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Dr Katz

Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #50 on: February 18, 2004, 02:51:30 PM »
Katz is MIA? Don't you believe it. Dr Katz is always watching his little putzies!

Dr katz

JDoyle

Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #51 on: February 18, 2004, 05:31:57 PM »
Some very funny stuff here:  ;)

http://www.jumptheshark.com/

ian

Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #52 on: February 18, 2004, 07:50:50 PM »
Mike,

For me it was when a very personal attack occured on a golf course architect that involved no criticism of his architecture.
It was uggested that it was supposed to be funny, but in fact it has in horrible taste.

This was the day the site's credibility plumited, you lost a whole group of golf architects who lurked and particpated on that day. The person who introduced me to the site never came back after that day, and it was a loss for the site.

Steve Lang

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #53 on: February 18, 2004, 08:45:57 PM »
 8)

I've studied gca since summer 2000, but only been checking in here for 1.5 years,..  I don't think gca.com has really changed much in that period, so the j-t-s probably occurred before aug 2002.

If i suggested again that Long Island and many of the NE courses owe a great deal to the last Ice Age and the glaciers' movements, and I was tired of hearing them endlessly referenced,.. I expect certain folks would jump all over me again or ignore the point as worthless or baseless as they've never studied that area's geology, or I should just accept those courses as the best examples period..  

This all sort of belies the main issue to me, that there's a wide spectrum of interests involved in gca, framed by design, art, and planning,.. these elements make architecture of any kind what it is, the building of things where sometimes form follows function and sometimes the reverse is at play.  The opinions over the art seem the most heated, followed by those on design and planning.. and the bastard technology race fueled by greed destroys the gca landmarks, just because there may be no more "majors" held there!  I say let them be museums to be appreaciated and properly maintained as they were intended.

While I have greatly enjoyed mining the archives more than enterring into discussion groups, its hard not to chime in, and harder not to come back and see if anyone wants to take up your opinion or take it to task.  As long as there are characters, pundits, students, historians, professionals, and learned elders around, i think gca.com will survive.  in the mean time, I'm copying and pasting great gca.com stuff into my electronic journals and folders..

I fear when gca.com may jump the spark.. to ground.
Inverness (Toledo, OH) cathedral clock inscription: "God measures men by what they are. Not what they in wealth possess.  That vibrant message chimes afar.
The voice of Inverness"

PC_Police

Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #54 on: February 18, 2004, 10:33:33 PM »
GCA Jumped the Shark when people started deleting threads that show John Daly autographing boobs.  Where else is Mucci gonna get his porn.

Michael Moore

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #55 on: February 19, 2004, 10:13:18 AM »
It didn't.

But if it does, it will be because people treated it a scrapbook for photographs that nobody else cares about.
Metaphor is social and shares the table with the objects it intertwines and the attitudes it reconciles. Opinion, like the Michelin inspector, dines alone. - Adam Gopnik, The Table Comes First

THuckaby2

Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #56 on: February 19, 2004, 10:23:42 AM »
Michael:

Ouch, but point well taken.  I'll take that down after a little bit.  I do have some friends here who I think will be nterested - they've asked me about my kids from time to time - but I guess I could have just shared these pics by email with them... only thing there is email attachments sometimes take forever to download, this is simple and easy... but I do understand this is woefully self-indulgent.  I just ask you bear with it for a little while.  Thanks.

TH

David Wigler

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #57 on: February 19, 2004, 02:12:32 PM »
It didn't.

But if it does, it will be because people treated it a scrapbook for photographs that nobody else cares about.

Michael,

I surely hope you are kidding because if not, the above post is the most self-indulgent, self-important load of crap I have read here in some time.  There are close to 9,000 topics on GCA.  If you do not care about the people on this site, than skip threads like Tom's.  I happened to get a huge smile out of the photo's of Tom's children (I have never met his kids and it was amazing to me how much his son looks like a minature version of Tom).  To say "Nobody else cares" is insane, insulting and outright wrong.  Frankly, I would bet the the vast majority of us got huge smiles out of the two threads on family and the vast majority of those that didn't care, simply skipped those threads.
And I took full blame then, and retain such now.  My utter ignorance in not trumpeting a course I have never seen remains inexcusable.
Tom Huckaby 2/24/04

