The Social Network & Community JUST for Firefighters
Dumbing Down the FFN
Does the FFN understand what is happening to the FFN site?
Without "reinventing the wheel here", one of the seasoned FFN members posted the following:
Between FFN CONSTANTLY adding *news* posts and the assorted games, caption-this and meaningless posts, anything good just gets quickly buried. I guess it could be compared to a tsunami of that crap just rolls in every day and buries the good stuff.
On the other hand, there's way more things to take serious than the slow and inevitable decline of FFN into a facebook clone. Probably only a matter of time before there's pillow fights, mafia wars and farms here on FFN."
What is causing the decline of some of the brightest minds participating on the FFN? Possibly, as the FFN staff redesign and change the format, you can see from the below example that the FFN is really trying to keep the topics varied and interesting. One key thing that you can see below is that once upon a time, there were more than just five forum choices. Is less really better?
Personally, I don't think having five choices is a good thing. As mentioned above, information and articles for important issues such as the Japan earthquake and nuclear threat are buried.
Perhaps it's time to change the categories to enable informative posts to not get buried. Out of sight equals out of mind... Perhaps a separate window component for the games might be a good solution. Regardless, having more than five choices prevents the minimal five choices from taking up what little room the FFN provides for intelligent forum posts.
The existing format consistently has two of the five spots, sometimes more taking up the minimum (5) forum posts that are displayed. What is even more scary is that there are 22,220 replies for a forum post on Word Association and 1,018 replies to another word game. What are our priorities?
Am I alone here? I don't think so... This profession is just that, a profession. I challenge others to raise the bar and support posts that have minimal comments. Use this site to learn more than play. Your life and others could depend on it.
or,
I could be missing the obvious fact that this site is moving more toward the social side. Silly me for thinking that the FFN statement on the bottom of the page means what it says...
This site is intended for use by current and former fire, rescue & EMS professionals.
CBz
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jack/dt on
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Jack,
Sadly, they do NOT screen either forums or blogs. I say sadly because some of each are simply nonsense. Topics get buried because of multiple *news* posts by FFN (usually, it seems, in the morning) and people who keep games and pablum posts alive (pablum posts; no knowledge of fire service required, just access to a keyboard and the internets.)
I wouldn't say any post here is one sided (other than perhaps FFN/WebChief comments), an amusing fact because some people have posted their *thoughts* here in the form of discussions and then got very offended when people disagreed with them. Actually makes for fun reading and participation.
Depending on what you're looking for, try the search function at the top of the 'forums' page. It's not very clever and you may have to try key words, phrases and apply some mental gymnastics to re-word your search to find anything relevant.
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For what it's worth I seldom even bother to look at the blog section anymore. Many of the *blogs* are little more than twitter-esq mental ejaculations, in essence private journals/diaries made public. Ewwwww.
Why would I care about someone's musings on their life? Is that what we've become?
Oh and yeah, I just looked at the blogs, two pages of firerescuemagazine *blogs* (really, what now constitutes a blog?) I didn't know that inanimate 'magazines' could write.
Let's at least be honest here, firerescuemagazine and FFN are two pockets on the same pair of pants and as such, firerescuemagazine's *blogging* is nothing more than self-promotion. In reality it's nothing more or less than most of the other blogs. At least firerescuemagazine presents some form of *journalism* which is more than I can say for those *blogs* by people who think we are all so very interested and fascinated by their life.
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Jack,
Okay now you're just being an assho*e.
(WebChief just spit coffee all over his keyboard and screen.)
Just kidding there Jack. Good luck with you're new position.
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Permalink Reply by Firewriter on
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Excellent post ... agree about not limiting it to five most popular.
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Permalink Reply by Russ on
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Cap; when i was a probie my LT used to say "its never an emergency until its your ass". i hear you buddy and i'm with you
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"...one sample of Massachusetts rainwater has registered very low concentrations of radiation, most likely from the Japanese nuclear power plant..."
"...Nevada and other Western states also have reported minuscule amounts of radiation...
"...California, Pennsylvania, Washington and other states...showed comparable levels of I-131 in rain."
Certainly what happened in Japan has the potential to affect us, but fortunately there still remains about 5000 miles between us and them. Dilution IS the solution to the problem, which is what I've stated in the various related discussions.
As I've interpreted various posts in various discussions there was a note of, if not impending doom, certainly one of rising fear. And for people that do NOT bother to educate themselves, this does more harm than good. Have you considered how many people may have started taking some source of iodine based on earlier discussions? There are some health risks associated with doing so and one should be well aware of them before randomly taking iodine supplements. And iodine ONLY works to prevent the body from taking up radioactive iodine-131, having no affect whatsoever on any other radioactive isotope, but do people understand that, or does panic drive them, cluelessly?
