Do y'all know of Nicholas Grinder? That's the pen-name of that tortured olj personality and recently-former old bachelor whose journal was called Lifestyle Tips for the Dead -- rechristened this month as Dusty Answers.

Grinder is at least thinking about starting a forum, and seeking reader input. But he's trying to be sneaky and keep the forum as a semi-secret. I thought I would "out" it in this forum.

If I knew HTML, I'd have a better job -- and, more to the point, I'd paste the link for you instead of leaving you with the work of cutting and pasting the following text:

http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a.tcl?topic=Even%20Dustier%20Answers%2e%2e%2e%2e

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2000

Answers

Since I don't read this journal, I don't care. This forum seems like an odd place to discuss this...

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2000

Thanks, Tom. I used to be a Lifestyle Tips fan and was wondering if it would be be back.

There are an awful lot of forums by popular diarists now and, even with bookmarks to the "New Answers" pages, I'm spending an awful lot of time clicking around the Lusenet hierarchy. I don't suppose there's any way they could join forces...

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

I agree that there are so many forums now that it's impossible to keep up. I'm subbed to a couple of them, but I wind up deleting most of the messages unread unless a thread happens to catch my eye.

It's also getting harder for a forum to maintain a personality. Now our topics just overlap with Pamie's and Rob's and Kymm's, to the point where I'm kind of losing interest in my own forum. I don't do the personality tests anymore because so many other forums do them; political and meta discussions have sort of migrated over to Rob's forum; Kymm and Pamie have pop culture topics sewn up.

What do you guys think, is it time to let this forum die a graceful death?

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

So, the political stuff has migrated to Rob's forum? What's the link? Don't kill your forum yet, Beth. But don't hate me if I take just a little peek at Rob's site . . .

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

Ironic that after not checking either your's or Pamie's forums for over a month (it was taking up WAY too much of my workday) the day I decide to peek is the day you talk about getting rid of the forum.

I have noticed a lot of crossover between your forum and Pamie's. I don't read Book of Rob (I'm trying to limit my computer time) or Mighty Kymm so I dunno there. I think the forum questions that are specifically related to a piece you wrote are still really good.

Who knows, maybe the four of you should just start one forum that you all link to?

BTW - I just started my own OLJ - completely inspired by Bad Hair Days of course. If yinz're interested it's at http://davidgrenier.weblogger.com.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

I like your forum. I think you should keep it. It does have a personality. I read Pam's forum but I rarely post because I feel like I'm 106 years old over there. I don't know the bands, I didn't even know what beatboxing was. I had to ask my baby brother.

Even if it's not lively all the time. It's summer. Things slow down. Folks go out more. It's slow at my page, too. Keep the forum!

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

Beth this is the only forum I read daily and post to semi-regularly, and I would miss it if you shut her down. I read threads of interest on other forums, but follow this one fairly closely and enjoy hearing what others have to say about your entries. I liked the psychology test links and discussions too! (no smiley cause i know how you hate that)

PS. Tom, would you mind posting the link to Dusty Answers pls? Thanks.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

I've always found Grinder very clever, and would read his forum.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

I sometimes read and enjoyed Grinders page in the past, I'll check it out.

Beth, I really enjoy your forum, I hope you continue with it. Yours and Rob's really rule.

Thanks to today's journal entry I now see the chance to start a number of flame wars when I get home from work today, so I'm really pumped.

Keep up the good work.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

Jim, I hope you mean to say that you intend to instigate some spirited debates in this forum and not "flame wars," as you stated, which consist of little more than name-calling and personal insults.

I think that's one of the fundamental problems with fora--whenever a really good, interesting discussion gets going, someone will often come along and ruin it by making it personal (and no, I don't think that Jim is one of those people).

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

I think there are too many.

I remember hearing about how johnson & johnson, in effort to regain more of the market share, was actually pulling products (putting only 4 different shampoos on the market instead of 14) based on the notion that for consumers, too much choice can actually shut them down and turn them off (remember Moscow on the Hudson?). Well, it worked.

While the corollary here is pretty weak, the fact remains: since almost all the journalers I read & enjoy suddenly now have forums, i find i have almost stopped reading forums altogether - even the ones, like this one, that I've been reading all along.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

It's probably bad form for me to agree with Stee (since I have a forum myself), but I do. I find myself dividing up my own forum posts among different boards rather ... meta talk on Rob's, general chitchat on Pamie's (I can't keep up with the pop culture stuff over there; I'm too old), girl talk on Kymm's, garden talk on Lucy's (to the point where I'm probably going to kill off my own garden forum).

I'm just not sure what niche this one fills when you take all that away.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

"rather ..."

Um, I have no idea what I was going to say there. Maybe that's why this forum is boring, because the forum mistress is illiterate. As you were.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

For those who asked, Grinder's olj index is at http://www.impolex.demon.co.uk/2000/index.html

Sorry again that I lack the tools to paste a link.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

I'd say this one has more politics than the others. I consider the credit thread and the parents thread political, for instance, and even the menstrual thread had overtones of "Why are They keeping vital information and products from us? For the same reason They don't make runproof nylons"?

I do hope this forum keeps going! When I suggested mergers, I was thinking of all the forums on LUSENET who are going to get maybe five to 30 replies a week, worthy though they are, and the ones where there's only maybe one thread at a time of general interest. Mightn't those forums (whatever) benefit by sharing audiences? (I speak as someone who once started a LUSENET forum and got no replies.) Assuming the audiences are all the same level of wit, of course.

