Another one bites the dust?

[usctrojancpa]

So.... my lurk-fu uncovered these nuggets:

http://www.ocreader.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=13389&f=156#p13389

I hope OCR hangs around (and I think it will) but any grand ambitions for a wide readership should probably be jettisoned. It is what it is. It's ok that it's just a clubby group of Internet friends. Despite some best efforts by the mods, this forum really only seems to get going when the subject is Irvine or TI, and even then it's only more hits by the same small group, rarely any new posters.

    That's not for lack of trying. I remember when BK posted about a high hit count on OCR one day, and he assumed it was all TI lurkers coming over to the clearly superior site. I think it was Lizzie who corrected him by saying it was actually the result of an OCPAC email blast with a link to an OCR review of one of their performances. That was a great outreach idea, but it's clear that all the OCPAC people who came that day looked around and saw no reason to come back.

    The forums here are really not conducive to outsiders. They're even not always conducive to insiders, but that's another story! :lol: A good example is sgip...here's a guy who is a major contributor to Calculated Risk and has a wealth of work and life experience all around OC (not just Irvine). Yet he said the other day on TI that he couldn't follow "what they were trying to do over there.".

    "just my $.02" <---hat tip sgip

The problem is that a public internet forum is not necessarily a good place for a group of friends to shoot the breeze. You will always be conscious of the fact that your posts can be read by anyone and will be around until the end of the universe so you will be restrained in what you say. I'll bet bk wishes there was a way for all of his Irvine praising IHB posts to just disappear. Billions of years in the future, long after the earth has been incinerated by our exploding sun, some alien in the far corner of the universe will point an antenna in the sky and pick up ancient packets of data drifting across the galaxies. Once decoded, that alien will wonder who was this "bkshopr" and what was this wordrous place called "Woodbury East."

Those mirror my original sentiment back in March. And really... it's not that all the regulars portray that vibe actively... it's there non-actions. Allowing BK to go roughshod all over the place and "Thank"ing him for it sets the tone for that (an image of Borat yelling "High Five!" comes to mind for a strange reason). Oddly enough... their most moderate members (at least to me) don't post as often as they used to and I think OCR can use more of their middle-of-the-road viewpoints.

But... change is afoot. This was probably a good wake-up call and the people over there are aware of what's going on are they are willing to remedy it... like GI Joe says... "Knowing is half the battle".

And I actually encourage many of you lurkers to become posters at OCR... they have knowledgeable people over there who can give you a perspective beyond our unicorn of a city. You can always come back to the "safety of TalkIrvine" (<-- hehe... see what I did there?).

IHO, you are good people.  It's a shame that I never got to personally meet you at any of the IHB gatherings.  One of these days, we'll have to grab lunch so I can say that I actually met the famous IHO.