Hi,

Most people I know like April Fool's jokes. That was my only desire - to pass on a smile.

I am sorry I stirred up a firestorm.

I'll try to remember that people here do not want to joke and take a poke at themselves for a laugh.

Moderator: Please delete my post.

Douglas Edgar van Veelen

So I check in for the first time in a while to see if April 1 might produce a humorous post and find this thread and its contrived indignities, laden with declarations of war, delusions of grandeur, a phobia about injuring the historical record and a nice healthy dose of psychobabble.


@Robby Peartree


"When April 1 shows up they want to write a totally factious story that will live in the internet world for ever and someone searching latter will not know that the story was a creation of a persons imagination."

Is this serious? You complain about being counseled about spelling, but I think you mean FACETIOUS, rather than FACTIOUS, although either could theoretically apply. There's any number of online dictionaries-and this is helpful in making this complaint.

Do you really think people are going to believe that the Big Boy was given a TTTE face and googly eyes? Good grief man, we ought to get on the writers of "The Onion", because if a few humorous posts on one day a year here is the equivalent of defacing the Rosetta Stone, what damage are they inflicting on the historical record?

@steaminfo

"RyPN is precisely what it is. "

Indeed.

And what is it precisely, statements of precision are usually not that bereft of detail when they are so endowed with certitude.

A joyless and fading autocracy, responsive to the complaints of posters who exhibit personalities modeled after MASH's Major Charles Emerson Winchester, whose stridency increases as the search for a purpose becomes increasingly elusive.

"this is NOT a "community". It never has been, and probably never will be."

Agreed, but you might want to take that up with Randy Hees, your fellow keyholder who asserted that it was a "community" decision. While we're engaging in amateur psychoanalysis, that seems like passive aggression to me.

The very fact that it is not a "community", advancing results, but an autocracy hell-bent on a very peculiar laundering of anything deemed injurious to the tender sensibilities of the resident morality police says much.

Saying it's not a "community" might be a fact, but it's also an admission of failure.


"those who hold the "keys to the kingdom""

What "kingdom"? One should should never confuse a tempest in a teapot with a Cat5 hurricane.

"meets your intellectual and emotional needs"

This entire post bespeaks of emotional needs. People who make references to "alpha males" exhibit gamma tendencies -specifically the contemptuousness of municipal bureaucrats.


There was a time here when people used to discuss how many preservation organizations lost sight of the objective of their project as the old guard acquired authority and power and used it to enforce their social conventions and personal biases; irrespective on attracting others.

They were supposed to be warnings, not blueprints. I do however have to admire your assiduous efforts to punch Nazis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AhGYo9TExU

I've been following and occasionally contributing to RyPN for many years now. I think the embargo on April Fool postings came about because a considerable number of them were, to put it in words of one syllable or less, "lame". Some were near copies of early "foolishness" and some were just not funny to most of us. Nowadays we have Facebook (and probably other places) to try our skills at "creative writing on rail related subjects", so that's probably where such items belong.

Over at the RYPN Deleted Posts page, former RYPN poster Jim Templin put it best:

Hi,

Are there alternatives that you might suggest?

Doug vV

Really amazes me that rather than submitting or contributing meaningful content, there just seem to be more posts about the lack of meaningful or relevant content or moderation, than actual content itself.


Moderation is not curation. Critique is not content.

Kelly,

I submitted an April Fools story (see below), originally on the interchange.

I have tried about four times in the past submitting some material on the main page, only to have my emails to Dave never responded to. At what point does one give up?

Bad moderation drives away those who contribute and provide meaningful content. If you create an environment in which people do not contribute, because the moderation standards are wishy washy, or they frankly do not want to put up with the utter bullshit, then the moderation is open to critique.

If you want to sit down and analyze the many faults of RYPN, a reason for the lack of good content on the forums these days is because good contributors are fed up with the way the forums are moderated. It's only part of a larger puzzle though. Lack of a functioning front end of the website to post longer-form content, and lack of a way to push links of content to places like Facebook also cause the content to suffer. Longer form content can help create good discussion on the various fora. However, if you have bad management of the fora, with uneven moderation standards, then even the best front end of a revamped RYPN will not help.

How sad -- the online persona matches the real life person.

Perhaps I should have used quotation marks around "harass."

What's even sadder, you don't even know me in real life, so you have no basis for which to make your statement.

In the past, many museums and local organizations have written superb April Fool's Day articles in their newsletters and publications. Since they are limited to the readership of their members, the rest of us don't get to enjoy them. I would suggest a Facebook "April Fool's Day Hall Of Fame" page for the best of those articles. My favorite was a Pacific Southwest Railroad Museum article about retrieving some historic cars from a World War 2 bomb range. Just watch out for the unexploded munitions.

@ superheater

I glad to see you can show your limits of understanding of others. I am Dyslexic not stupid, and those who can not understand the struggles to overcome a disability then you have even bigger issues. Next time you make a mistake do not get mad if someone points it out in public. Maybe if they do it enough we can drive the person off so we wont have to deal with their limitations. May I further suggest that if you do not understand the abilities and limits of others that you show why the April 1 post for those with limited knowledge to think critically and understand the humor.

Furthermore on a board I watch one young member did not initially understand it was an April 1 post. It took a lot explanation to get the truth out. Seeing that made me realize that when time passes and the environment changes things that were once preposterous are for some reason believable.

Robby Peartree

OK, so here's a good one for you... Union Pacific is going to pull a Big Boy out of storage and restore it to operation! Hahahahahaha, hohoho... Huh? They did what? For years, that was a perennial favorite of the April Fool's gag. Now it's reality.

Quite a few years ago, I was told by somebody who would know, that restoration would never, ever happen. In fact, his comment to a thread proposing it was "No matter who you are, that's funny!" Well, times change.

Given the fact that the only constant is change, and that some rather amazing things have happened over the years, it's not to difficult to understand why somebody would believe a story about how they've designed an electrical package retrofit to a GG1 and will be restoring it to operation, or any of the other regular tales most realize are fiction. (Until they become reality)

I'm a fan of a well crafted joke, but I agree that it's all too easy for stuff to be seen as believable.