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On the subject of unregulated discussion forums
Posts
It's a dictatorship, it's just one in which those in charge actually listen to the people and care about what's best for them.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
<3 Benevolent Despots.
So how many self-given medals has the glorious General ElJeffe earned himself?
Needless to say, it was an incredibly odd moment. It was non-anonymous, in a way, but when we discovered that the degrees of seperation between the two of us were less than three, the two of us wound up pissing everybody else around us off. I haven't seen her since, but it was pretty horrid.
Ah, I remember now! It was YEC. She put forth canopy theory and said she believed it, and I said something about how she must be patently retarded to actually believe that. Turns out her and everybody I knew her through believed it.
Yikes. See, now that's sort of the interweb existence invading our own real life existence.
Sort of how they made a real statue of Rocky in Philadelphia.
Let 'em eat fucking pineapples!
... D:
Canopy Theory? She believes gays breed in the top layers of rain forests?
Or she just thinks they should all be cocktail waiters?
EDIT: Wait, shit. That second one is Canape theory, nm.
This is true, but well....how should I put this. The membership, as a whole, acts to self-moderate without your intervention instead of looking to you to get the job done for them. This, in turn, honestly seems to keep you guys more linked to the population as a whole.
I moderate at another website. Have done so for years, moving from a normal member up through the ranks to the point where I'm one of five (and one of two if you count people who are still regularly active) people who can actually completely ban members from the website. Over there, they attempt to maintain a "family friendly" atmosphere. Word filters, etc. But instead of calling people out when they're being stupid, people immediately turn to the moderation to take care of things for them. This results in us having to be authoritarian at times, and necessitates a "backing off" from the community in order to maintain a degree of impartiality. For the most part, I don't see that around here.
Consider a recent event - a new member registered and started posting, using a different-from-default font color. In my time here, other than accenting, I've never seen anyone do that. No idea how long they'd been reading the forums before registering, etc, but regardless - in every single thread they posted in, they were called out, with varying degrees of tact. In less than an hour, they shifted from purple to silver, and I've not even noticed a separate color since then, so I presume they either left or went to default. Now, of course, this isn't the sort of issue which required mod intervention in the least, but it demonstrates that the membership itself is willing to self-moderate, which greatly reduces the need for mod intervention as a whole.
YEC=Young Earth Creationism.
I ..... wow .... just ..... I knew it was gonna be dumb, but goddamn.
Thinking about it, I'd rather she believed gay men were fucking in the treetops. It's at least an amusing image.
But, in all honesty, I confront people in exactly the same manner as I did on Facebook, so I was completely transparent in that regard. I remember once laughing at somebody in one of my intro bio classes when they started asking retarded trap questions about evolution.
Yeah, my buddy's roommate his sophomore year believed in this. It was insane to hear him talk about it. People actually believe it! Like the truth! It was like saying this forum uses the color blue. That kind of truth. We were insane to reject it in his eyes.
Is that the theory that brie goes really well atop a cracker?
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
That's true, but I don't think the two things are really that separable. The community self-moderates largely because they either agree with the rules, respect the manner in which the ruleset as a whole contributes to the overall atmosphere, or respect the leadership enough that they want to help out. (Of course, there are also those who self-moderate because they enjoy the power trip from telling someone how to act.) This results partly because - I think, at least - we have a pretty good ruleset laid out, and partly because the way in which we "govern" attracts the sort of membership that is responsible enough to self-govern.
I think the latter is actually the biggest part of it. We don't really tolerate assholes; or, at least, we tolerate only a specific type of asshole conducive to this sort of environment. Basically, we, as a community, have decided to shape our society such that its members wish to maintain the status quo. Our rules are premised largely on forbidding the type of things that most people here don't want people doing. So when someone is acting the fuckstick, other's are eager to tell them to cut it out. It's not only against the rules, it's considered obnoxious. Part of the job of being a mod, then, is helping to maintain the ruleset in such a way as to maintain this sort of environment, curbing memes or trends that seem counterproductive.
Then, of course, there are the other rules that fall outside the "happy society" framework - things like the ban on certain discussion topics, or certain - ahem - words, and so on. I think self-moderation happens here largely because of the respect that forumers have for the guys who run the site and for the guys who help moderate.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
I lurked the forums for quite a while (over three months) before recently adding myself to the PA forum mob, and I did so precisely after reading Tube's sticky on SE++ posting rules. The two I remember being most relevant to this discussion are essentially related to (not quotes) 'getting a feel for the forum' and having a 'poster beware' attitude. About the second remark, I believe that it is related to what ElJeffe summarized previously. I believe a good parallel can be drawn between immunology and the self-regulating practises found in forums such as this one (rare as they are).
If the PA forums wish to instigate a finer, more harrowing process to remove unwanted members, then I believe the answer lies in something akin to a two-week partial membership that is limited to SE++. Should they have the patience to lie low and absorb the local customs, then that wisdom is quickly rewarded. However, any simian mind stumbling into this forum will be promptly crushed by eager proponents, claws and teeth gnashing violently.
Man, you're the internet Hitler.
It's the only way we'll keep the blood pure.
I doubt I'd have made it through the SE++ crucible. Not from them tearing me to pieces, but rather from me not wanting to deal with SE++. That's not to say that a temporary membership doesn't work in some cases (I know a number of sites which do it), and once upon a time, we only had short windows where registration was open - I actually wouldn't particularly mind seeing that again, even though it's not needed. The occasional person gets lucky, or people who bother to read the forums see the 2 week window when it's there and jump in. But really, I mean....if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
This is probably a decent reason to not pepper arguments with clutch polemic like "patently retarded" unless you're preaching to a choir.
I don't suppose you actually remember any of the questions? I'd love for you to share some of them.
One of them was probably about the placenta. Something along the lines of how there's no possible way the placenta could have evolved therefore the entire theory of evolution is wrong. Got hit with that one myself a couple times.
You're probably right, but I really didn't care about alienating her and that group of acquaintances. I just couldn't care less of a few Christian fundamentalists hated me.
Goatmon: They were your standard Michael Behe, AiG, crocoduck kind of questions.