Facebook is boring. Its more comprehensive than e-mail for keeping in touch, but its not a very good medium for discussion or meeting new people. Myspace just doesnt have the same maturity level or sub/counter culture that we have here. Tribe.net is my favorite social networking site.

They do have one advantage though. The sites actually work.

<<Now if someone could expain to me what is so interesting about facebook, as an alternative to tribe? I just don't get it. Other than that their software and server works, I mean.
>>

LOL!

> Now if someone could expain to me what is so interesting
> about facebook, as an alternative to tribe?

Nothing, really, at least not to me. I find it one of the blandest looking sites I've ever seen. Maybe the appeal is that so many people are on that service, that one has a good chance of finding people one knows in the real world?

If one really is looking for a social networking site with discussion groups that is working, I can think of a few offhand, even after eliminating the ones with troll problems that I've witnessed:

1. Last.fm
2. Vox
3. Imeem

Flickr, Multiply and Vimeo all have discussion groups as well, and I'm sure I'll think of more, after a good night's sleep. There's no reason to settle for Facebook, unless one likes Facebook, which some people do.

What I don't understand is why people would feel the need to delete a membership on a free website. Does Tribe allow people to downgrade from a premium to a free membership? Is that the issue?

I think that part of the problem is that tribe itself is not letting us know what, if anything, we could do. Obviously, the majority of the members here do not have baskets of money to offer it. Presumably those who have big dollars to give it also get to hear about what it needs, what its actual problems are, etc. etc., whereas the average member has little or no clue about these things, and combing through these help sites without even knowing who are staff and who are just chatters doesn't make it any easier to figure out where to go or what to do.

It is all well and good to have all these admin sites, but most people are less into admin matters than they are into counting a zebra's eyelashes. Some updates and announcements FROM tribe would go a way toward generating more interest, though, I am sure ~ and helping put together e-letter updates might well be a substantive way in which some from the hoi poloi could actually, as you say, do something to improve things. There may well be other types of little services that the rank & file would happily volunteer to do, you know, but they need to be informed of the need for these things, or else they will not know about them.

If you were to look at this place as a nonprofit org, you would have to consider that the work of fundraising and recruitment lies within the responsibility set of the org, not the general membership. That is why those organizations focus on their publications so much ~ to stay visible and attract supporters . If basically all you do is post an announcement about yet another downtime (either prior to or after the fact) and create some complaint departments and help desks, people just not going to know anything about much and they aren't going to make it a research project to find out, either.

In the Bad bad bug thread here, you notice that trolls are discussed at length. I find it interesting that, in visiting an off-site spin off to tribe, I saw more engagement and discussion about the state of affairs on tribe than I do here. In addition, I find that many trolls take a keen interest in the doings and directions of tribe than the majority of "regular" types of members. This does make me wonder a bit sometimes about whether or not some of these "trolls" became trolls because they want to be part of the solution, but are never told how they can make any sort of contribution other than monetary for which they receive not even a regular update on where the money is going.....

Food for thought.

"Frankly, I believe you post is entirely off topic for this tribe."

TMbo, would you please clarify which one of us you are talking to?

"What have you done lately to improve things besides wish and moan?"

Again, would you please clarify what we can possibly do to improve things? Obiously, for 99% of us there is no way to help fixing those servers, we don't even know why tribe is the only site I have ever heard of that keeps crashing and limping the way it does, and you yourself are not a paying member either. WTF do you want us to do about this, TMbo, other than be one of the rats that do not leave the sinking ship? Going to the bug tribe is one of the very few ways that is known to me to do anything at all when things are not working properly, just as amialbehermit says.

If the search feature could be fixed, if it actually worked as well as the old search feature worked before the 'upgrade', it would become easier for people to join tribes and find members, and that would increase traffic on the site.

New members come here and they cant find new tribes. They do a search and what comes up instead is a bunch of threads and listings. Tribe.net is unlike other off topic forums in that it isnt all in one place, you have to join more tribes to have a worth while time here. People who have been here forever probably dont notice or realize how much of a pain in the ass this is for new members who dont already belong to dozens or hundreds of tribes.

I think I still like the out layout better.