M4M site offline?

[Latbear4blk]

2 hours ago, AdamSmith said:

I only mean that forum had a greatly higher quantity of higher-quality conversation under HooBoy's intelligent, light-handed management than under daddy's totalitarian, pointlessly ham-fisted, essentially witless style of moderation.

And that I think the decline in quality of participation, and the steady departure of longtime substantive participants noted in a post above, is direct evidence of the chilling quality of his moderation style.

I did not mean to address you condescendingly. If I did, I apologize. For you personally I have only the highest regard, as you know.

 

I think I get your point, just try to understand the points I am making. You are pretty literate on psychology and self reflection, so you should concede that an argument that places mediocrity somewhere else and leaves you in the side of the insightful contributors is suspicious. And you know I think you are a insightful contributor, my problem is not about you but about your argument.

You would have a strongest point if we had a higher quality participation here. Out of this short time I have been participating in both sites, I do not think so. I see  a diverse quality in both websites. Yes, here you have less examples of blatant stupidity, but It is easier not to sound stupid when you do not say anything, and things here are pretty quite when we are not discussing the other site.

I have no certainty about anything I am saying. You may be right. I am just suggesting that perhaps you are wrong, that perhaps there are other reasons to explain the high level of participation over there, that perhaps have to do with something useful people do not find here. I am not sure what, I am just posing a possibility.

Perhaps what you see as a decline in quality is a generational shift. After a couple of decades of Digital Age language and communication are changing. Perhaps, maybe, you are still evaluating quality with standards from the Gutenberg Age instead of the Digital Age. 

I have no firm convictions about any of the possible reasons to explain the live exchange over there and the silence here. I do have a deep distrust for explanations that place somewhere else the problem and leave me feeling better than others. I am not saying they are not valid and possible explanations, I am just sharing my natural distrust for them and the comfort they bring.

 

[Latbear4blk]

One more thing, that someone else posted I do not remember who or where. Another factor to consider is the software here. It is not as  user friendly as the interface over there, and it has plenty of glitches, at least for me (I used a Mac and Safari).

[unicorn]

5 hours ago, RockHardNYC said:

With all due respect, it's a bit more complicated than that.

Daddy is very low on cash. In the wake of the Rentboy fiasco, he's particularly paranoid about the legal issues associated with photo uploads. He simply can't afford the Feds breathing down his site. He can't afford the hint of any fines.

It's not a good idea to take Daddy's decisions too personally. He pays the bills for owning and maintaining his site, and none of us knows what it's like to do business in his shoes.

The only "advantage" of the other site I've heard, other than traffic, so far, is that they allow posts to be altered indefinitely, and this site limits the time one can alter one's posts (I thought it was an hour, but someone else said 30 minutes). If that's an advantage, it seems to be a pretty minor one. One could also argue that limiting the amount of time one can alter's one's posts keeps things more honest. Clearly, the major difference is that of traffic/participation. Paranoia can definitely reach insanity, however. No sane person would ever confuse a photo of a model who happened to have a fully clothed toddler son in the background as kiddie porn. If I were playing the $100,000 Pyramid, I would not list that action if the category were "Things sane people do." The photo was from the model's own Facebook page, for Christ's sake. Another time he banned me for a month because I posted a picture of an FTM man which showed the man's vulva (not open or anything). He allows pictures of penises and has NO rules against posting pictures of vulvas. I don't know the reason for such a rule, which he obviously has in his head. However, instead of politely saying "I know that this is not in the list of rules I have at the top of this forum, but in the future would you mind not posting photos including female genitalia?" he chose to ban me for a non-existent rule, without so much as a notice. This is not just extremely rude (especially to a fruitful contributor), but quite insane as well, as I see it. The only one with cause to be "paranoid" is the hapless contributor who never knows what's going to set him off. But this "paranoia" would be based on real facts and past behaviors, rather than on unfounded imagination. Whenever I'm over there, I feel I'm walking on eggshells, and never know what's going to set him off.  

[unicorn]

Amusingly, I glanced through a string in the other forum entitled "Do you forgive and forget or hold a grudge?". In it, Guy Fawkes, who I'm assuming is the man who runs the site, writes, literally, "I forgive and forget; it's not worth holding on to the negativity."  This from the man who's apparently banned a number of posters permanently. 

