I think facebook and other platforms are eating a lot of what message Boards used to do for people right now. I do a lot of the socializing I used to do on this Board there, and elsewhere. But I still hope that some of the fans start spilling over into this board, because honestly, I have yet to find a facebook discussion anywhere that had any content and level to speak of - maybe I am looking in the wrong places, or maybe it's just a bit too easy to "like/ not like anymore" any kind of facebook page to expect extraordinary engagement you often see from Message Board regulars.

(I am still working on the "who do you add/ whom don't you add" netiquette. I discovered a relative or rather inlaw of mine I haven't seen in 15 years. Still, family. But I'm still somwhat shy of adding them. Hmmmm... Do you have some sort of personal rule?)

"Hoher Sinn liegt oft im kindischen Spiel." (Friedrich Schiller)

Facebook is rather shallow by its definition and unfocused when it comes to anything other than social interactions - great for keeping in touch with friends, posting a status update or other titbit about one's life, with all the content that entails.

It's also a vast platform for unstable time-hogs that also latch on to your private data. Then again, Facebook itself is, by design and purpose, a company that profits from encouraging users to reveal as much about themselves as possible.

That, and advertising. So yeah, not a very stable venue for any discussion or debate. Groups, as Mal mentioned, are crap, not being much of a focus for Facebook in the first place - just a way for them to cover yet another social niche and encourage users to stay on for more.

I honestly prefer forums, message boards, email, and even blogs (limited as those are) to Facebook - if anything, I feel that it has a negative rather than a positive effect on one's focus in the 'net. It reduces pretty much everything not advertising-related to a set of social quips, and once you set up enough friends (and added a lot of people you forgot even existed, or never knew about - a good way to keep in touch, I guess), I find that Facebook essentially slices up the time one has available for 'net interactions to things that are smaller, simpler, easier to write without much focus.

There's just more of them. And I'm not sure that that's a very good trade.

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty. - Rabbi Moshe ben-Maimon

By the way, I do keep noticing that people reply to those first posts automatically mirrored on the facebook page, as if they'd been posted there and not here or assuming people check that site, too. This includes, for example, a thread where the poster got no reply here as of yet, but at least one on facebook. Should people be given a hint that their replies might go unread and questions etc are actually being posted here? I thought it was self explanatory, but obviously that's not the case.

"Hoher Sinn liegt oft im kindischen Spiel." (Friedrich Schiller)

I guess what we could do is reply here ourselves with the quote from Facebook?

Dragon's Kingdom - Stop typing "alot" when you mean "a lot"! - Disappointed

I don't know. Some even don't seem aware at all that they're replying to a post made somewhere else, some even seem to think they're reading posts *by* Terry Pratchett, obviously it's a bit confusing to some (even if only because a few apparently can't be bothered to read what is in front of them).
Also, people might not per se agree to being quoted here, and the facebook page was meant to not only give the site more hits (which obviously works) but also get some new members to join.

Is there a possibility for a built in disclaimer after every RSS grafitti post that says something along the line, "This was posted on the Terry Pratchett Message Board by a member of the community; if you want to join the discussion and respond, think of joining and posting there. "

I know it already says so on the site in several ways, but seemingly it's still being overseen.

"Hoher Sinn liegt oft im kindischen Spiel." (Friedrich Schiller)

There isn't really anything we can do about it. I have changed one option today which will hopefully show the exact source of the post twice in future, but that's the only controll there is really. We can't alter any of the wording. A lot of people have signed up here though, but only a tiny fraction of them have posted anything. I don't suppose we can do much about the sillyness of some people on Facebook though, the ones who don't even read the posts properly and reply to what the 'think' it's about.

Instead of quoting them we could just say that some people have replied on fb, just so they know. Or just reply to the threads ourselves and ignore Facebook posts on here.

Anyway, it's all sort of working ok.

Dragon's Kingdom - Stop typing "alot" when you mean "a lot"! - Disappointed

wow there's facebook already in 2005? where was I?

I think you've mistake the Join Date with the Post Date.

Dragon's Kingdom - Stop typing "alot" when you mean "a lot"! - Disappointed