Messages

1

General Comments / Farewell to Ornery

« on: August 15, 2021, 05:50:22 AM »

Kristine Card has informed me that she and OSC have decided to wind down their online presences, and to stop hosting Ornery and Hatrack River in early September sometime. 

The admin at Hatrack has started a thread to let people say goodbye and connect with one another beyond the forums.  Please feel free to use this thread in the same way, and if you'd like, leave your contact information for the other members.

I have spoken with Kristine Card about continuing to host ornery.org and the ornery forums on my webserver. She said they are open to that, so please let me know if you'd like for the forums and guest-article page to continue. If there is enough interest, I will make the arrangements to have it transferred to my server.  We should be able to transition seamlessly, perhaps with a few days of downtime.

With the advent of Facebook and Reddit, old bbc-style forums like this have been slowly dying off.  We've seen our membership drop significantly since the early/mid 2000's, and I think we've got only a dozen or two active posters now.  Perhaps it makes sense to let the forum close as OSC leaves the picture, or maybe it's worth maintaining. What do you guys think?

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General Comments / Re: Packing the Court

« on: April 12, 2021, 02:53:06 PM »

Aris: Please stop depending on the censoring feature. It is not appropriate to use language like that here. The Cards have asked us to treat this like forum their living room, and they do not want us cursing in their space.

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General Comments / Re: Russian Influence, where is the beef?

« on: October 11, 2020, 05:06:48 PM »

Criticism of ideas is welcome and encouraged here, but please remember not to attack one another personally.

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General Comments / Re: We gotta talk about Uncle Joe

« on: February 29, 2020, 02:17:27 PM »

We're coming into the election seasons and tensions are starting to get high.  I'd like to remind everyone to please treat each other with kindness and respect.  Many of you are starting to approach or cross the appropriate line. Please stay far away from the line. If I have to temporarily ban a member during the election season, I may decide to have the ban last until November 5th.  I do not want to have to police every word you say. Please, be more kind and more respectful to one another.

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General Comments / Re: Welcome to the New Ornery American Forums!

« on: October 02, 2019, 04:42:20 PM »

I haven't noticed that. I just went to ornery.org and clicked "forums" and was brought to the forum front page with the three forums visible. Can you tell me exactly what you're doing so I can take a look?

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General Comments / Re: The Hunt

« on: August 16, 2019, 05:03:04 PM »

Crunch: Your email on record does not appear to be functioning. Please update your email address and contact me at OrneryModerator@hotmail.com. -OrneryMod

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General Comments / Re: Trump's asylum rule

« on: July 25, 2019, 02:45:19 PM »

Blanket warning: please respond in earnest or don't respond at all.  Personal attacks, snide comments, and bickering aren't welcome here.

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General Comments / Re: Proposed book review group, plus the "Gospel of Dog"

« on: February 06, 2019, 10:14:02 PM »

We tried a book club in the past and it had a moderate success for a while. I think it would be great to run one again. Feel free to run it here in General Comments, I don't think we need a separate forum for it. 

It's been a long time since I've seen active moderation here.

Please don't jinx it. 

9

General Comments / Re: What could Trump do to cause his supporters to vote against him?

« on: August 23, 2018, 02:12:11 PM »

Please remember that we are here to discuss political and philosophical issues with one another, and it is generally not productive or permissible to negatively characterize how we believe others are acting or what their motivations might be. Doing so invariably leads to increased tensions and reduces the quality and enjoyability of the conversation for everyone involved.

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General Comments / Re: Welcome to the New Ornery American Forums!

« on: December 25, 2016, 06:18:17 PM »

Merry Christmas everyone!

And thank you for being an awesome community this past year. Despite a highly contentious election, I don't think we had any serious issues arise. I think we all found that happy medium of hard discussions without personal attacks, and I'm grateful for that. Looking forward to an even better 2017.

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General Comments / Re: Who is left?

« on: September 26, 2016, 11:12:02 PM »

I feel silly saying it, but I kind of resented the migration and feeling like all my history on this board was being wiped out.

Sorry. We kept the old boards in place to try to mitigate that some, but I have a similar regret. 

If it's any small consolation, there appeared to be issues with the previous forum's database, where older threads were becoming mangled. Seeing that was the final push I needed for helping implement the new forums.

12

General Comments / Re: Why can't they just give Islamist honor spankings?

« on: July 31, 2016, 11:48:55 PM »

Pete and DJ: Please see your emails. -OrneryMod

My apologies to the rest of the members for allowing this to go on for so long; I was away from my desktop computer for longer than expected.

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General Comments / Re: Yoo hoo, Pyr, if you care about black lives, answer me this

« on: March 18, 2016, 02:42:13 AM »

Pete: Please see your email. -OrneryMod

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General Comments / Re: Election Day

« on: March 17, 2016, 01:24:12 AM »

AI and Pete: Stop it.

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General Comments / Re: Welcome to the New Ornery American Forums!

« on: December 14, 2015, 01:25:42 PM »

I've added a link to the old forums in the index of these forums, for convenience: http://www.ornery.org/forum/index.php

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General Comments / Re: Welcome to the New Ornery American Forums!