Darren_Kilfara

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #58 on: February 19, 2004, 03:45:36 PM »
For me, GolfClubAtlas jumped the shark because Ran has consistently refused to take a more active hand in moderating the forums. I used to think GCA was the best site about ANYTHING on the web, but that is definitely no longer the case (in my opinion). The best sites, I've since realized, are those where the moderation is borderline fascistic - you misbehave once, you get a warning; you misbehave twice, you get suspended; you misbehave three times, you get banned. Period. It sounds harsh, but it keeps people on-topic, and it keeps them from degenerating into petty personal attacks. I've never met Ran and don't know much about him, so I can't guess as to why he chooses not forcefully moderate this forum - is it because he doesn't have the time/inclination to be a policeman, is it because he has a moral disinclination to censor "free speech" (now there's a phrase which has all the wrong connotations in 21st Century America), or is it for some other reason? Whichever it is, it's the site's loss. The irony is that many lurkers and other intelligent posters would be MORE free to speak their minds, not less, with tighter moderation of the group.

(Two examples of forums that work very well, in my opinion, because of their zero-tolerance approach: Sons of Sam Horn, about the Boston Red Sox; Television Without Pity, about various current television programs. The former is particularly relevant to this discussion, I think, because it manages to attract the sort of "industry participation" which many people wish GCA.com had more of. SOSH counts among its members John Henry, the owner of the Red Sox; Curt Schilling, starting pitcher; Bill Simmons, aka ESPN.com's "Sports Guy"; Art Matone, of the Providence Journal; Bob Lobel, of WBZ television. I don't believe a free, unfettered discussion forum about the Sox would attract those sorts of voices.)

On a more personal note, GCA definitively jumped the shark for me when a thread I started about Civil Behavior turned into a series of personal attacks against me, based on things people know about me from my book. Since then, I've felt an almost complete lack of joy every time I visit this site - I simply am not having fun any more, and as much as I love talking about golf course architecture, this forum causes me more grief than pleasure nowadays. The crowning moment came a couple of weeks ago, when a thread I started out for not-at-all-selfish reasons - suggesting that people linking to lots of large photos in one thread may have trouble reaching people like me with 56K dialup modems - again degenerated into vitriolic personal attacks from the likes of Tuco Ramirez, for reasons I'm completely at a loss to explain. This is my first visit back since then - just to see if I had any personal messages, really, but then I saw this thread and couldn't help myself...

A couple of other semi-random points to make:

--RJ, I completely disagree with your point about off-topic posts sometimes "exposing the soul" of the posters here better than the on-topic posts. That may be the case, but I always believed that this was a site in which to discuss golf course architecture. I made a number of friends here with people who liked talking about golf course architecture - when I met them in person, then (and only then) we talked about other things. When I come (came) here, it is (was) to talk about architecture. Now you have an architecture-themed board about golf and whatever-the-hell-else people want to talk about. If you or anyone else likes it better that way, more power to you. But I don't. (The whole point about sites like this, for me, is that active participation in discussing a shared interest is what draws people together. A watered-down site makes it harder to share that interest; now you might have people coming together because they're at least vaguely interested in architecture AND they discover that they're both fans of the Green Bay Packers. As the group has gotten bigger, being into architecture almost isn't enough.)

--I agree with everyone who has said that there really is only so much to talk about in this field. I personally have gotten to the point where once I've sifted through the off-topic stuff which doesn't interest me and the on-topic stuff which I've seen discussed before (and upon which no new light is being shed), there ain't a whole lot left to attract me.

Anyway, I'm not one to storm off saying tearful goodbyes, only to come back a few days/weeks later (a la Mr. Naccarato). ;) I'll probably keep lurking and visiting occasionally, and I'll fondly recall the time in my life when this was my favorite website, a place I recommended to everyone I knew who might be vaguely interested in golf course architecture. But life moves on...

Cheers,
Darren

T_MacWood

Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #59 on: February 19, 2004, 03:53:56 PM »
David
"...the most self-indulgent, self-important load of crap..."

I thought I knew what self-indulgent and self important meant, but perhaps I don't...how are MM's comments self- indulgent and self-important?

