Should the watering hole be eliminated?

Nuke the entire site from orbit...

It's the only way to be sure...

ThirstyBarbarian said:

I think we should keep it. Of course it's filthy and disgusting. No one should hang out there all the time. But now and then it's fun to pop in and see if anything exciting is happening. In that spirit, I think it should be renamed the Glory Hole.

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Good idea but your comment has me wondering just what are you thirsty for?

grouch said:

Good idea but your comment has me wondering just what are you thirsty for?

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I think it's clear from his Avatar, he's a teetotaller.

K'Tesh said:

I think it's clear from his Avatar, he's a teetotaller.

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He probably drinks milk.....

You can kill it if you want, it wont stop the trolls they will just move to different parts of the forum. Give the rabble a box to stand on and they will normally stay out of your garden. Don’t like what goes on in the Watering hole? Don’t go in then, safe space millennial cry babies aren’t happy no matter what you give them, so why bother?


TA

With nearly 431,000 posts in almost 25,000 threads, I don't think The Watering Hole is going anywhere soon.

DavidMcCann said:

No....have you met the people I launch with? I don't wanna know what those freaks do in their free time...

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Yes I have - point given.

DavidMcCann said:

When Rocket conversation runs out at a launch, you're still physically at a launch doing something and physically stuck there. While on a forum, when rocketry talk runs out... you can go somewhere else on the internet.

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If a launch gets boring, frustrating, or I stop having fun - I pack up my gear and split.


To be honest, you left out the most important option in the poll "Really don't care much one way or the other".

Regarding renaming stuff, I'd suggest the circumcision thread be renamed "Are you foreskin or against?"

LOL....the poll isn't slanted at all, is it?

The Watering Hole has been a good place to post interesting stuff that doesn't fit in the other forums - music, films, jokes, etc.
Seen a lot of helpful advice on everything from home repair to travel and vacation hints....
And space program stuff in general.

If you think it is merely about posting offensive stuff I think you are being either too sensitive or too judgmental ...

ThirstyBarbarian said:

I think we should keep it. Of course it's filthy and disgusting. No one should hang out there all the time. But now and then it's fun to pop in and see if anything exciting is happening. In that spirit, I think it should be renamed the Glory Hole.

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Well, if that happens might get lots if threads on glass making, but that penis size thread would fit in just right....."pop into the Glory Hole"...swing much??

blackbrandt said:

I say leave it. It's one of my favorite threads. If I see a thread I don't like, I skip over it and read something else, like a good build thread or two.

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Your favorite thread is "[FREE]XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXX"

That prefix should just open a PM to you

H_Rocket said:

If a launch gets boring, frustrating, or I stop having fun - I pack up my gear and split.

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I'm not talking boring....just a lag in conversation. I like a little silence here and there.... but eventually talking about rockets, you can only say so much...so you do tend to talk about other things over the course of a 10 hour day. I hope no one is sitting on TRF and nothing else for ten hours at a time.

ThirstyBarbarian said:

Regarding renaming stuff, I'd suggest the circumcision thread be renamed "Are you foreskin or against?"

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Glad to have Thirsty back.

DavidMcCann said:

Your favorite thread is "[FREE]XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXX"

That prefix should just open a PM to you

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Ouch, low blow. XD

And I meant forum. Sheesh.

Ok, finally have some time today to sit and respond thoughtfully...
Here's my thoughts on this subject...
First, let's get this out of the way: I'm CLEARLY a troll. I don't start threads to offend people. Never have, never will. But when I see a thread that is clearly baiting, I'm just the right kind of Jerk-Hole (read "word that I shouldn't say") to take the bait and run with it. I don't do it out of some sense of "I'm better than anyone." I do it because I believe that if I disagree with someone, I have every right to state that disagreement just as loudly and obnoxisously as the original post. Should I do it? Maybe, maybe not, that's debatable, and my friends often debate it with me. Believe me, many of my friends (rocktery and other) tell me all the time how much trouble my mouth gets me in... BUT, we're still friends, and they understand that I'm an a-hole. Keeping them around helps me remember that I can get carried away, and I try to stay just inside the line of offense. When I do cross the line, I apologize as soon as I realize it. Actually, in a recent spat on TRF, the whole thing ended quite amicably. I called and spoke with someone that disagreed with me. We spoke for 20 minutes and I found him to be pretty cool. Another guy and I PM'd back and forth a little bit, and we buried the hatchet. Those that find me offensive, if they're brave enough to interact with me personally, we usually find some common ground and agree to disagree and move on with life.
Second, I find it impossibly ironic when people tell me "If you disagree/take offense, you can just move on and not click/comment." So that person finds me disagreeable/offensive, DID NOT just move on and DID click/comment, but wants me to move on and not click/comment... ... ... Cognitive Dissonance, anyone?