« on: December 14, 2015, 01:22:33 PM »

Glad to see we're finally on a newer platform.

Are there plans to migrate the content from the old forum?

I'd like to, but there are some problems with doing so. First, someone would need to write a translator from the old database to the new database. Second, some user names with unique characters (like ') are not permitted on this software, so we would have to work out a mapping from the old user name to the new user name. Finally, something was slowly breaking with the old database; a lot of old threads were not loading correctly, and posts seemed to be missing.

Finally, there is cost, security, and time concerns.

For the time being, we are keeping the old forums as "read only". This is very similar to what things would be like if we imported the old threads, so it seems like a "good enough" solution.

Is this still hosted by the OSC?  Shouldn't there be a link on the front page going back to his "front page" of Ornery.org?

Yes. I believe the system administrator is making that change this week. I know he has a heavy workload, so it might take a little time.

Is it a general setting, or a personal setting to have the forum sorted so that the threads with the most recent posts are on top?  Be darn inconvenient if it can't be done at all.

The general setting is the same as the old forums: newer posts on the bottom.

I believe there is a personal option you can choose to reverse that.

edit: here is a link to that settings page: http://www.ornery.org/forum/index.php?action=profile;area=theme;u=26

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General Comments / How to Submit An Article for Publication on the Front Page

« on: December 12, 2015, 12:19:45 AM »

As you are likely aware, our front page has a place for guest articles to be published.

Mrs. Card has expressed an interest in increasing the quantity and quality of the articles published in that section and so she asked me to make a small announcement here to make sure that every member of the forum knows that they are welcome and invited to submit articles for publication.

There is no requirement regarding content: all reasonable points of view and political persuasions are welcome.

Submissions can be emailed to me at: OrneryModerator@hotmail.com.

18

General Comments / Terrorized Americans

« on: December 12, 2015, 12:18:12 AM »

Link to the topic on the old forums.

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General Comments / San Bernadino Attack

« on: December 12, 2015, 12:17:57 AM »

Link to the topic on the old forums.

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General Comments / Hell bent on the Caliphate

« on: December 12, 2015, 12:17:37 AM »

Link to the topic on the old forums.

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General Comments / A comprehensive guide to Republican abuse of Benghazi

« on: December 12, 2015, 12:17:15 AM »

Link to the topic on the old forums.

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General Comments / Finland is considering giving every citizen €800 a month

« on: December 12, 2015, 12:16:59 AM »

Link to the topic on the old forums.

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General Comments / What is a mass shooting?

« on: December 12, 2015, 12:16:38 AM »

Link to the topic on the old forums.

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General Comments / Bernie Sanders says and does

« on: December 12, 2015, 12:15:55 AM »

Link to Topic on Old Forums

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General Comments / here comes the next ice age

« on: December 12, 2015, 12:15:35 AM »

Link to Topic on Old Forums

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General Comments / The defensiveness of the pro-pot crowd

« on: December 12, 2015, 12:14:52 AM »

Link to Topic on Old Forums

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General Comments / Obamacare Predictions for May 2015

« on: December 12, 2015, 12:14:05 AM »

Old Forum Topic

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General Comments / Welcome to the New Ornery American Forums!

« on: December 12, 2015, 12:13:42 AM »

We have migrated the Ornery Forums to new software.

The old forum has been disabled, but will remain available for reference.

Accessing your Acccount

• Password Reset - In order to access your account, you will need to reset your password. You can do that here: http://www.ornery.org/forum/index.php?action=reminder. Please enter your username or email address from the old forums, and a password reset link will be sent to you.
• Account Missing -  If your account does not exist, please simply register it, using the same email address you registered with on the old forums. If you do not have access to that email address, please contact me to discuss the matter.
• Problems - If you have any trouble accessing your account, please email me for assistance: OrneryModerator@hotmail.com.

Continuing Conversations from the Old Forums
There is no completely painless way to way to make this transition. After reviewing the matter for a bit, we decided to disable the old forums immediately. If you are in the middle of a conversation on the previous board, I recommend that you start a new thread here to continue that conversation. For the posts that were active in the past few days, I have created these topics already. If it goes back more than a week and you'd like to pick up the conversation, please follow suit.

Inactive Forums Removed
The Ornery Writers Workshop, Ornery U, and the Ornery American Book Club have been removed, due to inactivity. Posts that used to be appropriate for those forums can now be posted in general comments instead. If there is significant interest in bringing these forums back, let me know.

New Features

• Like Posts - You can now "like" posts.
• WYSWIG Editor - You can use a visual editor by clicking the appropriate button when making a post.
• Additional UBB Tags Enabled - The following tags are enabled, feel free to play with them: abbr acronym anchor br code email hr nobbc pre s sub sup

If you run into any issues with the new software, please contact me by email (or post here) and let me know what problems you're facing so I can help resolve the matter.

Once the forums are up and running, we can look at enabling some of the other features of this software, like private messages and polls.