 

[Latbear4blk]

@unicorn, I am not into beating Daddy, but I do take your first point. Let's accept the only advantage of the other site is participation, even when I disagree. 

My new question would then be, why do people participate so actively under Daddy's soulless tyranny and do not open their sexy mouths under Oz's democratic paradise?

[AdamSmith]

26 minutes ago, Latbear4blk said:

My new question would then be, why do people participate so actively under Daddy's soulless tyranny and do not open their sexy mouths under Oz's democratic paradise?

Russian meddling?

[unicorn]

33 minutes ago, Latbear4blk said:

@unicorn, I am not into beating Daddy, but I do take your first point. Let's accept the only advantage of the other site is participation, even when I disagree. 

My new question would then be, why do people participate so actively under Daddy's soulless tyranny and do not open their sexy mouths under Oz's democratic paradise?

As has been stated multiple times before, people go there, as I do, because there are more responses likely to any posting or question. It's simply a more active site. Bigger is not necessarily better, but sometimes people just go where the volume is. BlueRay wasn't better than HD-DVR, but it won out because of volume.

[Suckrates]

37 minutes ago, Latbear4blk said:

@unicorn, I am not into beating Daddy, but I do take your first point. Let's accept the only advantage of the other site is participation, even when I disagree. 

My new question would then be, why do people participate so actively under Daddy's soulless tyranny and do not open their sexy mouths under Oz's democratic paradise?

I think its because the perception of Boytoy is that its a TWINKY site?   If you study the type of guy the members over at Daddy's are attracted to, its more of a mature, studly type guy, or a muscly hunk.  The WHY they put up with Daddys tyrannical rule is that they feel there is no other site to offer them what Daddys site does.   Maybe that's true... Daddy's site is the road most travelled, but a little research might turn up other options.  

But if this conversation continues, Lucky will be questioning the sincerity of EVERY persons comments here that is speaking negatively of Daddy, but still participating on HIS site.   Right Lucky ???  

[RockHardNYC]

7 hours ago, AdamSmith said:

You only need to look back, if you care to, at 15-year-ago-plus content still archived on the M4M forums to see the tragic comedown from then to now, there.

"If you care to" are the key words here. Who on earth wants to do a 15-year search over at the "other site?" Spend just 3-minutes with the software's "Search" feature, and you'll quickly realize that The Judas Cradle from Medieval times would be a far more enjoyable form of torture.

5 hours ago, AdamSmith said:

I only mean that forum had a greatly higher quantity of higher-quality conversation under HooBoy's intelligent, light-handed management than under daddy's totalitarian, pointlessly ham-fisted, essentially witless style of moderation.

As much as I respect Adam's intelligence, this quote is playing havoc on my recent brow furrow Botox treatment.

While it's true that the "conversations" in the early Hooboy days were often wordy and spirited, there was a group of haters, which included the self-haters, that made the board a very unwelcome place for anyone with a thinner skin or any decent guy who respected gentlemanly behavior. If you didn't know how to swim with sharks or deal with evil, hateful queens, you would not last long.

I've talked about this before: Benjamin Nicholas was the only reason I joined the Hooboy site. I had been an avid reader of the review site for years, but I always disliked the tone of the forum and never joined. Several of the haters were out to tar and feather BN, simply because he enjoyed gossip. They found that so offensive, coupled by the fact that he was selling himself as high-end.

BN's marketing concept deserved scrutiny, but I saw and appreciated his fundamental talents. As a secret fan, I joined Hooboy's forum to challenge the haters, and within six short months, I aged ten years.

I suspect many of the haters from those bygone days have died. When a personality is so cancerous, which is the lifeblood of many TROLLS, it eventually affects their health. And then they expire. These are not happy folks with productive lives we are talking about.

IMO, Daddy got rid of many of the miserable, self-hating, troublemakers. With Time-Outs and Bannings, he cleared the board. It took a long time. Many of the assholes were TROLL ADDICTS, similar to the current ONE that continues to spread his particular style of plague.

Avoiding the meme "Breakdown" and ignoring the countless "freedom of speech" screams, Daddy helped foster a new esprit de corps, which I hear is quite evident at the Palm Springs events. Yes, the ones Lucky started. Daddy's board is at its best when the TROLLs are banned, and most serious thinkers know this and say so privately.

Unfortunately, expert moderation is not easy to come by. Good moderation requires time, energy, and writing skill. You have to know how to manage personalities, which is a talent, and who wants to manage a bunch of loud mouth, egotistical drag queens, especially when the work won't yield much profit.

