Easter Sunday, 2019

Letter to BOTW Refugees

Having watched my fellow BOTW Refugees struggle in recent weeks to regroup in a new landing-spot somewhere on the interwebs, I have reached a point where I worry that we might not find consensus.  I am trying very hard not to worry, though.  I believe we can survive, though it may take time.

May I share my thoughts?  My opinion is just my opinion, nothing more.  Please read this with that in mind.  And please do comment below.  Perhaps our discussion here will help us resolve our homelessness dilemma.

I’ll start by reviewing what our alternatives are.

Fortunately, many of us have come to Twitter to keep in touch.  That’s a good start.  But outside of the Tiara’s Ark DM (group direct message) which Melly set up, Twitter is not an ideal place for posting articles to which Refugees can reply.  Twitter ain’t the WSJ.  Tweet length is an issue, but tweets can be threaded, although this creates layers and layers of replies.  My Notifications folder gets flooded with dozens upons dozens of tweets, which take a while to sift through.

I used to be on Twitter by my real name, Jude, but got kicked off the platform when I tweeted something that was politically incorrect by Twitter ‘progressive’ standards.  I came back under a pen name, Fiona Byrd, and vowed to avoid political Twitter.  I found a different Twitter, a happy Twitter, a creative Twitter.  I don’t do political Twitter under my pen name, so generally I only read what my fellow Refugees tweet, but I rarely retweet, like, or reply to political tweets.

The great thing about Tiara’s Ark DM is that what we say there stays there.  It’s private!  And there are no character limits or censors.  But the trouble is that when the group DM is filled with new mesaages, it can be hard to navigate because you can’t reply to a message immediately below the message, you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the thread, and mention the name of the person you’re responding to if you want to reply to something said by that one person.

Frustrations with Twitter have prompted some of us to ask that we move to Facebook.  I’m afraid I was rather vocal in stating that I don’t do Facebook, period.  That is still the case for me, even if all of my fellow Refugees agree to go to Facebook.

Tony has been extremely helpful in opening his Gonzoecon blog (on the WordPress platform) to BOTW Refugees.  I have applied for a subscription to the e-mails, but have not yet received confirmation.  Until I get access, I can’t begin to describe the experience.

Tony has also provided us with a discussion forum on ProBoards, and I do have access to that forum now, but there has not been enough activity yet for me to describe the experience.

My humble opinion is that what we need is a blog that is as close a match as possible to the old BOTW we used to know, where “authors” can contribute posts for blog visitors to comment on and reply to each other’s comments, in an easy-to-navigate thread.  Last night, after many hours of research, I found a template and a format that seemed to fill the bill.  Unfortunately, I was not aware of how much animosity there is for Google amongst BOTW Refugees.  Had I known, I would not have ventured into Blogger.

Pretty much everything I have to say about this blog’s structure and functionality is in the first post and in my replies to comments of those who have kindly come to take a look and give it a whirl.  It’s pretty easy to use the blog, easiest of all if you’re logged in to your Google account before you come to the blog.

I do appreciate that Google is a no-go for many of the BOTW Refugees.  But quite frankly, I find the animosity misplaced.  Even my own animosity against Facebook is foolish, I admit it.  Because you see, all — all — social media is a data-minining operation.  No matter how you access the interwebs, your data is getting sucked up, baby, and sold to big corporations and the government for demographics, targeted advertising, and Lord knows what.  Long ago I chose Gmail as my e-mail service (I have about 10 different accounts for different purposes) and Google Chrome as my browser, because these products offer the best security and are robust and user-friendly.  It was refreshingly easy to set up the BOTW Refugees blog on Blogger (Blogspot).  And it didn’t cost me a dime.

What is Google going to get from me in this blog account?  Not much!  The account owner is BOTW Refugees, as in first name BOTW last name Refugees.  Google’s algorithms correctly assessed that I’m a human being, not a robot, and there were no personal questions asked.  I lied about my date of birth, and Google didn’t care.  I didn’t have to hand over my phone number,  street address, or my first-born child to open the account.

We can say whatever we damn well please on the blog.  It is OUR blog.  However, I would hope that we keep our language civil.

I have deleted a couple of my own comments already, either as tests of the system or because I made a mistake, not because I said a wirty dord and regretted it.  As administrator, I have found that the process of expunging comments is easy-peasy.  I’m sure Miz Storey gets a thrill up her leg every time she deletes a deplorables comment at the newspaper where she now ‘elevates discourse’.  I would only delete a comment if it were from a robot or a spammer or a troll.

Even though I created the blog and am the administrator, I have no vested ownership, and would gladly transfer the account to anyone else in our group who wants to be the administrator.  For security reasons, I doubt Google would allow multiple administrators.

Instead of multiple administrators, there should be multiple authors, people who write the content for the posts (the Admiral’s role of old), at whatever frequency we find agreeable.  So far the blog has two authors: Melly and me.  If this blog flies, I will gladly extend invitations to others — I would need your e-mail addresses, or you can e-mail a request to botwrefugees at gmail dot com (I have purposely broken the address into segments to protect it from bots that sweep the interwebs to glom up e-mail addresses to spam and phish).

I was up till dawn creating the blog.  Even though it was easy to create, it took hours to settle on Blogger (Blogspot) as the platform.  There are a lot of blog platforms available, but the top two are Blogger (Blogspot) and WordPress, and the latter costs money — and from what I’ve read, you need to be a WordPress subscriber to avoid having to go through the captcha process every time you try to log on to comment.

If you’re not logged in to a Gmail account, you have two alternatives to comment, but I’ve only tested one of them:  Anonymous.  Click on Anonymous in the drop-down list below the comment box.  Be sure to say something in your comment to identify yourself, otherwise no one will know who Anonymous is.

I haven’t had a nap today to catch up on lost sleep, so I’m feeling a bit crispy, but this is kind of how I live day to day anyway, especially at the full moon, Lord knows why.

This is Easter, the day of Resurrection.  It is also Passover, the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery.  We need to find a place of resurrection and liberation, a place where our ark can land and we can speak freely, without censors.

Because of my own fierce aversion to Facebook, I do respect the aversion to Google amongst many in our group, and so I will probably shut down the BOTW Refugees blog if there is no interest in it.  But until we find a better, more aggreable landing-place, I offer it as a temporary islet in the vast sea of uncertainty.

This is the blog’s second post, and I hope you will comment.  I would love to hear your opinions and suggestions.  There will also be a third post soon, which I hope will invite the kind of conversation BOTW Refugees can enjoy — and of course everyone is free to go off-topic, too!

I will also check in once a day at Twitter to see how things are going in discussions about where we go from here.  I hope with all my heart that someone will find a place we can all agree on.  I just wonder if there actually is a single place that all of us will like.

We shall find a way.  Or not.  But life will go on.

Hugs to all,
Jude