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I wrote up this post when I was stuck in front of a computer for a long time and had nothing better to do. I later decided to not post it because I didn't really care about the matter anymore, having written it down and out of late-night my worries, but then I decided to post it. Then I decided to not post it. Then I decided I'd better post it, and quick, or otherwise I'd spend my retirement years in front of a computer screen, biting my lip with indecision as my mouse hovers over the post button.

So here it is. Blah.

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The actual title of this thread should be The Possibilities Of Changing The Location Of The 111: What Benefits And Disadvantages Will Come From Such A Change, Why Such A Change Will Signify And Lead To The 111's Eventual Death, And Why This Might Or Might Not Be A Bad Thing, but there wasn't enough room.

I'm stuck in front of a computer and have a lot of time on my hands, so I'm going to entertain myself by writing up this sort-of essay. I'm not trying to state a thought or idea as fact. I'm pretty sure the possibilities babbled about in this essay-thing don't take into account a lot of things and don't accurately present how the proposed situations would apply to real life. SO: if you have any thoughts on the matter as well, please feel free to contribute them. Yay!

Anyways.

I don't know about you guys, but late at night when I'm having trouble falling asleep, my mind wanders across all sorts of topics. These vary from 'What would life be like if I could belch fire?' to 'Is it at all possible to become an explorer-adventurer in this day and age?' to 'If I had a mansion, what in the world would I use all those rooms for?' to 'What would happen to the 111 if it got moved out of the WF?'

The idea of the 111 moving to a different location isn't a novel one. It came up a lot after the Lurve got deleted, but I know I've thought of the subject now and then way before I even set foot in the Lurve. Before the Lurve deletion, my main thoughts on the matter were something like "Wouldn't it be convenient if the 111 weren't so firmly attached to Gaia?"

We've all, at some point or other, entertained scornful thoughts about Gaia and how silly and time-consuming it is (though admittedly some of us entertain these thoughts much more or less than others). Most of us have thought about quitting Gaia now and then. But if one were to quit Gaia, one would have to quit the 111 as well.

I don't know about you guys, but the only reason for over a year that I've been logging on anymore is the 111. The only reason I ever venture into the WF is because that's where the 111 is located. I have a hunch that it's the same for some of you So, for some of us, the 111 is the only thing keeping us here. The scornful anti-Gaia thoughts then propose a neat and easy solution: "Move the 111 somewhere else!"

But before we get into the problems involved with that, let's first start with what might happen if the 111 moved somewhere else on Gaia.

And before we get into that, let's first state the advantages that exist of having the 111 on Gaia, on the front page of the WF.


The first advantage is the format. The way the 111 is currently designed, it's relatively easy to identify each poster, find old posts, and know when someone has posted something new without having to constantly refresh and scroll down. Remember that many forum boards have only a name to identify different people, and that old posts are deleted within a set period of time, and that one does have to refresh and scroll down each time to see what new posts have been made.

Also, the 111 is a single thread located on a place where people can make more threads, meaning that all the chatting is located in one area, while we can still make essay-posts and story-posts and so on without disrupting the flow of conversation.

Let's not forget the 111's prime location: the front page of the WF. Though this might be an annoyance at times, it is also the main way in which we acquire more 111ers, and since most of them come from the WF, we usually have at least a starting ground on which to base further friendships. We all think of ourselves as writers, whether we produce constant work or mostly procrastinate and avoid writing. The 111 is a friends chat, but it's also a writers chat. I'm not sure how important the writers chat part is to the 111, but at the moment it's part of what we are.


So, the first thing we'd without-a-doubt lose from a move would be a new influx of people. This won't immediately matter to some of us who already have made lots of 111 friends, but it will still signify the eventual death of the 111. Once we stop growing, we can only shrink. Eventually, we'll drop off the new location of the 111, one by one (lol wordplay!). Good friends will keep up their long-distance friendships without the 111, and maybe as time goes by, we'll pop into the 111 now and then to say hi. But more likely we'll move on with our lives. There are a lot of 111ers who never stop by anymore. None of us can hang around the 111 forever. Without a steady influx of people, the 111 would eventually die.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. But it is something we should be aware of.


Now, let's say the 111 was moved to Friends Chat. The only thing we'd lose is the steady influx of people (steady here being a relative term), which we would lose no matter where we moved, so yeah, that's a given. Everything else would otherwise remain sort of the same... sort of. No more would we be able to wander around the WF and its subforums and do silly things and amuse ourselves at the expense of silly threads. I mean, we cooouuuld, but then we'd actually have to go and click the WF, instead of just popping out of the 111. That little extra bit of effort won't make it worth it for many of us. So, we'll also be losing the WF, for all its good and bad things. I'm not sure how important a loss that would be, but it should be considered if we're going to make an equation out of this.


Now, let's say the 111 was moved entirely to this guild. That would be a much harder blow. We'd lose everything mention in the previous paragraph, and also we'd lose the ability to quickly check if someone new posted (you can't subscribe to guild threads,after all), while in addition losing quick and easy access to the 111.

