbies or passions, the ‘fandom’ has been an example of what online communities can grow and evolve into. Modern fandoms, which have strong online community bases, thoroughly portray these displays of development, communication, and connection within their realms of influence (e.g. social media sites like Facebook or Tumblr, or television shows). There are many networks which these online communities communicate through. “Communication,” is a simple way of describing the types of interaction that fandoms/communities do. They create ideas, share opinions, report up-to-the-minute events, and create original content. Whether it be for a grassroots campaign or a creative direction for a television series, online communities have become a significant force for change in today’s culture. Many major events in current news can be pinpointed to origins within online communities.
When developing an online community, it is important to have the technologies necessary to keep members interested, manage assets, and uphold community relations. Developers take into consideration whether all the online community members are good at using technology. If an online community is not workable for some users, they may be discouraged. Surveys and discussions where members may post their feedback are essential in developing an online community. Online communities are developed to encourage individuals to come together to teach and learn from one another.
Of course, when I use the word "community", I don't want you to think that I'm talking about the hit US sitcom Community. That series follows a group of students at a community college in the fictional locale of Greendale, Colorado. It makes heavy use of meta-humor and pop culture references, often parodying film and television clichés and tropes. Community has received acclaim from critics, being ranked in several critics' lists of the best television series in 2010, 2011, and 2012, and has gained a cult following.
But I digress. We were talking about the seriousness of forums. Seriousness is an attitude of gravity, solemnity, persistence, and earnestness toward something considered to be of importance. Some notable philosophers and commentators have criticised excessive seriousness, while others have praised it. How children learn a sense of seriousness to form values and differentiate between the serious and that which is not is studied in developmental psychology and educational psychology. There is a distinction between the degree of seriousness of various crimes in sentencing under the law, and also in law enforcement. There is a positive correlation with the degree of seriousness of a crime and viewer ratings of news coverage. What is or is not considered serious varies widely with different cultures, so perhaps you are simply applying your own culture's values when you accuse forum members of being "too" serious.
Maybe they are not serious enough!