patrick.net

PatNet is clearly an NSA imitative to locate political dissidents so they can be rounded up and contained. Clearly anyone who registers for this site is a psychopathic extremist who is likely to become a terrorist, or worse yet, a troll. Best for the government to geotrack their IPs and send the cleaners, er swat team, in.

Dan! I remember reading some of your posts a while back. Good to see you stil here :-)

Now I would call it a new media news site.
Before it was a cat fight.

What I find perplexing is all of the people who made it a point to post how uncivil Patnet has become over the years, and decided to take the highroad and not participate in the verbal pandamonium, and haven't posted here in years.
Patrick changes the format to something more civil and interesting. Now those same people comeback wondering why did Patrick take HBO out of his cable bundle package.

Maybe the news format should be like Patrick had it at one time, but nore like it is now. He should take the posts that had the most likes, or even ones he personally thinks is news worthy, and have those on the Home page. With the new format with the pictures, and the first post only. Then have a link that says "Posts" that will bring you back to the old catfight forum look.

Personally I like the new look. He had something like this before, but even then IIRCC he showed the last post. Or it could have been just like it is now. I'm sure at one point the forum must have started out with only showing the first thread. And everyone's input on making it the format that everyone ran away from. But turns out they were really lurking and couldn't turn away on a bet.
Some times you've got to change a lot to get back to where you started.

Investment club ( set by friends) with a slight tilt toward west coast economics

Than ren runs ;-)

I guess I never paid much attention to the catfighting before and focused on real estate discussion.

I definitely appreciate the simple, ad-free format, new or old

Provides an outlet for the institutionalized, in between meds.

BayArea says

I guess I never paid much attention to the catfighting before and focused on real estate discussion.

I definitely appreciate the simple, ad-free format, new or old

The old politics section was a raging communist hatefest. It was a few years before I would tread there.

I can only assume that Bap was a masochist.

Real Estate, economics, politics and large doses of ongoing, thematic florid paranoid psychosis.

Patrick says

it's an uncensored anonymous forum.

i hope to make it pleasant to use while still maintaining everyone's right to speak and to draw a following for their ideas. i especially want to people to have a place to say things they cannot say in person because of family or work or school pressure to conform to the politically correct opinions in their area.

i'm still happily renting, but would consider buying if i could find a reasonable deal on a place i like.

Patrick, great summary and now it makes more sense to me. I like the theme you lay out. Is there a reason you don't advertise the site's purpose in some sort of a header, or do you intentionally limit traffic to some degree by avoiding laying out the site's purpose (maybe word of mouth attracts more "quality" members)?.

I will say that I do like having the housing hashtag available that still covers that topic, as that remains my main interest here (especially with the Bay Area focus). I find it interesting that even with redfin, zillow, trulia, and other forums, I still considered p.net the premier real estate related site out there during previous years.