Let's face it: clicking on Guilds is a hassle. You have to open up your Guilds page and click to get to the list of Guilds you belong to and THEN click on the guild's front page and THEN click on the main forum, and then you could click on the new 111 (which I'm assuming, for the purpose of this essay, will be a big Announcement chat thread thing). It'd be much simpler to Bookmark the 111 Announcement and not have to go through all that hassle, but even then, you'd get the front page, and you'd have to click to get to the last page, and then you'd have to refresh the entire page to check for new posts.

For some of us, this would mean much less activity in the 111. When so many things on the internet is available a click away, going through that whole cycle of clicking would just not be worth the effort.

I know that I check my Myspace occasionally, maybe once a week, sometimes more. This is because it's a bother to check it, and plus, there's no guarantee anything new happened since I was last there. If all I had to do to check it was click a button and get informed if there was anything new or not, then I'd probably check it along with my mail. But no, I need to log in and load the page and turn off the sound so the music doesn't play and search the page to find updates.

That's what I think the 111 would be like if it were moved into the guild. There might be awesome conversation going on, or there might not be. But it'd be a bother to check, and I wouldn't do it as nearly as often as I do now.


Okay, I think I covered the basics of what could happen to the 111 if it were to be moved to a different location on Gaia. Now let's consider moving it off of Gaia entirely.


When looking for a new place for the 111 of off Gaia, the natural reaction would be to make it a thread in a little private forum. The advantages of forum-posting versus chatting are instantly visible: when you forum-post, you can spent time typing out your post and making it coherent since you don't have to worry about other people's comments whizzing by. You can respond to comments made hours ago without coming across as ridiculously off-topic, and you can pop in when no one is one and still contribute to the conversation. Also, a record is kept of your posts, which can be a hindrance to some people, but all in all tends to be a boon for others.

We'd lose a constant influx of new people, of course. That's a given in any situation. However, we wouldn't lose ease of access. If the forum is properly designed (and it is pretty easy to design it for this purpose), accessing the forum via Bookmarks would be as easy as clicking Subscribed Threads on Gaia, and would yield the same results: one would be able to tell at a glance if new posts had been made.

A potential disadvantage would be losing old posts. Some forums automatically delete old posts, which can be a huge hassle, since one of the attractions of the 111 is that it's a near-complete record of past conversations and shenanigans. But eliminating that problem shouldn't be too much of a trouble, I think. I'm not sure how easy or difficult it would be, not being that knowledgeable of computers, but I'm sure that feature, should it be present, could somehow be turned off.

Another potential disadvantage would be losing the visible identification system: the avatar. This, though, would also depend on the forum service we decide to sign up with. I know some of them don't allow visible identifiers, but some do, and what more, you get to select your visible identifier yourself. No more scrounging for gold! No more trying to achieve an avatar that looks like something you can't do on Gaia! Now you can use whatever images you like! Once again, this is a double-edged advantage. Some of us enjoy making avatars and playing around with the features available. For others, it's a mere hassle. This division of opinions could be potentially solved if the identifier image for the new forum is large enough to allow Gaia avatar images. I'm not sure how many people would continue using Gaia avatars for their visible identifiers (I know I wouldn't), but it would be ideal if the option was at least kept open.

Now, for the second issue at hand involved in carrying over the benefits of the 111: the ability to make essay and story/poetry posts in a place easily accessible from the 111, and the ability to comment on those posts in the same way on chats in the 111. This could also be solved simply: have the 111 thread be on the front page of the forum, and have a subforum for essays, stories, poems, etc. This would be an ideal method of getting 111ers to look at your stuff, because it is then relatively private and doesn't involve random strangers peeking in. Once again, a double-edged advantage: sometimes one wants the opinions of complete strangers. But then, Gaia will still exist, even if the 111 is no longer located there.


Now let's mention some serious issues that would come up with moving the 111 to a new off-Gaia location. First off, the decision would have to be near-universal among 111ers. I can't at the moment seeing us moving off Gaia voluntarily. I think the 111 would have to be deleted or Gaia would have to become a paying site, or something like that. Moving the 111 off Gaia would require a lot of effort, planning, and thought. Most of us will prefer the easy way out, and if we've given one that keeps us on Gaia (aka, being moved to the Friends Chat), chances are we'll stay there.

So, nearly all of us would have to agree that the new location is, in fact, the new location. This would mean, I think, tight-knit cooperation. If we were all to sit back and relax while one 111er made a new 111, chances are most of us wouldn't really wander there that much. One wouldn't feel like one was at home in the 111, for one. For another, some of us wouldn't even find out about its existence until a certain time after the fact, if only a couple of us are involved in making the move.