I don't want to appear like an ogre who doesn't like kids (I have two of my own), but his comments seem completely consistant with this sites stated mission?

And I'll make a prediction...Ran will take down the Huckaby pictorial at some point in the very near future.

Jeff Fortson

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"? New
« Reply #60 on: February 19, 2004, 04:04:16 PM »
.
« Last Edit: August 18, 2012, 09:01:56 PM by Jeff Fortson »
#nowhitebelt

THuckaby2

Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #61 on: February 19, 2004, 04:08:47 PM »
Hmmm.

I had no idea this was so offensive.  OK, I gather I've offended two regular posters by the display of my kids, and for me two is two too many, so they will be gone as soon as I finish this message.  My apologies.  For those who replied - thanks and I hope you did get a kick out of it.

Of course if Ran is to remove my thread, then in fairness he'd also have to remove Ian's, and in fairness MANY other off-topic threads here...

And given Ran has very understandably (to me, because he does have a life) shown no interest in policing the site (as Darren suggests he should), well... I didn't see the big harm.  

But Tom M. - you tell me:  how has this site's "mission" EVER been followed with 100% precision?  I go back and read the old threads and find a LOT that is "off-topic."  

But in the end you are correct, my post certainly has nothing to do with "golf course architecture" and thus is to be utterly cryed downe.  How horrible to report something meaningful to me, which seems to have been enjoyed by at least a few participants.  This subject is so deadly serious after all, and it is my bad for forgetting that.

Gee, let's rip some raters again.  That's so much more beneficial to the golf world.

TH

ps - it appears that one cannot delete the first post in a topic, so one can't delete a thread one starts.  Makes sense.  But please understand I have sent a message to the moderator asking for the thread about my kids to be removed.  I sent it at 1:14pm PST, 2/19/2004.




« Last Edit: February 19, 2004, 04:14:44 PM by Tom Huckaby »

Jeff Fortson

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #62 on: February 19, 2004, 04:13:12 PM »
Tom H,

100% agreement here.

Don't even think of taking those pictures of your kids down.  There is nothing wrong with that thread, just wrong with the heads of others.


Jeff F.

P.S.   You may want to work on not laying the club off so much though  ;)
« Last Edit: February 19, 2004, 04:15:26 PM by Jeff_Fortson »
#nowhitebelt

THuckaby2

Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #63 on: February 19, 2004, 04:18:38 PM »
Jeff:

Well, I never did feel completely right about posting that, and those who I felt would get a kick out of it have already seen it, so what the hell, gone it goes if the moderators respond to my message.

I will remain curious as to how the absence of the thread IMPROVES the site though.

TH

ps - don't I know it about my horrid swing!  But damn it's so ingrained, it's just a part of me... arrrggghhhhh!  ;D
« Last Edit: February 19, 2004, 04:19:25 PM by Tom Huckaby »

SPDB

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #64 on: February 19, 2004, 04:23:21 PM »
Looks like the shark's jumped gca, i saw two things on this thread I didn't think would ever occur. TEPaul bidding fond adieu, and Tom H. getting pissed.

T_MacWood

Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #65 on: February 19, 2004, 04:23:38 PM »
I'll make a second prediction...this thread will soon follow the Huckaby thread.

Tom H.
One hundred percent precision...far from it...if it were 100% Ran wouldn't have to spend as much time deleting as he does. You've got to give JohnK his due...he is proactive, deleting his own posts and saving Ran the work.

SPDB

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #66 on: February 19, 2004, 04:24:47 PM »
Tom Mac. - I agree with you and MM.

Kevin_Reilly

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #67 on: February 19, 2004, 04:25:16 PM »
Tom H,

Don't remove that thread or the pics.  The rude comment from MM above says plenty about him.  I'd tell him to pound sand.

PS, this site hasn't jumped any shark or done anything close to it.  Every site eventually has these posts of "self-reflection" where someone claims that the site has gone downhill.  These posts are often accompanied by "good-bye" posts where someone says that the site has deteriorated and they are leaving...then followed by pleas to stay.  I like to quote a local newscaster who says "if you don't like the news go out and make some of your own."  Anyone who doesn't like the direction of the site is welcome to post away on topics that they prefer.
"GOLF COURSES SHOULD BE ENJOYED RATHER THAN RATED" - Tom Watson

THuckaby2

Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #68 on: February 19, 2004, 04:33:11 PM »
SPDB:

You have yet to see me pissed.  Good lord if you think that shows anger, well... thankfully you haven't seen how I am when this is truly the case.