Okay, now that that's out of the way...
1) The Watering Hole is a "social media space." There will be all kinds of dissenting voices and differing opinions about all kinds of stuff. I was thought, incorrectly, that politics and religion are forbidden topics on TRF. They're not. Directly insulting a person or a group of people is. Knowing that goes a long way towards establishing where, exactly, the guard-rails are. Having clear boundaries makes things much easier for knowing what's acceptable or unacceptable in this particular forum.
2) Many threads in TWH are at least a little bit rocketry related. Example, awhile back there was a thread about the movie "The Martian." I had zero interest in seeing the movie, but after reading some of the thread, I decided to see it. Where would that thread have happened? High Power? Recovery? TWH gave that thread a common-sense home, and why shouldn't it be on TRF? Some threads just have no where else to live on TRF, so The Watering Hole becomes a "catch-all" space for topics that don't really fit anywhere else. Why not have that? Does it take away from TRF as a whole? Nope.
3) Are there threads posted on TRF, specifically in TWH, that are clearly weird and awkward existing on a rocketry forum? Sure. But, having clear boundaries about what is and isn't acceptable makes it easy to know what we should or should not report to moderators and expect to be closed/locked.
4) Are there threads that are clearly just baiting a political/religious fight. Yep. But closing The Watering Hole doesn't stop that from happening. To make an analogy... (WARNING, analogy coming up, don't take this literally!) Should we ban all cars because a few drivers get drunk and run over people? Nope. That would be silly. What we should do is hold those people responsible for their irresponsible actions and let everyone else continue driving. If there was an easy way to prevent those people from driving then we should do that. But predicting which person is going to make an idiotic move like driving drunk is nearly impossible so all we can do is deal with it as it arises. Such is TWH... We can't preemptively stop people from being weird/idiotic/mean/whatever with their posts, but we can shut them down when they do that. Again, clear boundaries and clear consequences for breaking those boundaries is the best way to "prevent" such behavior and at the very least, makes it perfectly clear how to respond when it does happen.
5) All that being said, there are some REALLY off-topic threads in TWH. You never know when one is exactly what someone on TRF needed to read in that moment. And you never really know when someone is going to be offended, so what should be limited and what shouldn't be limited? Seems like the solution to the problem (if there's even a problem, and I don't agree with the premise that there is a problem to begin with), is to establish CLEAR boundaries and CLEAR consequences.

All that being said, I'll probably be a juvenile a-hole from time to time. I do it in real life as well as online. Ask anyone that knows me. I know it. My wife knows it. I accept it, AND I'm willing to accept the consquences that come from such behavior. AND I'm willing to accept that there will be others out there like me. So, yeah, as long as there's a space of any kind for people to interact with each other, there will be friction points. I'm okay with that. And I think you should be okay with it, too. If all else fails, technology is pretty super in allowing us to Block and Ignore things...

One final thought. This is one of the few spaces where I interact with people on the opposite political spectrum as me. The way Facebook works and other social media, it's super simple to become enmeshed in a bubble where I only hear from those that think as I do, and it happens VERY unconsciously. I didn't set up my facebook page to be a bubble, it's just happened over the years. I find it pretty GREAT that people of ALL stripes enjoy rocketry and come together and find common ground. If only our Congress and various state legislatures could start with the common ground of a common hobby, we might live in a better country. I'm a firm believer that diversity is the key to growth and happiness. I had never in my life held a gun until this past November. Never would have either, it it weren't for some rocketry friends. Now, I've got a need to fire a gun again. If I didn't keep spending my money on rockets, I would've bought a gun by now (oh, and my wife is still opposed to having a gun in the house). Anyway, point is... having this kind of friction-point in my life is a good thing. It makes me more self-aware, and it expands my horizons beyond my own little personal bubble. Keep the Watering Hole. Just EXPECT and be ready to deal with whatever kind of "hole" shows up...

Management is sorry to inform you that your wall of text has been rejected for overflow purposes.

Please take a photo of a bunny or kitty and post it in a meaningful meme to explain how you feel.

Thank you.

Hahahahahahahahahahah
hahahahahahahahahhah
hahahahahahahahhaha

Sure is nice to have Thirsty back
from his trek around the world...

Teddy

DavidMcCann said:

Management is sorry to inform you that your wall of text has been rejected for overflow purposes.

Please take a photo of a bunny or kitty and post it in a meaningful meme to explain how you feel.

Thank you.

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Like this?

ThirstyBarbarian said:

Regarding renaming stuff, I'd suggest the circumcision thread be renamed "Are you foreskin or against?"

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Thirsty... For the Win!

I like TWH, the Yard sale, and Research forums best. The rest is pretty hit of miss depending on the topic. I tend to just see all new posts from my last visit, look at the participated ones and anything of interest.