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Permalink Reply by Mike Schlags (Captain Busy) Retd on
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1. People should educate themselves, thus the purpose of this discussion and forum posts. We learn from each other.
2. My slant on self administration of KI is that you can achieve the same thing using topical iodine. Your prior posts with specific information on how to use the liquid was excellent info.
3. As far as how many people may or may not have taken the KI pills, consider that the West coast alone bought out ALL the available KI pills. Again, the word panic comes to mind.
4. The health risks can be huge, and folks do need to ask their personal physician about KI administration, especially when children are involved.
The bottom line Jack for what I've shared here on this forum is that folks need to be prepared in case things do go very wrong on the other side of the planet. I don't buy in to the 5000 miles distance, solution to pollution thing. Not when exposure guidelines written by the American Conference of Industrial Hygienists consistently reduce exposure level amounts for many hazardous materials. Their studies, which are the guidelines for human exposure are based on tests, lab data and real world experience. Firefighters are often times the actual lab rats that dictate permissible exposure levels. Exposure to any hazardous material is bad. Not knowing how to prevent the exposure when possible is even worse.
To not openly discuss this because it could cause panic is nonsense. Why? Because very few folks actually read posts like this... It's more of a social site these days, haven't you heard?
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Actually Mike you've misinterpreted me, or equally possible I wasn't being clear enough because I didn't want to appear to be "harsh" to you as I may have been to others.
To clarify: I thought a lot of what you wrote went beyond education/elucidation and was precipitously close to fear mongering.
I kept posting that at the present time there was no need to worry (although concern is always a smart thing to have under these circumstances.) Your (and another's) posts were, at least in my mind, alarmist, and not in the good way of just raising the alarm but more of the sky-is-falling type alarmist. Posts comparing this incident to Chernobyl, or making false statements to make a personal point, or the constant posting of that (to paraphrase), 'we may not be getting all, or accurate information.' An assessment such as that is based on what, conjecture?
If you choose not to buy into the dilution is the solution to pollution way of looking at it, all well and good but, meteorologically speaking, the Fukushima contamination most likely did not even come close to the jet stream, and any contamination that did was subsequently lofted up into the upper atmospheres by storm updrafts across the ocean. In the process, that *plume* of radioactive particulate was widely dispersed both vertically and horizontally. In fact, the only reason that they are finding traces of iodine-131 is because they are looking for it. I haven't read of any detectors going off in the larger cities or near nuclear power plants, where there is constant monitoring in place (with the exception of one in Huntsville AL, see here http://www.radiationnetwork.com/Message.htm).
So again, I never said we should not discuss this, that is a patently false claim. I've only ever said, or implied that one needs to be cautious in what one says for fear of it being misunderstood or misapplied and to not be making alarmist claims that are unfounded.
For example, in your post on 3/19 here - http://www.firefighternation.com/forum/topics/when-should-you-use-y... you posted a graphic of the 'radioactive plume' that had reached the U.S. Yet there have been no indications of increased radioactive levels until yesterday/today. That was 10 days ago, was the plume just lolly gagging about until yesterday?
You posted about using Betadine Solution as a means of protection but failed to include any instructions on its use, any known contraindications and more importantly, did not mention that IT SHOULD NOT BE INGESTED. For a person hearing (much more likely than reading) about taking iodine to protect themselves, and only giving your comments a cursory glance they might be lead to believe that it is okay to 'take' topical iodine internally. THAT should have come with a strong warning from you.
And yes, you and I can flap our gums all we want (metaphorically speaking) in here to almost no avail. The posts get buried and we move on with 'what kind of gear do you get as a junior' and the equally fascinating 'last word'.
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Why doesn't it go the other way? Successful posts found on the FFN site should be published by the FireRescue Magazine folks and the authors should get compensated, which in effect would create better forum posts on the FFN. This would be a win/win scenario and entice subject matter experts like Kali to contribute to the site. Not everyone is retired like I am... Sometimes, you get what you pay for. I believe that this could and should be the case here. At the very least, you should offer folks a coffee cup...
CBz
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Thank you for taking your time to show your support and thoughts. If enough of us bring this to the FFN folks attention, changes can and will be made... I hope...
CBz
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You know, to be honest here, I never look at the Blog Posts. My only reason for being involved with the FFN is to see if I can help someone out, that's it. This means Forum Posts pretty much catch my eye. So... today, I actually take the time to scroll down and look at the Blog Posts, and as Jack predicted, here's what I saw:
This just doesn't seem right somehow... So much for original content.
CBz
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