When a new community arises, online or in the real world, a specialized vocabulary often develops that reflects its concerns. After several months, Open Salon has developed a tiny bit of idiosyncratic jargon. Not as much as I'd have expected--where's the creativity, people?--but still some. Here's what I've observed, for the edification of newcomers and the mild amusement (mild to the point of being nonexistent) of longer-term members.
Thanks to
Sally Swift,
o'stephanie,
Behind Blue Eyes,
Freaky Troll,
Liz Emrich,
odetteroulette,
alice maurice,
lpsrocks,
libertarius,
Kent Pitman, Randy Smith, Bob Eckstein, Edgar Alverson, sierrasong, john walker, Caveat Canem Croceum, CoyoteOldStyle, and others for additions and suggestions.
Big Salon (also Closed Salon, Real Salon, Ye Olde Salon): Salon.com. Usage: "I generally don't read letters at BS (Big Salon, as I like to call it) anymore, either."
To blog whore: (a) To send an Open Salon mail message to a number of other members about your latest post. (b) To include a link to a post you have written when entering a comment on someone else's post.
Some OS members are happy to see such information, especially in form a, others less so. Usage: "This blog whoring has got to stop!" To blog pimp: (a) To add a link to someone else's post that you think the poster or commenters might like to peruse. (b) To add a link to someone else's post in a comment upon your own post.
Blog stalker: Someone who watches the Activity Feed and follows you around wherever you go. Usage: "I'm not blog stalking you, really!"
To bump: To post the first comment on a blog post you have just written, such that it appears in the Activity Feed. Usage:
"Bump for the feed."
Circle jerk: Blog whoring pimping in the round.
Comment slut: Someone who makes a number of comments on another's post, not in a direct dialogue or cat fight, but in an effort to draw attention or to pick up conversational friends.
Cover: (a) The home page of Open Salon. (b) The central portion of the home page of Open Salon, for which content is selected by the editors; i.e., the home page minus those posts whose appearance depends on popularity with Open Salon readers. Usage: "The following is an opinionated guide for getting a post on the cover [b] of Open Salon..."
Echo chamber (also cult of OS group think or mutual admiration society): General agreement among Open Salon members. For example, "It is 24/7, we luv Obama soooo much and we hate Palin soooo much."
EP (or editor tramp stamp): Editor's Pick. (The responsibility for picking appears to be shared between a few people, but the pick remains singular.) Usage:"Rated/appreciated/Wondering why this doesn't have an EP yet."
Feeder Bleeder: Someone who responds to comments in five or six separate comments when one would do so, that their post continues to show up in the Activity Feed for a longer period. [Ed: I confess to being a feeder bleeder, though without nefarious intent.] Some OS trolls do the same with posts rather than comments.
To friend (antonym:
unfriend): To add another Open Salon poster to your list of favorite posters, which is known as your list of "friends". Reciprocation is viewed as polite by some but unneeded by others. "Feel free to friend me, as I will you in a second." (Antonym usage: "ghad that sounds gross too...but meant completely in motorcycle speak and context only...I can just hear people clicking to 'unfriend' me.")
Line thingie: A data plot.
Usage: "Editors LOOKIT - a line thingie!!"
Me, me, me!: A complaint that one's posts have too few readers. See everything written by
Freaky Troll, or, more concisely, a post by
Artsfish. Usage:
"Me, me, me!"
Open Call (related terms: Informal Open Call, Personal Open Call): Requests for blog posts on a particular topic. General open calls are made by Kerry Lauerman; informal and personal open calls are contained within appropriately named posts by Open Salon members.
OS: Open Salon. Less commonly, Open Source, and even less commonly, Operating System. Usage:
"I suspended my OS campaign."
To pander: To rate a post with the hope that the poster will visit your blog and rate one of your posts. Usage may be humorous or bitter, depending:
a visual illustration.
Place, as in
[name]'s place: A reference to the named person's Open Salon blog. Usage:
"We're having a party at Liz Emrich's place."
Popular kids (or cool kids, or kool kids, or betas; often, the kool kids' table): OS members who joined during the beta period, before the site went public. Usage: "I don't think there is a kool kids' table, at least not just one."
Poster: A blogger on Open Salon.
To reach around: See blog pimp.
Sloan: Joan Walsh, accomplice to Zerry (see below). Usage:
"I bet 'Sloan' (not her real name) is in love with you as well."
Skunked (past participle): A post that has not been rated, whether it has comments or not. Usage: "My last post was skunked."
To swallow the red pill: To have one of your posts chosen as an EP for the first time.
TPTB: The Powers That Be. Usage: "
I am answering this not as one of TPTB but more another blogger and devoted reader here..."
To thumbify (noun form:
thumbification): To increase the rating of a post by clicking on the thumbs-up icon.
