Always, always, always check to make sure that you are subscribed to the list before posting. It might seem like an unnecessary chore, but when the bumps start flying, it is very easy to send off your post just as the You Got Bumped! e-mail hits your inbox.
And ALWAYS3 refresh the main page a couple of times before you decide that your post did not go through. I made several duplicate posts (back when I was a young BLister) because I got the You Got Bumped! e-mail after I had sent the post and didn't see it listed on the main page. I learned to refresh the site (even as I was getting ready to re-post the message) before sending, and avoid some of the comments made about my trying to increase my stats!
There are times when two or more BListers seem to get on a topic that none of the other BListers seem to know anything about. Call it trivia, arcane knowledge, or useless information, it is fun to see the responses from those who do not understand the references made by the BListers 'in the know'. So far there have been lyrics from songs ("We can be like they are"), literary works (Deja Thoris, John Carter, et al), and many other tidbits that elicit responses along the lines of "Who [or what] are you talking about?".
This helps determine who is on your wavelength, and has provided for some interesting discussions.
There are always people who feel it is necessary to mess with the List in ways that piss off other BListers. There was a person who set up multiple e-mail addresses and proceeded to flood the List with bumps one night. It was strange to see 4 people named ba or bc on the list at the same time, and it caused a lot of off list discussion as to what was happening. An apparent side effect of this flood was the post statistics did not increment as Blisters posted new messages. One BLister felt that this was a terrible thing since their 100+ posts did not get into the stats, and pled their case to a number of us off list.
The next day all of the bas and bcs seemed to be gone, but the posts still didn't increment. At least the time and bump stats did. Just one more thing for the programmers to work on - figuring out ways to stop attacks that they never conceived of in the first place. I've been there, and it ain't easy.
A few weeks later
Life reared it's ugly head a few weeks ago, and I had to change my work hours and hence my participation on the List. It was difficult to not have the unlimited Net access that I had enjoyed since I started with the List - my participation became limited due to my inability to watch the List out of the corner of my eye at all times. In some ways it felt like I was missing a big part of my life, and I took every opportunity I could to resubscribe.
The biggest regret I have with not being able to access the List as much as I used to has little to do with my personal statistics. I thought that not being able to stay in the running for most posts or more time would be difficult, but I have found that missing certain milestones has been the worst part. When I finally get a chance to subscribe, I see that someone has passed the 1000 post mark, or has celebrated another day on the list, and I have missed that event. It is like a family gathering that I had to miss, and it is a strangely sad feeling.
The bots came back again, with Toby (and a bunch of variants of toby) flooding the list one night. For about 40 minutes it was all I could do to stay subscribed. A few of the regulars managed to stay subscribed so that Toby never managed to hold all six slots at once, but it was close. I had almost 50 resubscribes in that time, and I know that other BListers had the same kind of numbers. Why do so many people feel that it is a good use of their time to attempt to hijack / destroy something?
The latest craze to hit the BListers is reposting jokes from other people. The reason given is that this is a 'service' for those who did not see the posts originally, but it seems more like a way to increase the stats when the poster doesn't have anything original to say. There has been some discussion as to how appropriate this is, but the basic idea of the List is that the 6 folks on the List at a time are the ones who make the 'rules'. As those subscribed to the list get bumped and new BListers take their place, the rules change accordingly. It is interesting to note that some of the people who screamed the loudest about people artificially inflating the statistics are now doing it themselves...
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