Author Topic: Keeping BetterMost Alive...  (Read 9861 times)

Offline Phillip Dampier

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Keeping BetterMost Alive...
« on: May 13, 2006, 01:59:52 pm »
I am starting to plan strategies for BetterMost for the upcoming summer season to keep the site evolving and interesting for users, new and old.  We'll always be dealing with Brokeback Mountain - it's the one thing we all have in common.  But I also am aware that this site will need to always be working on new projects and ideas to make it interesting enough to come back to month after month.

I am always interested in receiving ideas and suggestions about new things we could offer, or ways to improve the site.  What makes BetterMost somewhat different from the other fan sites out there is our emphasis on social networking and personal development.  We're not just about the film itself, but more about the people who were affected by it.  So BetterMost needs to be a place people can visit to talk about anything they want to talk about with people they have built friendships with.

If you have ideas, please share them.  We don't anticipate becoming the next MySpace, but we're not going to stand still and stagnate either.  :)
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Offline newyearsday

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Re: Keeping BetterMost Alive...
« Reply #1 on: May 13, 2006, 02:07:18 pm »
Hey Phillip, this is sort of along the lines of suggestions and improvements, but just wondering if you saw the PM I sent you a while back (a week or so ago) about little aesthetic things to do to make the site a little more easy and visually pleasing to use. Thoughts? Responses?

But I am glad you are bringing up this topic. I know it's been on my mind too somewhat lately, esp. how I can contribute more to the depth here...it  is something I have on a back burner, to be brought to a front burner when a few other projects are under control/finished.

« Last Edit: May 13, 2006, 02:08:56 pm by newyearsday »
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Offline YaadPyar

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Re: Keeping BetterMost Alive...
« Reply #2 on: May 13, 2006, 08:01:28 pm »
I love the idea of this space evolving.  I will think on this for sure.  Appreciation once again for all you do, Phillip.
"Vice, Virtue. It's best not to be too moral. You cheat yourself out of too much life. Aim above morality. If you apply that to life, then you're bound to live life fully." (Harold & Maude - 1971)

Offline Two_mules

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Re: Keeping BetterMost Alive...
« Reply #3 on: May 13, 2006, 09:12:09 pm »
  We're not just about the film itself, but more about the people who were affected by it.  So BetterMost needs to be a place people can visit to talk about anything they want to talk about with people they have built friendships with.

That is such a refrershing attitude, Phillip. One community I was a member of was driven off a message board because the guy running it didn't like the way we made it a community. He decreed that (for example) wishing each other happy birthday was off topic. We upped and left.
Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart.
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Re: Keeping BetterMost Alive...
« Reply #4 on: May 13, 2006, 09:21:21 pm »
I like the community idea as long as it is related to the original subject of Brokeback Mountain, whether it is the movie of the Annie Proulx short story.

But, I see a lot of stuff that has absolutely no connection whatsoever with the topics brought up in the story or movie. And the fact that some of the graphics, meaning posted pics, keeps being reposted AND reposted in member's replies and takes up broadband width space.

I am not a fan of any of the actors in the movie and their real lives don't even seem to be very much related to the AP story anyway. I do like what they did in the movie and should be commended for that. I have known and/or met several people who were in Hollywood's show business and they were just common folk and easy to talk to.

Offline Sheyne

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Re: Keeping BetterMost Alive...
« Reply #5 on: May 13, 2006, 11:03:17 pm »

I'll have a muse on this too, Phillip. I mean, yes, we came here originally to talk about Brokeback Mountain but - and I'm directing this to TJ mostly - but it was always going to be inevitable that we would exhaust our regular discussions about the movie and start to talk about other things.  This is not a bad thing.  BBM was just our meeting point. It was the catalyst that created this community and now its to the point where we're going to start branching off into other topics.

I'm extremely grateful for your forward-thinking attitude, Phillip. I don't want to see our watering hole dry up neither - I love coming here - I come here now for the people as well as the conversation.

We'll see what we can all come up with together.

 :)
Chut up!

Offline newyearsday

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Re: Keeping BetterMost Alive...
« Reply #6 on: May 13, 2006, 11:39:21 pm »
Sheyne!! I love your sig line--LOVE it! And yes, we are a community now (like it or not!) I love it, and I think one of the advantages of that is that hopefully, we feel safe to go even deeper in revealing and exploring what this movie can teach us about life and how to live it. (Right Keren?)