Usage: "You have achieved supreme thumbification."
Truncati: "The recent upgrade of OS that included shortening 'My Recent Comments' for no apparent good reason has presented us with a new and banal art form... the truncati. These aren't just cut off words, mind you, they are complete rearrangements of thought; a dementia of mind that only the true intellectual may fully enjoy. Or perhaps that's an overstatement." [
CoyoteOldStyle, in
Truncati Alfredo? (with apologies to Rod Serling)]
Zerry: Kerry Lauerman.
Usage: "I believe that Zerry is madly in love with me and is trying to keep me all to himself."
There have been requests and suggestions for new but not-yet-popular terms:
alice maurice asks about a term indicating that OS blogging is addictive... Bob Eckstein suggests Open Salon Addition, or OSA (every condition needs a three letter acronym [TLA], after all).
Randy Smith requests "a term for the inadvertant reference post (outside source) that has previously been posted by another OS blogger. Reefer is a newspaper term for a reference...reefer hog as a term for someone who...nah, that's not good. "
Randy also offers the following:
O.S.-ticats, or OSticats (or OSticates - Oh-Ess-tuh-cutz), or even OSticrats: The community of Open Salon posters. (Maybe someday Sarah Silverman will try to make us famous, and people will be able to get the joke.)
lpsrocks suggests the following entries:
Grayhead: An OS poster without an avatar. [Ed: I have never seen this, but I think it's good.]
Newbie: A new OS poster.
To greet newbies: To make a point to visit and comment on newbies' blogs.
Trolls/shitheads: People who make a pastime of hijacking others' posts just to say mean things or push an agenda (differentiated from reasonable disagreement or discourse).
Stupid shitheads: Trolls who post the same comment on multiple blog posts - a particularly annoying form of blog whoring.
libertarius offers the following:
To go meta: To achieve assured cover status by posting on OS about the culture of posting on OS. [Ed: Cover meaning (a) is the focus here; this also gets points for cleverness.]
More cleverness from Edgar Alverson:
[At the] faucet: The position of Open Salon posters who follow the "Most Recent" list and try to post first the first comment on new posts. Usage: "So-and-so is at the faucet today."
And yet more cleverness from Caveat Canem Croceum:
blogorrhea: like the guy who made 11 posts in 5 hours and was never heard from again. Also known as "going postal".
blog-rolled: Poor Randy Smith made his "Don't weep for me, Sarah Palin" post on the 29th, but (unnamed)'s identical but later post caught Zerry's eye and made the cover. Randy got blog-rolled.
Commenter: Says, for the most part: "Good piece"; "Great post".
Commentator: Posts 532 word comment to an original 375 word piece. Example attached.
PPS: Post-posting syndrome. Hanging around the faucet after one's post, pouncing on that first comment and replying, bumping and grinding, seeing whether Thomas or Zerry is awake enough to EP your piece, waiting for the ratings to push you from the AF (didn't see that in your lexicon) to the infinitely more desirable RSF (right side feeds).
Well, this would probably be more entertaining if it were longer. Have I missed anything? (Perhaps specialized to discussions of politics, or food, or photos, or story telling?) Please add a comment, if so.
C.K. Dexter Haven
Chuck A. Stetson
JK Brady
Mark Pritchard
john blumenthal
OEsheepdog
Salon.com
Comments
May I add under blog whoring: c) adding a link to someone else's post that you think the poster and/or commentors might like to puruse, d) adding a link to someone else's post in a comment upon your own post.
rated
Also, what about the term Cover? Most web sites use Home Page, Front Page, etc.
And then there's Open Call, usually reserved for Broadway, but we Posters (as opposed to "bloggers") love a good Open Call here on OS.
Btw, I like receiving updates of new posts, but I am Much more likely to read immediately if a url is included. (Someday we'll be able to put links in the mailform, right, Zerry?)
Alice, I can't think of anything. You'll have to make up a word or phrase and hope it catches on. :-)
Someday -- though not in the short term. Maybe by the time I release my comeback album, "Kerry with a 'Z'!"
I 'm sure there are other things we need terms for.........
Hey, Zerry, Rob started it!
In some cases (like the thumb business), these terms have a clear source in a single poster, whom I've quoted in the definition. But others have adopted the term, too...
I confess I find the OS schedule a bit confusing and it doesn't seem to be followed in any case. I'm wondering if there are "sinkhole" times when it makes no sense to post, and times that are better.
any thoughts??
newbies - new bloggers or posters
greeting newbies - making a point to visit and comment on newbies' blogs
trolls/shitheads - people who make a pastime of hijacking others' posts just to say mean things or push an agenda (differentiated from reasonable disagreement or discourse)
grayheads -OS posters without an avatar
??stupid shitheads? - trolls who post the same comment on multiple blog posts - a particularly annoying form of blog whoring, I'd say
No doubt, Sandra. :-) But then I sometimes remember the New York segment of "Night on Earth"...