To get the 111ers involved, there'd have to be PMs flying around to get everyone at attention, and quite probably a thread, either on Gaia or somewhere else, where we can put forth ideas and propose what to do next in a panel fashion. We might even borrow from various government principles for ease of transfer. For example, we could do a democracy, which might be a pain because getting everyone's vote would be a pain. I think I might be in favor of a republic, where a committee is chosen by the assembled 111ers to work on the new 111. From my experience with organizing a guild on Gaia with another person, I can vouch that the more people there are directly involved with the matter, the more troublesome and time-consuming it is, especially when you have varied time zones and are communicating via posts. I personally would have no problem electing half a dozen other 111ers to deal with the move, knowing that we'd all be able to post ideas and suggestions in the planning thread and thus give in our two cents for the move without getting in each other's way. But that's just my idea, and I'm not even sure if it'd be a good idea in practice, so yeah.

Next problem with the move would be deciding on a location. I think if it possible to set up a free message board online, so we'd probably have to find one of those services. I don't think that would be too much of hassle, except we'd probably want to find the best suited one we could.

Next problem would be deciding on the owner(s) and moderators. These would exist solely for coordination and creation, much like this guild. It would be good if the owners and moderators would be 111ers who have proven themselves impartial regardless of personal opinions (and thus wouldn't randomly ban someone they don't like or something like that). After all, no one would want to use the 111 guild if the owner would ban people they were arguing with. Also, it'd be good if we had several owners, so that if one of them drops off the net without warning, there'd still be someone around with the ability to handle problems with the forum.

Next problem would be on deciding the rules. I'm somewhat in favor of an anarchy, even though I know this will mean some of you will promptly begin to post really gruesome porn just for the sake of it. Without Gaia to restrict us, though, I think that we'd actually have to discover what our values are, and I suspect one of them might be respect for the other person's eyesight. Ideally, there would be an option for the faint of heart that would replace all posted images with a link to the image, but I'm not certain how much you can do with a free forum.

A lack of organized government, though, would closely resemble the current 111, because really, the only restrictions we have are the Gaia ToS, and we don't even always follow them as closely as we should.


Some problems with having the 111 in its own forum that I may have stated before but would like to go over again: lack of new people, loss of some old people, and claustrophobia. Let me elaborate.

Lack of new people I already went over. But also keep in mind that we will be losing some old people. Not all the 111ers will make the shift, and some who do will post much less frequently. While we all generally get along, we might as well face the fact that we're not the most tight-knit huggy-wuggy birthday-party bunch of friends in the world. Making the shift will be the big first step, and for some of us, it'll end up being a little to much trouble in the long run, and for others, it'll depend heavily on who else makes the shift. So if it's too much trouble for A and B, their best friend C, D, and E (though it's not too much trouble for them) won't care as much about making the shift, and their good friends F and G will not be active without them there, and H and I, who admire F, G, and A, will also not be as active, and so on and so forth. If we manage to make the shift, great. If not, then oh well. The 111 will just have died a little sooner than later.

If we do manage to make the shift, we'll have to adjust to a lot of things. For example, we'll have to adjust to the fact that we ARE only logging into the forum for the 111. Not for anything else. Just for the 111. Even though I've said I only stay on Gaia for the 111, that doesn't mean I don't do other things while I'm sticking around. When the 111 is empty, I sometimes browse around the WF, check other forums, etc. Checking the 111 would change from visiting a wacky forum with wacky events and wacky avatars that also hosts the 111, to something like checking your e-mail, except a very active e-mail account where you're e-mailing with a bunch of people who can all see each other's e-mails. There is a difference.

Also, we'll have to adjust to getting along without adoring every111 without the ToS to keep us in check, or the rest of Gaia to act as a stress-relief buffer when the 111 is being not-fun. Some of us will most likely quit the 111 anyways, without it being anything to do with Gaia. After all, when we consider quitting Gaia, we also (and sometimes mainly) consider quitting the 111, and people will consider quitting it for almost the same reasons as before. Removing the Gaia factor leaves just the 111, but that doesn't mean it won't take up people's time or become boring to them by itself. So, the 111 will gradually begin to shrink.

I don't think there's really much more for me to say. I think I've mostly set down my thoughts on the matter, and the image of a shrinking 111, cosy in its little private forum floating on the waves of the internet sea, is oddly comforting while at the same time being a tiny bit depressing. Good friends will be good friends. Even if we lose touch with each other, we'll still have the memories (and maybe post history, if the 111 is not deleted). We're all real people (mostly), and even though most of us will never meet, we've still influenced each other and amused and entertained and helped out each other on many many various occasions. We'll all eventually leave the 111, and whether we can look back on the same 111 thread on Gaia, as active as ever but with new and different people who we don't recognize, or if we can look back on a dead little world that preserves a pleasant time in the past... Well, there's a difference, but to someone who has quit the 111 years ago and whose friends have all gone as well, I'm not sure how big or important a difference it is.


Your thoughts on the matter plz kthnxbye

It's working fine for the Minilurve.

Why not the 111?

Thoughts plz. xp

All that the prophet Latkes spoke of has come to pass.