Recollections: or The JC's Top Twenty

I certainly agree that nostalgia is a great deceiver, but I also think it's one that can occasionally be indulged, just as all other lenses through which we view the world can be indulged, even celebrated. This is a very, very personal list and that's all it ever can be. That's all anything can ever be.

Does the tendency to be nostalgic mean that these kind of things are worthless? I don't think so. I tend to be open minded and eclectic about most things. I think the JC has faded in some ways and improved in some ways over my time here. Just like most things: music, film, literature . . . it's all give and take.

And the great things will stand. Bottom line: I don't think I'm overly nostalgic. These are legitimately and sincerely, the events that I recall as the most fun to take part in. As for eras, movements, etc . . . maybe these are the same here as they are anywhere else: largely fictional.

And I don't think my favorite year was the year I registered: probably 2002 shading into 03 for me. But again, I don't think I have a favorite . . .

 

A Movement of the People

18. The Campaign for The Amphitheatre

I hadn't even posted this pick and already people are nitpicking it . . . saying the Amp was less a movement of the people than some because it had moderator support from the beginning. Maybe, but to me it wasn't that obvious from where I was standing. Anyway, disagreement is the soul of human interaction.

The name will crop up again in this thread, but I have to say, at least as far as I was concerned, the idea started with Lord Bane. The idea: a forum dedicated to discussion, serious discussion, you understand, of art in all its forms: literature, film, music, museum arts, etc.

I got roped in to the campaign by virtue of running a first in those days, a hosted discussion, wherein the thread starter works through a list or something like that, with discussion on each entry taking place separately and in order . . . well, darn, like this thread, kind of. My thread was called A Different Kind of Movie Topic and it was based on the AFI?s list of the 100 Best Films of all time. In the JCC, however, it kept getting buried, given the relatively small number of posters who frequented it. So, Bane and his minion Spiderdevil, both great guys, used me for an example when they took it to the Mod Squad. This, they said, is the kind of thread that would flourish in the Amp! It would be getting buried under whine threads or relationship threads.

Was there a market for a forum like that? Or would it be pretty well untrafficked, they asked. Well, we argued it, long and hard, but the mods seemed inflexible. This was a forum for Star Wars. Period. As well, there were those who said that the creation of a forum for serious discussion would bleed the JCC dry. What little serious conversation there was, they argued, would soon vanish and the JCC would become the vast idiotic wasteland that, in fact, it is today. Er, well, that?s still debatable, I guess. Regardless, the first campaign ended in a draw.

Some time later, there was another campaign, led this time by RidingMyCarousel. This campaign I?m rather embarrassed to admit, I mostly laid out on. To be honest, I didn?t have much hope.

But it worked. I?ll never forget being in the JCC on the Sunday afternoon the Amp opened. That in itself was strange. Sunday, I?m never on the computer. It?s my one day off. But I was there that Sunday. And Lord Bane posted the announcement in the JCC: A new forum for serious discussion on art and culture has been opened. It is called The Amphitheatre.

There were still, as there always are, some bugs, so those of us who were in the JCC when the thread was posted and who voraciously flung ourselves upon the link Bane posted, clicking furiously, were rewarded with . . . nothing. A dead link. But that was fixed soon enough and there we were . . . a brand new forum! The informative thread was like a shot of adrenaline!

We settled in and I felt justified. I posted my JCC thread again and in the first few days several people said they wished they had known about the thread before. Which, I felt, proved my point about the need for the Amp.

The Punchline would come later:

November 18, 2002, a little over two years after my grand entry, the Amp would get a new moderator. Me. It still boggles the mind. I just wanted a quiet place where intelligent discussion could flourish and somehow I ended up with the power to edit posts, ban people forever and get into pointless arguments in a private forum or two. Life is funny sometimes.

Next time, we?ll take a look at the opening days of another forum and what, in my opinion, remains the most frenzied week in the entire history

 

I was new to the boards at this time, but I remember the discussions about creating the Amphitheatre and its implementation. I know a lot of people have had a great time in there and it was a hard won accomplishment to get the Amph instituted. I knew when you got appointed to be the moderator that you'd found a true calling here.

Again, another great memory, Rogue.

 

*history meter rises*

great post, rogue.

 

Although I don't drop into the Amph all that often, it is easy to see that it is by far the most intelligent forum on the JC (The Senate still terrifies me) and I'd wager that it heading in that direction would be largly due to the attitudes of its founders. That's a good memory.

Boy, this sure is a history lesson for all the n00bs out there...

 

Ampitheater is a joke, IMO, and it did more harm than good for this forum by lowering the bar for threads. Back then, threads about feces and oddly colored muppets would have been (and still deserve to be) rightfully mocked.

Not only that, but the banner uses the lamest picture of Anakin I've seen. The photographer for AOTC should have been severely reprimanded for even thinking of making poor Hayden strike such a dorky pose.

 

I have to agree. The JCC is mostly one big fart joke and social thread now. But that's just my humble opinion.