That sounds plausible, but it's a violation of Rule Number 2: To get on the cover of Open Salon, stay away from meta-level posts. I should know--I've written close to a dozen of them, and while a few have been Editor's Picks, not one (that I remember) has been on the cover (that is, the central cover part, as chosen by the editors. That calls for another update. Sigh). Which is fine, of course... I'm not bitter...
But I do like going meta.
Silkstone, here's my advice, for what it's worth: Don't worry about it, but do keep in mind that the right sidebar generally works to show the most popular posts at intervals of four, twelve, or twenty four hours; two or three days; or one month. Only the lower intervals are really meaningful for timing a post, but it's probably a good idea to post during the day when people are reading. Beyond that... Well, I've thought about writing a post on it, but I'd have to look at some data...
It makes me want to go all Ambrose Bierce on it!
I just want to crawl, with some difficulty (actually, alot of suffering) to the level of discourse I see with your posts. I am awed most of the time.
I'm not trying to be funny,....really,......OK maybe a little, in an insecure sort of way.....
Thumb.
Hector is a bit bitter that he never caught on.
"Reach around" - Freaky, you always wuz a classy dame!
The feature is still useful. It's just misnamed.
Moreoever, there is a slight sense in which it feels bad to not reciprocally friend someone because of the meaning of the word friend. This would not feel as bad if it was called "favorite" or "fan of" because if I say I'm a fan of John Stewart ('fess up, John, I know you must be out there somewhere lurking), that doesn't create a social obligation on him to be my fan.
(The friends bit is slightly further complicated by the pre-friending of Joan and Kerry, which means that in some cases, depending on whether those guys are in fact even someone's favorites, the friends list may not be just a list of favorites.)
Don S.
In addition to the lexiconning, there was also a big cat fight between Stellaa and Pretend Farmer with Stellaa winning handily. It was an exciting thread. I can't remember the topic of the blog though.
So, . . . how does one behave at such an affair? I've merely seen one in Seattle once, but just in passing. My brother and I were merely killing some time before we would return to see our parents at their separate homes, one in Sequim, the other in Spokane.
Also posts that have comments but are not rated, or those that have no comments or ratings...have been SKUNKED.
Hey, doesn't The "Freakster" take offense at the loose use
of the word "troll" to suggest someone of a less than savory
nature? If so, what can or should be done about it? Or
does the "Freaky" part dissipate any negative energy?
Consider this a bowing in your direction Freaky Troll.
I'm a Freaky Troll Whore.
Welcome, Don S! You raise an interesting point about the social networking aspect of Open Salon, which Stacey Youdin riffed on earlier. I think all that remains to be worked out. There are a few people on OS that I've known in my outside life, even one that I know in person, but the only thing I've done with this relationship is send email. (Does this sound odd? If so, consider that I'm a computer scientist. :-)
Enjoying your post. Re-reading I see that my suggestion Feeder Bleeder could be taken as a dig but that was not my intention at all.
(Also, I don't think any of these terms are seriously pejorative; even the seeming digs strike me as being mainly tongue in cheek.)
One of my favorite activities here is "discovering" good writers. When I see a good post disappear, I will forward it by "feeder bleeding" which I do not think is a bad thing even for what you may consider your important work. Look at how powerful Greg R's post on bullying has become and he had to repost it in order to give it to us.
Right on, Rob!
And you've just reminded me. There is a super secret thing you can do for an unnoticed post that you like... If you thumbify a post you've already thumbified, its rating will go down by one. (Aah!) But you can always thumbify it again, to give the post back its original rating. So why would you do this? Your thumbification, new or old, appears on the Activity Feed. (At least, this was the state of affairs the last time I checked.)
Of course, this isn't really a secret. It might also be considered impolite. I don't know.
And also did not mean to imply that those new posters whom I nuture would not make it on their own. Like I said, I pick the ones I really love. No names or notches on my "place" but the thrill of being first to discover. ( As a kid, I always wanted to grow up as a "trail breaker" like Jack London.)
She has a truly kind and good spirit.
rated
Rob, this is a great lexicon. Super work as always.
Thumbified.
I think Freaky is the only one who invented new terms, everything else is common board/blog terminology.
http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=22855
As used in the posts that night on the 27th all of which started in the CAT FIGHT at Stellaa's place, to circle jerk is to blog pimp in the round. People were pimping other people's posts on other people's blogs. Not whoring. Pimping.
And for the record, it is plain that all innocent acting Pretend Farmer started it with a blind side from left field over at Stellaa's place in the 27 September thread, but Stellaa sure as hell finished it. I'll bet Stellaa to win in an internet knife fight any day against all comers.