Jenny
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Offline maggiesmommy GayLee

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Re: Keeping BetterMost Alive...
« Reply #7 on: May 13, 2006, 11:59:28 pm »
I think this is a wonderful idea...we can encourage each other, remensce (sp?) about the movie, go back to it as a reference point...have a WATCH IT AGAIN day, then all get together and see what it said to us that was different or deeper..lots of ways to share our lives, struggles, joys and still connect to BBM...as a matter of fact, who I AM now is because of BBM.... so anytime I post here it is all about BBM...
I celebrate your wisdom and protective spirit....you're awsome...
It is not the Number of Breaths We Take that number our days
Rather the Moments that Take our Breath Away

Offline Phillip Dampier

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Re: Keeping BetterMost Alive...
« Reply #8 on: May 14, 2006, 12:30:47 am »
Hey Phillip, this is sort of along the lines of suggestions and improvements, but just wondering if you saw the PM I sent you a while back (a week or so ago) about little aesthetic things to do to make the site a little more easy and visually pleasing to use. Thoughts? Responses?

Yes, I have it and I turned it over to John who is trying to learn more about this software and what can be modified and what cannot.  I have been tweaking things to make it as easy as possible to navigate around here, including increasing the number of posts per page, etc.  My technical skills at modifying the code that makes the software work isn't good enough, so I have to wait on John.  I have kept your PM in my box so it's on the list.

That is such a refrershing attitude, Phillip. One community I was a member of was driven off a message board because the guy running it didn't like the way we madeit a community. He decreed that (for example) wishing each other happy birthday was off topic. We upped and left.

Let's face it.  If we weren't a community building something special with one another, why would people keep coming back night after night.  It's not all about the movie.  I'd like to see lots more general topics grow in forums like Anything Goes.  The movie provokes many of us to do something different in our lives, and this site should always provide a place for updates, no matter what it is you are working on in your life.  I have been trying to wish people Happy Birthday myself when I see it on the calendar.  Heck, I've started congratulating people whenever I see they have achieved a cool number of posts.  One of our great users here hit the big 500 yesterday.  It's a great achievement.

I like the community idea as long as it is related to the original subject of Brokeback Mountain, whether it is the movie of the Annie Proulx short story.

But, I see a lot of stuff that has absolutely no connection whatsoever with the topics brought up in the story or movie. And the fact that some of the graphics, meaning posted pics, keeps being reposted AND reposted in member's replies and takes up broadband width space.

TJ, there will always be a place for these discussions here.  We haven't even seen the pay cable viewers hit here yet, and they'll be coming with the same questions and thoughts we had back in January.  But life is about change and evolving and growth.  Annie Proulx encouraged us to finish the story in our own lives, and that is what a lot of us are doing.  I am doing it myself personally.  If I confined my comments exclusively to the movie, I'd have burned out by now.  The movie is a catalyst for changes in my own personal life.  I started this site to help me build confidence that I could launch something meaningful and it would be useful, not just to me, but to others.  I am working towards other projects as well.

The movie discussion forums continue, and unlike some forums which delete messages after say 30 days, a lot of the remarkable threads here will be here as long as this site is.  Don't worry about the bandwidth and the site space taken up by the informal discussions here.  The entire site can still easily fit on a CD-ROM and still have a ton of space left over.

And to everyone, I agree that as time passes, we are going to keep coming back to the movie, as well as exploring new remarkable things we encounter in our lives and journeys forward.  And I'm sure Annie Proulx herself has some remarkable stories we can explore in the days ahead as well!
You're a part of our family - BetterMost, Wyoming

TJ

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Re: Keeping BetterMost Alive...
« Reply #9 on: May 14, 2006, 01:40:01 am »
Phillip,

Some of my comments here are related to the fact that some of the people posting the stuff which seems a way off from Brokeback Mountain AND that the only connection of Brokeback Mountain and their lives is they took time to see the movie.

Many also seem to misunderstand what Annie Proulx meant with so many of her Wyoming expressions.

But, so many things in the story and the movie, including the dialog or conversations, remind me of my own live and people in my life.

Roland made a comment, in a PM, if I remember correctly, about people from the rural Midwest. Well, in my grade school, high school and college history classes, we were taught that Midwest was EAST of the Mississippi River and North of the Mason-Dixon Line. And states just west of the Mississippi were the West.

In the polls section, I created a poll for people to let others know where in the West of the USA on the East side of the Rockies members live or have lived. I did add "Idaho" as an after thought do to the fact that a friend wanted to include that, too. I have been to Idaho.