 

Fair enough. I know some people held this opinion back when we were still debating the forum's existence and I was aware that some still held it. It's an opinion that, I have to agree, has logic and some validity to it and, to be honest, I appreciate you expressing it here.

And I'm finally going to reveal something that I don't think I have ever said outside a private forum: I am still bitter that what I consider to be the finest banner ever submitted for any forum was rejected by the commitee during the Amp banner contest. It was gorgeous. And there were no huge heads on it. If I recall correctly, there were no people on it at all.

But groundbreaking art, beautiful or not, generally suffers. And so the banner you see now was chosen over a true masterpiece. I wonder if I could find the name of the guy who did that one . . .

 

Yeah, I'd have to say the YJCC was a big fart joke before the amphitheatre. At least the amphitheatre allows for a place for thoughtful stuff to stay on page 1.

 

Well, look at this I found it: the finest banner to ever be submitted. Thanks to HawkNC who actually dug his creation up from over two years ago.

 

I wasn't ever too happy about the Amph, mainly because for a while the mods were like Amphitheater nutty. I remember for about a year any thread even slightly pertaining to movies, music or art would get locked here and told to go to the Amphitheater. But see, the thing is, every forum has it's own community, and lots of people don't cross communities, so I don't know *anyone* in Amphitheater and I always wanted to discuss things with the people I'd known and the community I'd grown up with here on the JC.

And I had a very special attachment to memories and the past. I don't let it ruin my present (actually, my present these days is better than it's been in a long time, so I can't complain ), but I've always been the one who remembers and treasures past events that maybe meant very little to others. So I'm very appreciative of Rogue's thread because he is bringing back some JC stuff, and it's good to know I'm not the only one who remembers and still sometimes thinks about that stuff.

 

That's very true. I have a very close friend who had never posted in YJCC until two days ago. She's been here fro about 4 years.

 

Hawk can create things of beauty? Tell him to make a banner for his own Fan Force!!!

*rips hair out*

 

True. That happened to me, but thankfully, things have been smoothed out.

 

"Ampitheater is a joke, IMO, and it did more harm than good for this forum by lowering the bar for threads. Back then, threads about feces and oddly colored muppets would have been (and still deserve to be) rightfully mocked."

Totally agreed. JCC really suffered when it had the music/arts/film/pop culture topics ripped out and transplanted ito a new forum. It lead to all the linked forum crossover/Spoiler vs non-Spoiler thread woes and I think JCC lost a lot of its older members (I won't say the IQ dropped because in doing so I once was banned for insulting an entire forum) when it happened. I think it was a mistake and the JCC could still benefit alot from bringing both the Senate and the Amphitheatre back into a single high traffic forum.

 

DA and I agree on something. Better go bring Satan a jacket cause he's gonna need one down in hell today.

 

Nah. I think it works fine the way it is. Besides, I really wouldn't care for a bunch of posters derailing Amphitheater-ish threads with bad jokes and flames. Because that would so happen if we combined the two forums now.

 

You know, I wasn't in the JCC a lot in the first few days of the Amphitheatre, but I think that the problems probably came from overzealous moderators or moderators who did not understand the point of the Amphitheatre.

It was never (and this is my understanding from the very first campaign thread and conversations with RMC, who headed up the second campaign thread) intended to suck movie, music and pop culture threads out of the JCC.

It was intended to provide an alternative with threads that were more indepth and more discussion oriented. And I can tell you that those first few months in the Amp, a lot of threads got locked and redirected to the Community forum (which probably caused a lot of frustration . . . crossed wires, you know).

A thread like "List your favorite classic rock albums" is a JCC thread. A thread like "Q Magazine's 100 Best Albums List" is a Amp thread. Just because a thread is about movies, music or pop culture does not mean it belongs in the Amp. It only belongs in the Amp if people are interested in discussion.

This has been the case, from the perspective of the Amphitheatre, from the beginning. Apparently, there was a misunderstanding of the purpose of the Amp by the JCC mods and that caused some problems.

And I still don't think that the Amp should be reintegrated into JCC. I still point to my movie thread as a great example of the problems with that. It gets buried and people who would be interested don't get to see it. That's not a problem in the Amp.

But, bottom line, the Amp was never intended to suck all pop culture threads out of the JCC. Never.

 

I gotta say I love that Amphitheatre banner, Rogue. It's much better than the one that's up now.

 

I like the banner that is up now. It's been made by my friend, FlamingSword. Although many of you might have preferred another one, I would respectfully ask that you don't diminish her work.

Thank you

YV

 

Um, this is the JCC. Haven't you been around here long enough to know that?

 

This banner was made by Dudemeyster, not FlamingSword.

 

The banner currently in the Amphitheatre was made by FlamingSword, so I'm betting that's the one he's talking about. And I don't hate it or anything, I just happen to think that Hawk's was better.

 

Her banner is quite good, but Hawk's banner is cool as well.

 

To clarify: I prefer Hawk's banner to the one currently in the Amphitheatre.