Escort chat is no longer the novelty it once was. How many times can you ask the same questions over and over again? The answers get regurgitated, so the board can't really be what it once was. I see little point in looking backwards.

There still is promise. The career of escorting will never die. Gay men will always have a need to talk about their research and their adventures. They will always support a worthwhile forum effort. We just have to wait for someone to create one.

[Latbear4blk]

17 minutes ago, unicorn said:

As has been stated multiple times before, people go there, as I do, because there are more responses likely to any posting or question. It's simply a more active site. Bigger is not necessarily better, but sometimes people just go where the volume is. BlueRay wasn't better than HD-DVR, but it won out because of volume.

So you are telling me there is more participation because there is more participation. Not a wise reasoning path.

[Latbear4blk]

12 minutes ago, Suckrates said:

I think its because the perception of Boytoy is that its a TWINKY site?   If you study the type of guy the members over at Daddy's are attracted to, its more of a mature, studly type guy, or a muscly hunk.  The WHY they put up with Daddys tyrannical rule is that they feel there is no other site to offer them what Daddys site does.   Maybe that's true... Daddy's site is the road most travelled, but a little research might turn up other options.  

But if this conversation continues, Lucky will be questioning the sincerity of EVERY persons comments here that is speaking negatively of Daddy, but still participating on HIS site.   Right Lucky ???  

 

Yes, I did notice over there a preference for the older gentlemen, and I do remember pejorative comments made in the other site about boytoy's name. It would not be bad to have two places targeting different niches. But the question remains, why do people here do not want to share? We had this conversation before and you think people into twinks is ashamed and afraid of the pedophile stigma, but it does not make sense to me. Internet is supposed to be the place where marginalized people come out hidden behind fantasy avatars.

[MsAnn]

Calling it "soulless tyranny" is a misguided characterization of the site, and your characterization of this being a 'democratic paradise' is hardly accurate in my opinion. From someone who has posted on Daddy's for somewhere around six years and also been banned a time or two or three, I much prefer a site where admin doesn't allow bad behavior among it's members. Personally I understand his caution and sometimes seemingly heavy handedness at moderating. Admin has cautioned me on numerous occasions, and in the end they were absolutely correct in putting out the fires. 

You can't have any kind of civil discourse when posters are allowed to have rants that go unabated. When threads start to lose focus and emotions run high and become personal, there is a certain comfort in knowing that admin is there to put a lid on the pot. Allowing someone to post endlessly about how they have been wronged, is entertaining, but does nothing to generate any quality. Posters here seem to carry endless grudges and constantly attack other posters that they would like to drive off the site. I think they do it, because they can, and it's allowed, but It's like a car wreck, I slow down to look, then I move on.

When all is said and done, when it's mentioned that it's just participation, or it's just more traffic, that's BS. There are some pretty interesting men and women over there. Very diverse, highly intelligent from a multitude of backgrounds. As I mentioned before, the often spirited posts in the political forum alone is worth being involved in.

Having faced the brunt of troll behavior from a bunch of psychotic vindictive queens, I appreciated admins attempt, not always successful, at controlling the direction of the forum. Moderating is not an easy thing to do. There is a fine line that sometimes gets crossed, but in the end, it makes for a more civil place to post. 

Lastly...I post there because I find that by and large, the topics and threads are more interesting, conversations more robust, the debate more spirited, and the posters more diverse. It's as simple as that really...and well of course the 'gallery', there is that. My hat off to those that contribute there. You know who you are. 

[Suckrates]

26 minutes ago, Latbear4blk said:

 

Yes, I did notice over there a preference for the older gentlemen, and I do remember pejorative comments made in the other site about boytoy's name. It would not be bad to have two places targeting different niches. But the question remains, why do people here do not want to share? We had this conversation before and you think people into twinks is ashamed and afraid of the pedophile stigma, but it does not make sense to me. Internet is supposed to be the place where marginalized people come out hidden behind fantasy avatars.

All anonymity does is give people Bravado to be assholes, like the current Rockhard,  who throws the word Troll around like its his middle name,  but as for their comfort with their sexuality, preferences  and companionship choices, not so much....  There is still alot of paranoia in this area.  

