I’ll be fighting at this weekend’s “Fight to the Finish II” (Greenville, NC), as the second event run by the Amateur Fight League. Tickets are still available, especially with some great deals available from AFL’s Online Store - don’t wait, make sure you get your tickets before the weekend. :]

I’m scheduled to weight in as a middleweight (171 - 185 lbs.), which is a step up from my normal weight (170). I’ve been lifting heavy and training hard, gaining some weight to meet Brian Ward in the ring in my third mixed martial arts fight. Since my last fight against Will Estes was deemed the most exciting fight of the night by StarNews, I’ve been training harder and working more towards my professional career as a mixed martial arts fighter.

Rest days start after my last training session on Thursday night, so I’ll be getting some well-needed rest and relaxation Friday to prepare for the weighin on Saturday morning at the Greenville Convention Center. Afterwards, my friends and I are meeting one of my RolePlayGateway staff members at the Olive Garden in Greenville to enjoy my pre-fight lunch. Then it’s off to rest (hoorah for naps), and then later that night - it’ll be fight time.

Get in touch with me if you’re out in Greenville and you’re interested in having lunch with us or if you want to show up for the fight (which is at the Greenville Convention Center, tickets will be available at the doors), you’re more than welcome to come.

Let’s do the damn thang.

It’s been a crazy past couple weeks for me. I’ve been training up for my next fight (AFL 1, May 17, 2008 Elizabeth City, NC) and staying pretty busy at work. In other news, The Grand Tournament 2008 invitations were sent out, and RolePlayGateway will be hosting the event. I had a blast at the SEO - What You Need To Know Meetup in Raleigh, and met some great people (hi Ashley!), and got connected with the upcoming Advanced SEO Meetup (which I’m really looking forward to, Brian - sorry I missed the first one!).

Two of my friends passed away this past week, Brittany Custer and Chelsea Johnson, in two separate events. It’s so sad - both of these girls had an entire life ahead of them.

A few of my friends have also had recent losses, all very devastating in their own way. I don’t think you can possible hope to truly offer solace during times like these, but that is no reason to attempt to provide support and care for their loss.

It’s a very polarizing view compared to what we often feel - especially looking at the age at which people pass away. With Cyclone Nargis and the China Earthquakes, there’s a lot of pain in the world right now. It really makes you wake up out of whatever jaded state you’re in and realize that hey, you’re human. You’re in this with the rest of us, regardless of how much hate you think you have.

I’m not participating in the elections this year. Full stop.

It’s not that I don’t feel like I can make a difference - it’s that I refuse to be involved in what’s going to happen next. I’ll make my mark in my own way, this year. And hey, on a semi-related note, let me introduce you to an independent documentary (which means do your research to verify any of this) that I thoroughly recommend you sit down for 2 hours and watch. Two hours, give it your full attention.

All of that aside, let’s all remember that we’re in this together, like I said before. We need to be loving and supporting each other, through all of our trying times. Grow roots so that you might be able to nourish and feed others in their times of need, as we must do this in favor of our own health. (See The Golden Rule, figure 1.1)

For everyone who has lost someone, remember that everything has a cause and effect. You are still here and play a part in the effect of your loss - it is up to you to determine how you learn from and use the experiences you shared with this person. Be joyous and put these experiences to positive use, sharing and growing in their spirit.

Take refuge amongst your own family and friends - just as you have been there for them, they will be there for you.

There’s some discussion about how forums are or are not social media, (frankly, I don’t think there’s any question at all) - and it occurred to me the answer of why there is this rift in perception of forums/message boards.

Message boards haven’t changed in almost 25 years. There simply hasn’t been any real innovation - and that’s why there’s so much “real” social media out there that’s exploding right now. The stuff is so radically different from traditional mediums such as forums that everyone is missing the core of what social media is: community engagement and interaction

So, here are some of the things I’d like to see in a forum, and some things that I’ve implemented on some of my own forums (heh, or at least planning to implement):

Trackbacks
It’d be awesome to have the same functionality in a blog post that we have on Wordpress or other blog software - did I give credit to someone? Let me hit the trackback API to make sure there’s a connection between the two posts in the semantic web.

