3 posts tagged “discussion”

With the good news of the engagement between my friend Jennifer Siebel and Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, whom I had some contact with in his first year on the job, I have to note that the usual anti-Jen bloggers have been more silent.
   Either it’s the time of year or they have moved to other targets.
   It makes me wonder about the type who has a need to target others. I know: I deal to politicians as though they were subjects of sitcoms—but I like to think I do so with some restraint. Men such as Winston Peters or John Key have not escaped my sarcasm, but I admit it is done with what I see as a failure for them to grasp their jobs. In short, other than the ridiculous hours at Parliament, I think I could do better. I believe I have the intelligence to. And if they wanted to dignify me with a response to justify their positions, I will welcome it—not that they would.
   When it comes to someone like Jen, who defended herself on a blog and through that attracted more negative comments, I question: why? Here is someone who is merely stating her opinion, and that opinion is then rubbished by people who are even further away from the subject than she is—yet those people all proclaim themselves experts.
   What we have is a generation that has to lash out because of envy. They wonder why they are not as loved as others, they dislike being corrected by the real facts, and express their disdain by pretending to be more important than the next person.
   These are the people who, with their cellphones, speak loudly to assure others of their self-importance, so that we all know what their business is. And giggle to ourselves about their optimistic view of their trivialities.
   And when it comes to a civil discourse, which one assumes one should be able to have in a medium where opinion-sharing is one of its raisons d’être, they no longer know how to have one. There used to be a thing called netiquette, which I thought extended to the blogosphere.
   I wonder if we can restore our values this year. I’d certainly like a 2008 where I didn’t have to quote John Gabriel’s Greater Internet F***wad Theory again.

Welcome to IdAzuNidA, our 100th member at the Vox fashion magazines’ group! When I started the group, I had no idea we would reach 100. Please do post away, since I hate to be the lone voice (and I am for some periods). I’d love to hear your views on your favourites and on the topics du jour.

In 2002, my colleague Nigel Dunn set up a discussion forum at Lucire, originally called ‘StyleTalk’. This was extremely successful and in the years it was up, it logged up thousands of posts.
   Unfortunately, in 2005 and 2006, this forum was hacked repeatedly—coinciding with the staff difficulties I have alluded to on my blogs over the last nine months or so. Eventually, with other issues becoming more pressing and our attentions elsewhere, we regrettably let the forum die. Its database had been corrupted by hackers so, as far as I know, it could not be salvaged. Perhaps it is for the better.
   Interestingly, we have not had any successful hacking attempts since that change in staff.
   I am happy to say that tonight, we put the forum back, albeit without posts from our lovely regulars such as Lata Tokhi and Joanne de Voe. (If they are reading this, please go there!)
   The forum was also responsible for our discovering Doug Rimington, our regular Wellington photographer, who originally posted there as an enthusiastic amateur teaching himself the trade. I responded to Doug and invited him to a shoot that was to take place the following day.
   The StyleTalk name is being used on another new service we are introducing at Lucire, so the revised forum is called a more boring Lucire Reader Community Forum. But it says what it is and I’m happy with that.
   It’s about 99·5 per cent ready—I have noted some glitches to the people at phpBB, who designed the back end to the forum—but I would love for Voxers to hop on over and see what discussions you can get going. (The glitches do not relate to privacy.) What I am saying is that I trust my Vox neighbourhood here more than any other group to be the folks who cut the ribbons. I’m also happy to hear any feedback you may have, too.
   It’s not the only new service we have there at Lucire—I look forward to letting y’all in on the next one soon.
   As for me, I am off to bed, and hope we don’t wake up to too many bug reports! Have a great day over in the US, and a great afternoon in Europe.