Are there restorative benefits to a vacation from fluther?

Don’t flatline on us, @stanleybmanly!

Your not going to leave us are you??
Hope it wasn’t something I said?

Not really. WHen I go on business trips, I generally don’t fluther for 3–4 days at a time. I don’t feel better, and I don’t feel worse for the absence. And when I return, I’m every bit as cynical as I was before.

I’be kinda been off fluther the last week or so, pop in here and there, not really restorative but it’s been rather dullsville lately so I’ve been doing other things. I’m a fluther loyalsit but a little space is always good in our relationships. haha

Damn Fluther. If it wasn’t for this place, I could be getting married with Jean Claude Van Damme in the crystal caves, and then we could make a duet album about all the people Jean Claude Van Damme killed in the crystal caves. I hate my life.

No, you run the risk of coming back only to find the joint fucked, dead, gone, closed, bereft of life, extinct, pushing up the dasies, no more…this is an ex site.

@ucme That’s a little harsh don’t ya think, the place might be a touch slow lately but it’s far from pushing up dasies.

@dappled_leaves I’m touched by your concern, yet intrigued that my disappearance from this place would be so readily accepted as proof of my demise. Then again, nothing quite tops death in the realm of “vacations”. If not flat line, how about an induced coma?

@SQUEEKY2 Nothing you have written here could possibly offend me. In fact we share kindred views on so many issues that it’s kind of spooky.

I don’t think I’d still be here if I hadn’t taken all the breaks that I did throughout the years. Vacations are very helpful.

I’m glad the consensus here so far coincides with my own perception that things are dismally flat in the question arena these days. The vacation thing is probably the wrong way to word my question. What I really want to know is whether the questions are truly as inane as I suppose, or is my perception the result of being immersed in the place to the point of being jaded. In other words, would things look better if I get away for awhile?

@jonsblond So the place wears on you?

@stanleybmanly: If everyone had the same thoughts “would things look better if I get away for a while” then nobody would be here at all. Each member is a valuable addition to the collective. Each member being here as often as possible is what keeps the site going, even if it’s slow.

@stanleybmanly What kind of questions stimulate your interest?
I’d like to know where you got that suit. Did you steal it from the banker on the Monopoly board? haha

@jca I don’t necessarily agree with you. We wouldn’t ALL be on vacation at the same time. And as @jonsblond stated, there might well be merit in rotating through here, then giving it a rest.

@Coloma You like my duds? I dress to impress. Yes the top hat and spats mark my avatar as being in league with the monopoly guy. The fat cigar and the bomb under his arm are another pair of clues. You’ll also notice that he hasn’t missed many meals! The avatar is actually a stylized insignia adopted by an air bombardment & reconnaisance squadron ( I forget which one) from WW 1.

@stanleybmanly I watched “War Horse” last night, about WW1.
Very good. There ya go, I have chosen your movie for the day. haha

@stanleybmanly Yes, it has worn on me many times.

No. I have been away for awhile, due to my schedule. I felt like I was missing something and I was. When I was able to come back on, I felt like I had missed some things and some things had changed. I like to be a part of the flow. Sometimes the quality of the Q’s ebbs and flows, but that’s just a part of how this all works, but when I was away, it felt like something was missing. I wondered what you all were up to and since this is our own secret society, I couldn’t really discuss it with anyone outside of the collective. It just didn’t feel normal to me. Having all of you guys around is part of my normal.

I also realized that if you want to spice it up around here, you have to ask more questions, yourself. You can’t expect anyone else to spice up the Q’s if you don’t ask good Q’s yourself. I know my Q’s tend to be of the same genre, but they do get people to talking, because as we all know, everyone loves to talk about food.

So no, I don’t recommend taking a vacation from Fluther.

@SQUEEKY2 & the morons who lurved you, no big fella, my tongue was firmly in cheek, hence the dead parrot sketch reference :)

I don’t see amything wrong with the vast majority of questions, certainly no different to how it’s always been. I suggest if you feel the standard has dipped, then the problem is all yours & maybe you should take a break.

@ucme That’s one of the things around here…in all the years I’ve been here, people will regularly say that the quality of the site’s content is decreasing, therefore, although perhaps indirectly, pretty much claiming that only they still provide quality questions and answers.
That really gets on my tits, because it’s so arrogant, and most of all false, because I’ve never noticed any specific jellies posting anything vastly superior to anyone else.

@Symbeline We remain on the same page sistah, as with most shit :D
Nowt wrong at all with the site, generally speaking, apart from folks whining over fuck all…go figure.

Yes. I know first hand that you end up getting a lot more accomplished in your real life. I think it should be mandatory that each Jelly take 2 months or more vacation each year. I have taken so many vaca’s from here I could be the official Fluther travel agent.

@Cruiser There’s no disputing that the time spent here might be put to better use And @ucme & @Symbeline I’m questioning whether my impression of declining numbers in interesting questions is false, but a predictable result of spending so much time here. The 3 of you as well as @Kardamom are obviously combat veterans of this place. Ultimately, I’m asking if there is a useful remedy to long term members deserting the site.

It could be. Sometimes I get lazy with Fluther and start skimming through questions without really answering them. A break refreshes me, and it only lasts 3–4 days max.
As far as missing stuff, I don’t think there’ll be too much big stuff to miss, just some interesting discussions. When I took my Fluther “break” (I returned years later), Fluther had died down significantly. I wish I could have stayed to see the heart of Fluther but I was too early and too late. But the derivative of Fluther’s graph has been 0 for a while now so I doubt much will happen while you’re on a break.

@stanleybmanly There would be a remedy albeit too late to undo the collateral damage of days gone by….going forward, that remedy would simply be to be respectful to fellow Jellies no matter how much you disagree with them. Had this been protocol…at least half of the Jellies who left would still be here.

I take a break when I find myself getting sarcastic or writing answers too specific to the person asking the question. It’s so hard for people to know how nasty you mean sarcasm, and the general rule here is that any answer should stand on it’s own. Those are both easier with just a little bit of distance.

I think the long term solution for fluther would be more questions in need of answers, but the most visited and discussed questions are usually about opinions because everyone can participate. A lot of the specialized knowledge has left and for a lot of folks this is an activity unto itself rather than a resource to enhance other interests. Someone I tried to recruit to the site once told me it reminded them of the comment sections of news sites.

We stay because we have people here we care about and want to know how they’re doing, even if we don’t ask directly.

Long term members leave the site for a variety of reasons, most of them personal, I wouldn’t have any interest in analysing it.

There is no correct answer. It depends on the individual jelly, and that jell’s “real” life.

I, too, have noticed a dearth in the lively, controversial, and usually respectful diatribe discussion that originally attracted me and sustained my interest a few years back. IMHO, there were some jellies who had a tendency to turn discussions into flame wars, especially when discussing such mild topics as politics or religion. That tended to drive others away from similar discussions. Some even proposed banning, temporarily at least, certain topics of discussion.

Maybe it’ll pick up again as we approach the US general elections in 2016.

@funkdaddy A lot of the specialized knowledge has left and for a lot of folks this is an activity unto itself rather than a resource to enhance other interests.

Aye this is true, I attribute this mainly on how so easy it is to get answers to technical stuff by doing a bit of online searching. It’s quicker to look stuff up yourself, instead of posting a question on here and waiting for an answer, which might very well be someone just telling you to Google it lol.
At least in most cases, we still get a steady stream of knowledge/technical questions.