A forum thread is no different than a blog post. It has a topic, a goal, and a discussion pertaining to the original post. Let’s see some of the functionality we found in the current decade put to use!

Native RSS Support
There’s nothing worse than having to write an RSS extension for your forum, and still not have the functionality you want. Give every URL on my forum a /feed, please. This includes forums, threads, posts, users: the whole shebang.

While you’re at it, tell Feedburner to support filtered feeds - a lot of my users don’t want every single post. And I sure as hell don’t want to burn a new feed for every forum. C’mon, let’s meet somewhere in the middle.

Semantic URLs
Blogging software does it, why do we still have URLs on forums that use IDs right there in the URL? What benefit does that have to the user?

Social Profiles
Alright, we’ve got friends and foes lists on our forums, now - but where is the option to make this information public? Why aren’t we displaying a users’ friend list on their profile page by default? What about all their most recent posts and actions, and selected excerpts?

A community can only grow in a stifled manner if interaction between members isn’t made as easy as humanly possible. Current forum software is stuck in the 90’s, with an XHTML wrapper around it. Let’s fix this, and soon - before we all melt.

Real Metrics and Algorithms
Stop using post count as a legitimate metric. This only encourages poor post quality. Let’s see the ability to easily show Flesch-Kincaid, average word count, or something similar. The amount of posts a user has is not a good valuation of their contributions.

Instead, replace these with something more community-driven. Look at Digg for example. There is a solid (questionably) algorithm in place that measures users based on what they’ve submitted and the reactions of other users’ reaction to that content, whether it be a comment or a submission.

Maybe I’m just whining. Maybe I’ve got legitimate desires. What do you think?

P.S.: And good god, phpBB! Why didn’t you include this stuff in your phpBB3 release?!

So, entirely not in light of any recent events, I was integrating the chat rules that Vexar wrote into RolePlayGateway’s Rules, and I was looking for some examples of forum etiquette that other forums use. In searching, I found this perfectly humorous video:

(I found it on Neil Boortz’s website, but since headed over to videojug to get the original. PS, Neil? You’re awesome.)

That was probably the best one I found, above and beyond the video I came across that seemed geared towards the Steam forum community, which was a bit too NSFW to actually embed here on my blog. If you’d like, you can go check out posting a new thread on AlbinoBlackSheep.

I’m admin on several online forums, and I’m a moderator on many more; not counting the countless other communities where I’m an active member. I was pretty proud of the rules I put together on Gateway, and I think they’re clean, simple, and easy to follow. No one likes being bombarded and tacked down by rules, so I try to keep them as simple as possible. What do you think of them?

How do you manage forum users and set rules? I know Martin Reed has some good tips on forum rules, and there are many others out there that learned a lot from running forums. The best thing that we can do is learn from others, and gather experience on how to handle these issues. What is your approach to forum etiquette?

I’m a pretty heavy feedreader, with about 164 subscriptions. Over the last 30 days, I’ve read 8,032 items, starred 9 items, shared 20 items, and emailed 2 items. Of course… I really enjoy a good number of things that I read - and I want to share these items with everyone.

Then there’s the question about content-theft. Some bloggers like to take RSS feeds and republish them on their own site, earning revenue from the content, and there’s a huge backlash from the original authors.

What I’d like to do is publish my shared items feed here on my blog, without changing anything in the original article. I’ll have to play around with tagging and the like, and I’ll have to decide on what plugin to use exactly. However, will I get any backlash from the authors? Is this appropriate?

(There’s supposed to be a list of shared items here… but apparently it isn’t working.)

Now, keep in mind that each of them would most likely get their own post, with all of the original links intact. I’d be pulling the RSS feed from my Google Reader account (if I could link to my profile, that’d be great - then people could even “Add Eric as a Friend” and subscribe to my shared items. Alas - Google doesn’t make it that easy), and letting people read and see it here.

What do you think? Blog authors who I frequently share from, I’d really appreciate your opinion, or even suggestions on alternatives. Google Trends says my most shared items are from Lifehacker (a getting things done blog) - so YOUR comments would be especially helpful. Let me know!