[Tartegogo]

It also depends what you are looking for: if you just want to post about a musical instrument, for your own pleasure of posting, I guess anywhere could work. But if you actually want to find out stuff about an escort, you need the volume and the participation to have a chance to find someone that actually know that one escort, among the 4000 or 5000 advertising on RM alone and in the US alone. 

[Tartegogo]

47 minutes ago, Latbear4blk said:

 

Yes, I did notice over there a preference for the older gentlemen, and I do remember pejorative comments made in the other site about boytoy's name. It would not be bad to have two places targeting different niches. But the question remains, why do people here do not want to share? We had this conversation before and you think people into twinks is ashamed and afraid of the pedophile stigma, but it does not make sense to me. Internet is supposed to be the place where marginalized people come out hidden behind fantasy avatars.

I do remember how I was treated there when I said I was interested in hiring escorts who are advertising at 18 yo or 19 yo. (Spoiler alert: not well).

The great thing about M4M, is that you can unilaterally mute someone and never read anything from them again. 

Do we have this feature here? I haven’t found how to do it yet. I was going to do it on KevinC but he got kicked out by the admins. 

[Guest Larstrup]

3 minutes ago, Tartegogo said:

The great thing about M4M, is that you can unilaterally mute someone and never read anything from them again. 

Do we have this feature here? I haven’t found how to do it yet. I was going to do it on KevinC but he got kicked out by the admins. 

mouse-over members name in a post. A drop-down box will appear where you can click on ignore.

[Tartegogo]

2 minutes ago, Larstrup said:

mouse-over members name in a post. A drop-down box will appear where you can click on ignore.

Ah, I am using my iPad, that is why I didn’t see this. No mouse! 

[Guest Larstrup]

6 minutes ago, Tartegogo said:

Ah, I am using my iPad, that is why I didn’t see this. No mouse! 

 I’m checking on my iPhone now and just tapped on your profile to see if there was an ignore function there on your profile. I don’t see one so perhaps It’s a mouse function only, not sure however. 

The downside of ignoring a member however, is that the flow of conversation becomes very disjointed and difficult to follow when  The person you ignored is involved in it.

[RA1]

I started losing interest in the other site when a moderator made the simple mistake of calling Long Beach LGA which is LGB.  LGA being LaGuardia.  I gently suggested the actual correct identifier.  The next time I looked at that series of posts, the error was gone.  

The error was insignificant; the act of making it disappear unforgivable.

Best regards,

RA1

[Guest Larstrup]

3 minutes ago, RA1 said:

 

The error was insignificant; the act of making it disappear unforgivable.

 

Wasn't it your intent to have it corrected when you brought it to his attention?

[RA1]

He didn't correct it, he eliminated it.  My comment was intended to be similar to calling attention to an untied shoe lace.  No big deal. Had he said that is correct I would have thought nothing more.

Best regards,

RA1

[Guest Larstrup]

5 minutes ago, RA1 said:

He didn't correct it, he eliminated it.  My comment was intended to be similar to calling attention to an untied shoe lace.  No big deal. Had he said that is correct I would have thought nothing more.

Best regards,

RA1

Ah! I see.  Let’s just be grateful he wasn’t a commercial airline pilot!  

[AdamSmith]

3 hours ago, MsAnn said:

You can't have any kind of civil discourse when posters are allowed to have rants that go unabated. When threads start to lose focus and emotions run high and become personal, there is a certain comfort in knowing that admin is there to put a lid on the pot.

I can only report that I enjoyed greatly posting Over There in HooBoy's time, when the joint was like the Pleistocene (or whenever), occupied by predatory, highly intelligent for the day, meat-eating dinosaurs of every stripe.

O the day for woodlawn... Fin Fang Foom... Rick Munroe at the sharp end of his knife!...

Et al.!

[MsAnn]

1 hour ago, AdamSmith said:

I can only report that I enjoyed greatly posting Over There in HooBoy's time, when the joint was like the Pleistocene (or whenever), occupied by predatory, highly intelligent for the day, meat-eating dinosaurs of every stripe.

O the day for woodlawn... Fin Fang Foom... Rick Munroe at the sharp end of his knife!...

Et al.!

Well yes. Gratefully members have linked me to post from a time long gone, some were legendary. It is not to be now, so one takes what one can get.

[kjun12]

I started this topic but it has gotten far off tract.  Please stop posting your bullshit and start your own topic if you have something to say off topic.