Most of my participation in TWH is in rocketry-related threads, of which there are many. As others have mentioned, the lack of any sort of "miscellaneous rocketry" forum means that a lot of pretty good rocketry threads gets started here. I do often wish that those threads that those threads had somewhere to live that was separate from the off-topic stuff, since that might bring in some participants that otherwise avoid TWH (and I can't really say I blame them).

OK, since this is going so well, here's more food for thought-


since the "what did you do today" thread started, build threads and random "hey I did this today" threads have decreased dramatically in the rocket forum proper.

Is this good or bad for the forum?

DavidMcCann said:

OK, since this is going so well, here's more food for thought-


since the "what did you do today" thread started, build threads and random "hey I did this today" threads have decreased dramatically in the rocket forum proper.

Is this good or bad for the forum?

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I believe we need more build threads, thats where I generally pick up new methods/tricks/ideas.

That being said the "WDYDT" thread is a good place to make short posts/proress report without huge amounts of detail being needed.

DavidMcCann said:

OK, since this is going so well, here's more food for thought-


since the "what did you do today" thread started, build threads and random "hey I did this today" threads have decreased dramatically in the rocket forum proper.

Is this good or bad for the forum?

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Build threads are good... I rarely look at the WDYDT thread, too little stuff of substance drowned by too much simple "I did this", and cross chatter. I'll post in there occasionally, but not that often.

K'Tesh said:

Build threads are good... I rarely look at the WDYDT thread, too little stuff of substance drowned by too much simple "I did this", and cross chatter. I'll post in there occasionally, but not that often.

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+1

That thread seems to move fast, so a lot gets missed. Nothing wrong with it though. I guess it provides a place for the random rocketry-related stuff. Could have been named "Rocket Chat"

No, it should not be eliminated. It just needs better moderation.


[emoji1010] Steve Shannon [emoji1010]

An OT forum is a catch-all for stuff that doesn't fit comfortably into one of the the other forums. For instance, someone wants to know what computer to buy, or if they can use AutoCAD to simulate rocket parts, or what is the best kind of grass to plant on your farm if you want to use sparky motors, etc. You can't have a sub-forum for every possible issue.

The rules already eliminate politics and religion, and maybe the mods need to start deleting threads immediately upon instantiation, rather than wait to see if a brawl develops.

The rules could be changed so that the WH forum has to be in some way rocketry-related, but then that could come down to a mod's opinion as to what constitutes rocketry-related. For instance, discussion of some new electronic device with no known rocketry application might eventually lead to the uncovering of some new rocketry application.

I still think the best bet is to avoid whatever posts and people that you find offensive. Yes, maybe they could end up giving you some rocketry advice that you would otherwise miss, but that seems a small price to pay.

Me, I'm a Bible-believing, conservative creationist; but that's not what I expect everyone to be. It's a free country, and a mostly-free world. I don't get offended when someone posts liberal, atheistic, materialistic philosophy. I just move on. I know that the guy at a rocket launch who does not share my world view would very kindly give me chute-packing advice, just like the one who does share my world view.

Post, read, learn, accept, ignore if necessary, and move on.

Bat-mite said:

. . . . I know that the guy at a rocket launch who does not share my world view would very kindly give me chute-packing advice, just like the one who does share my world view.

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+1 to this. Being a rocketry person makes you enough of an outsider (what with fire marshals, BATFE, local government, uninformed locals, etc. trying to figure out whether or not you're a public menace) and therefore we all need each other.

CzTeacherMan said:

Ok, finally have some time today to sit and respond thoughtfully... (long post snipped)

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You and I could not be farther removed on the political/religious spectrum. But I would probably enjoy hanging out with you, and I hope we get to meet someday (LDRS 36?). Anyway, I think it's great that we can all have our own opinions, exercise our freedom of speech, and throw in some rocketry knowledge to boot.

I wish TWH was more open, because I would love to share what I believe and see how others respond, and I can ignore anything that is specifically intended to be an attack on me or my beliefs. But I'm okay with the way it is, too.

But really, what this place comes down to, for me, is giving/getting answers to questions like, "I'm about to launch a cardboard rocket on an M3700 built with 5-minute epoxy to abour Mach 3 -- any see any problems?" As long as that doesn't get taken away, I'm here to stay.

Bat-mite said:

I know that the guy at a rocket launch who does not share my world view would very kindly give me chute-packing advice, just like the one who does share my world view.

Post, read, learn, accept, ignore if necessary, and move on.

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Way back when I started as a mod here, there were some people who at least occasionally attended my club's launches and gave the mods and the forum some fits. Although I didn't take it personally, I was a little worried about what would happen when we met face to face. What happened was a smile, a handshake and good rocket talk. No discussion either way about a silly forum.