Random observations: 1) For every Xeney or Hissyfit there's a million bboards that seem to be populated by animals walking across keyboards. I'm waiting for someone who does gender studies of language to look at the boards at, say, Maxim. The findings will not be flattering to the menstruation-challenged half of the population. 2) I like LUSENET better than UBB because it doesn't split threads into pages and make you start with the first one. You can catch up on the new stuff faster. I'm happy that Beth's plans to move this forum to another system are going so slowly.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

I'm new to online journals, and forums.

I read Beth, Pamie, and Kymm, but not Rob.

I put in my 2c worth. Like a comic working live, being thrown a subject, and writing 750 words on it.

I put my forum entry in the ongoing book I'm writing, the great continuous book of my life.

A lot of Kymm and Pamie is beyond my ken. A lot of creepy actors, I didn't know who the creepy actors were, or what they'd done. I've also not heard of a lot of alternative bands.

Maybe Creepy actors was Diane.

There are a lot of forums, and time is limited.

I probably won't read the Englishman. But I would miss Beth.

If all the forums went away, I'd just write about whatever I read in the news that day, or heard on TV, or thought up, out of my imagination.

Like I did before I was on the Internet.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

Oh, keep this forum, Beth. People are still posting to it and enjoying it. I don't know if Nigel is a forum leader sort or if his audience is keen to interact, but I told him I thought he should give it a try. Some forums take on lives of their own pretty quickly, after all. The other thing to consider is not everyone wants to keep up with lots of forums. You've got readers who don't like forums but will post to yours despite this because they're *your* audience. Keep the forum, I say.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

I like this forum and think it has a different feel than the others, but then I only follow a couple of others.

What I like about it is that you ask interesting questions. It also helps that a lot of the participants seem to be around my age, unlike pamie's. There are quite a few folks who seem to be regular posters who I've gotten to "know" here.

I hope you'll keep it around.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

I rarely visit any forums other than this one and I visit this one mainly because you mention it in your weblog enough to pique my interest, Beth. I like forums because they are like a discussion list that doesn't clutter up my inbox. Same kind of behavior occurs but I find it much less annoying because I can click out and never be bothered with it again when a discussion devolves, as they so often do.

I vote you keep it.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

I like your forum, Beth. Something I did notice, however, is that about the same time that your forum really started to get huge, Diary- L started to die off, and now that so many forums have come in to their own (that started both before and after yours, I think, but mostly after. I could be wrong,though) Diary L is a ghost town.

This is not a bad thing, for people like me, who tire easily of watching people intent on defending to death their right to be as rude as they please, and lashing out at anyone who is foolish enough to ask for civilized discussion.

I know there are a lot of forums out there, but I doubt every reader reads all of them - I read yours, and I read some of Pamie's forum, and I like Miss Astruc's new forum, and the odd one here or there, but for me, there is no overlap, because I don't read enough journal/forum sites.

I think that, between the weblog and the forum, you have built a new venue for the OLJ type community, one that is missing elsewhere.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

Beth -

You get the 'life in general' forum - you cover just about everything, including opinions, daily mishaps, & stuff. Even if some of what you cover is up somewhere else, it is, as I think Lizzie said, the culture that matters.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

I'm one of those who started a forum, and I did so for a very simple reason -- because I've gotten really, really bad about answering e-mail. After all the e-mail I got on the topic of "weird fears" I thought a forum might be better for some of these things.

It hasn't quite turned out that way -- I still have more mail than I can handle, mostly because I can't handle any at the moment!

Re: having all forums in one place -- I actually proposed this to Ceej way back when (anything pre-Sophia is "way back when"), because we have so many journals on Spies and it seemed natural to have a gathering place of forums as well. But some other stuff intervened and that project never got off the ground.

My forum is pretty much about my journal and questions I pose, etc. I think of Beth's forum as Rick's Cafe Americain, as in "Everybody comes to Rick's."

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

I only just found out this topic was happening here, which is pretty significant in itself. I've tended to stay away from forums until now, having been disappointed by the content even in diaries I enjoy. But I've often wondered what sort of forum would develop if a curmudgeonly old git like me decided to have one. Would it be filled with other miserable old gits moaning about Tony Blair, mobile phones and people who say "absolutely" when they mean "yes"? Or would it be all about names for kittens, favourite Radiohead songs and thinly-veiled requests that readers tell me how wonderful I am?

Only one way to find out...

And of course having a forum about whether I should have a forum seemed like a cute idea. (How it ended up in this forum I don't know....) I'm still undecided. I suppose it's up to me to think of some decent topics that get a response without lapsing into popularist banality like "Who was your favourite character in Touched By An Angel?" or "Should I buy Snookums some socks?"

Now I'll take this back to my forum. Toodle pip....

Dusty Answers

-- Anonymous, June 21, 2000

Ah, how proud I am to be the Creepy Actor forum. We may not have discussed Creepy Actors, but we sure are Creepy Actors.

Since mine is so new I certainly cannot say "No more forums, mine was the last!" but I never much frequented them (except for this one at times) until I had my own. Now that I have one I really enjoy the sense of community it fosters, and I enjoy the sense of community here and all.

Is there a purpose to them? Well, not really, but what's the purpose of an online journal? It's fun, and people enjoy reading and contributing. And besides, Beth, this forum is so established that you couldn't kill it with a stick.

-- Anonymous, June 21, 2000

I think you should buy Snookums some socks, definitely.

This is the only forum I post at, you lucky, lucky person, Beth.

cheers

-- Anonymous, June 21, 2000

"Creep," I think you should call the next litter Meg Jo Beth and Amy, and as for the socks for Snookums: absolutely.

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2000