Ahem, as long as I'm on the subject, I might as well pimp my new post How I Almost Got Arrested on Election Day and ask for some friendly thumbing.
I'd rather take a couple hours off this afternoon and see if I can find some decent greens to cook with bacon and bacon drippings and maybe I'll even get all crazy and add some ham steak. All the greens I've seen in the store have been wilted and yellow on the edges. Time to search further a field.
When you link your own post you are whoring. When you link someone else's post you are pimping.
I should have sent you email, Sally--I couldn't figure out exactly what "comment slut" means. Sorry about that. Care to offer a definition?
Thumbified for edumacating us about the Webernet Bloggermajiggy. Thankies! Furthermore, you brought back the photo that makes me think bad thoughts about professors.
Wow, thanks for all the links, Rob. I seem to have become a Comment Slut...
Unfortunately, every time I re-edit this post, the margins seem to get just a smidgeon wider, so I'll have to leave all the additions in comments at this point, before we're all reading a single column of letters... (I could probably figure this out, but not right now.) Otherwise, comment slut would have been too juicy to pass up. Thanks, Sally!
My current definition would be someone who makes a lot of comments on someone else's post ... not in a direct a dialogue or a cat fight, just kinda hanging around the post, trying to pick up conversational friends.
Sort of like BBE. Who called me a whore, supposedly under the guise of guidance. But hmm...
(And I expressed myself badly--I recall our riffing, just couldn't figure out how it made you a comment slut. I was completely forgetting about my contribution to that very status.)
I hope those are Mae West bad thoughts and not, uh, fill-in-your-favorite-villain bad thoughts... :-)
But I will see what I can do.
And thanks for using my BS, Rob! Another early term (used before open.salon was public) was Popular Kids Table. You can pretty much figure that one out. I can name names, if you like!
Poster pimped his buddy/friend.
Good mnemonic.
MTK and O'steph: I'm watchin'.
"Rob - perhaps you could add to your lexicon "Wayneist" as a reference to people who abhor email notifications and complain a lot."
Use could be - "oh, you're such a Wayneist"
Ok, it is tongue in cheek. Kinda.
CLICK HERE TO MEET THE DEACON!
blogorrhea: like the guy who made 11 posts in 5 hours and was never heard from again. Also known as "going postal".
blog-rolled: Poor Randy Smith made his "Don't weep for me, Sarah Palin" post on the 29th, but (unnamed)'s identical but later post caught Zerry's eye and made the cover. Randy got blog-rolled.
Commenter: Says, for the most part: "Good piece"; "Great post".
Commentator: Posts 532 word comment to an original 375 word piece. Example attached.
PPS: Post-posting syndrome. Hanging around the faucet after one's post, pouncing on that first comment and replying, bumping and grinding, seeing whether Thomas or Zerry is awake enough to EP your piece, waiting for the ratings to push you from the AF (didn't see that in your lexicon) to the infinitely more desirable RSF (right side feeds).
Oops, seems this commentator may be suffering from an onset of blogorrhea.
WOOF
Just found your comment upon me:
"I am one of the people O'steph took under her wing. And I love her for it. It was like being the new kid in high school, eating lunch alone, and one of the cute popular girls comes over to talk."
Never having been one of the "cute popular girls", I really love this.
And, I think my taste in posters has been vindicated by your excellence!
Watering Hole - A virtual hotel bar where the open salon writers can hang out, shoot the bull (not the wolf) and buy each other a virtual drink.
OMG, that was ME! I had no earthly clue until this very moment. I am SO sorry, we have to find a term for unintentional blogrolling or I won't sleep tonight.
In tribute to that sophistication and talent, I coined a label. I'll confess it came from the subconscious, not from any effort.
So here it is: OSticats. I prefer a pronunciation Oh-Ess-tuh-katz, but I suppose Ahhs-tee-katz would be acceptable.
Maybe labeling is limiting. But my thought is that a community such as ours ought to be readily identifiable. When someone says "dittoheads," everyone knows which community that is.
I, then, submit for your consideration, an informal adoption of this label - O.S.-ticats, or OSticats (or OSticates - Oh-Ess-tuh-cutz), or even OSticrats. Maybe someday Sarah Silverman will try to make us famous, and people will be able to get the joke.
Thoughts? Alternative suggestions. Why don't we make it an 8-candidate playoff system, as the President-elect suggested for college football? And powers-that-be? How about an Open Call?
BLATANT BLOG-WHORING: I dumped a post on Election Day that tried to recruit a January 9th caucus on Open Salon. I'd appreciate it if you'd give it consideration.
This post was definitely not skunked!
rated
Peece!
David