Tom M.:

The point remains this site has NEVER been all about golf course architecture, and Ran himself is not immune from posting off-topic items.  Don't believe me?  Go back and read the old threads.

Perhaps this thread will vanish - if so, I sure won't miss it.  And as for the thread I did re my kids, it if does go, just remember it was at my request.  I do sincerely apologize for the offense, as minor and petty as it seems to me to be.  But wrong is wrong and so you win, I have asked for it to go.

I look forward to your next thread, which I expect will be 100% about golf course architecture, will be absolutely fascinating, and will elicit hundreds of responses, bringing joy to us all.  I mean that sincerely.

Kevin R:  you are SO right about how these discussion groups go and don't you and I and many others here know it from history!  This one does remain the strongest and the best... maybe it's this historical perspective that allows us to look for the good and ignore the bad?

TH

T_MacWood

Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #69 on: February 19, 2004, 04:38:13 PM »
Tom H.
It didn't offend me...I printed them out and they're hanging on my refrigerator....but my prediction still stands.

Bill Gayne

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #70 on: February 19, 2004, 04:41:30 PM »
The snow can't melt quick enough so that people go back to playing golf, seeing new courses, and writing about them.  :)

I wonder how much of the negativity is just a by-product of a long winter which has seen many topics exhausted and then recycled.

David Wigler

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #71 on: February 19, 2004, 04:44:02 PM »
David
"...the most self-indulgent, self-important load of crap..."

I thought I knew what self-indulgent and self important meant, but perhaps I don't...how are MM's comments self- indulgent and self-important?

I don't want to appear like an ogre who doesn't like kids (I have two of my own), but his comments seem completely consistant with this sites stated mission?

And I'll make a prediction...Ran will take down the Huckaby pictorial at some point in the very near future.


Tom - No worries, I'll help you with english (Heck you could forward this to Clarett and he could get college credit for it)  :)

Self-Important (My definition) Feeling so important that your opinions must clearly be the opinions of everyone else.  Example: "...it will be because people treated it a scrapbook for photographs that nobody else cares about."

Self-Indulgent (My definition) Indulging ones own self interest while not being concerned about others.  Example: Criticizing ones decision to show off pictures of their kids on a forum where many of their friends reside and can seem them instead of skipping a thread that was clearly titled and probably not of interest to them.

For what it is worth Tom, I received 5 different instant messages from people thanking me for the post.  I must admit that as a father, it amazes me that you would look down on someone for showing off their kids.  I, for one, thought the pictures were cool.  Nice to hear from you again and remind me why I do not participate as much.
And I took full blame then, and retain such now.  My utter ignorance in not trumpeting a course I have never seen remains inexcusable.
Tom Huckaby 2/24/04

Pat Brockwell

Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #72 on: February 19, 2004, 04:45:40 PM »
Yikes!  Come on everbody, we're talking about things mysterious, don't take it too serious.  I want to thank any one who has had the courage to take a shot at our course.  It is how we broaden our perspective and hopefully grow.  Remember, when something stupid is posted it says more about the poster than the postee.  My personal rules of posting are first do no harm, second be honest, third try not to be stupit. Ciao.

THuckaby2

Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #73 on: February 19, 2004, 04:46:23 PM »
Tom M.:

Just realize that if your prediction comes true, it is ONLY because I requested that the thread be removed, so I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here.

And if they didn't offend you, and do grace your refrigerator, then why the hell say what you did?

Enjoy the pictures, in any case.  I sure enjoyed taking them.

TH

Dan Kelly

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:When did Golf Club Atlas "jump the shark"?
« Reply #74 on: February 19, 2004, 04:52:36 PM »
Where's Fonzie when we need him?

I echo Jeff Fortson, in his Post #63.
"There's no money in doing less." -- Joe Hancock, 11/25/2010
"Rankings are silly and subjective..." -- Tom Doak, 3/12/2016