Is there a cure for the CANCER that is growing on this board? I discuss this below and think there is and maybe you will like it.
If you didn’t know it already, I’m a veteran of Web-based communities and I can trace my virtual roots to living in the first generation of online hangouts (which were direct dialup electronic bulletin boards before the Web was around) like the Well and ECHO. In their heyday, these old services had maybe five thousand people or so who were regular participants and out of this population there were some really cool community leaders and other well known posters who naturally emerged and then came the birth of a few clowns, jokers and the mix ended up pretty interesting and made it a great place to hang out..
I think there was more of a homeostatic balance in those days that made the community more self regulating than you will find in these times but to be sure there were moderators for different discussion areas that more or less made people play nice and if you were a productive member of those online societies, you got rewarded with having a discussion area of your own that branched out of a discussion group you frequented, and so forth. Kind of like a tree branch, branching out in different directions. The community was small enough to be managed effectively by the moderators in the groups and if you got a real asshole in your group you could always appeal to the other moderators in help with dealing with this individual and just ban them from coming to the Well or punish them in some way to stop their disruptive behavior.
In time though, a certain pathological sickness set in from what we called “Cranks” back in those days, who were people who had no qualms about sticking their own biased worldviews into the discussion and demeaning anyone who didn’t agree with them or whom they didn’t like…namely they mostly attacked others and were major shit stirrers. For some reason, they had axes to grind or some conspiracy theory they needed to convince everyone of, they needed lots of attention and always tried to drag the conversations in threads back to themselves. The really horrific ones got kicked out but the ones with the borderline conditions were the most difficult to deal with. Eventually the less pathological cranks became more and more like a cancer. By the mass of their clever little personal jabs here and there on various posts, they managed to agitate a lot of the normal posters into becoming a bit of crank themselves and before long, extended flame wars became more and more common, sometimes lasting for days. The moderators were trying to get people to stop and wise up to the baiting tactics and the drama queen tactics used by cranks but there is a big difference in people understanding something intellectually and responding to something emotionally.
You know as well as I do that I can call you a bunch of names and ridicule your posts or your worldview, and even if I told you that I was doing it for an experiment and you knew this, I bet you will still feel some emotional stirrings because of it. The cranks exploited this weakness in the online world and eventually the pleasant watering holes where everyone used to feel good about coming to, became places you dreaded going to because you were afraid someone was dragging your name or online reputation in the mud or just because they had soured the mood of the whole board.
In the years that have passed since then, I’ve seen many online communities born and die prematurely because of this and other reasons. I don’t think “crank” is a term that most of us use but we have new labels now called “trolls” and “spammers” etc. The real horrific assholes that spread misery and shit everywhere are usually either massively attacked by the community members of modern web communities or the system administrator bans them. The problem much more difficult to deal with though is the borderline pathologically screwed people and in our board, the added complication of dealing with people who for the most part have lots of built up anger, and are often new to the online world. Our board is a wonderful feeding ground for some people who believe in the motto “misery loves company” and if they can make you feel miserable…well they have done their job.
Right now, such individuals are in the minority and most of the posts on the board are not flame bait, prolonged wars, or trolls fishing for attention but if you take the time to look through the archives I think you will see a growing trend in which we are seeing more of the negative stuff develop. I predict it will get worse for just the reasons that this board is becoming more popular all the time and this fact is a magnet to those who are discontent as well as those who want the valuable things here.
So, what is my solution? Have a whole bunch of moderators to play spam warriors or make Simon quit his day job and play ex-dub policeman? I think not! Just think what is going to happen when there are 50,000 people as members on this site? Holy fried chicken snot Batman…you won’t even be able to read all the headers, let alone the posts. So, what to do? I suggest we use an innovative way to use evolution and the board’s popularity to our own advantage without losing our freedoms from those who enjoy the company of the miserable.
Here are the goals as I see them:
1. Promote quality and discourage crap.
2. Make JW.Com as readable as possible for as many as possible.
3. Don’t require Simon or anyone else spend a large amount of time dealing with troublemakers.
4. Don’t allow anyone to have a field day terrorizing posters.
5. Allow people to enjoy the fluff and the serious posts to their heart’s content.
6. Make this website the envy of the ex-dub world and the Borg the most miserable.
The only way I see this possible is by using a strategy that emphasizes decentralized control, negative and positive feedback and participatory feedback. Fortunately there is already a website that has discovered exactly how to do this and it is working incredibly well, that website is called www.Slashdot.org and here is how it works. If you have been a registered user for a few sessions, the system may notify you that you have been given moderator status (just like jury duty). Just like in the legal type of jury duty, you only work for a limited amount of time and during this stretch of time you have the power to rate the contributions of other users. Their rating scale goes from –1 to 5. That power though is diminished with use: each moderator is endowed with only so many points that he or she distribute. After the moderator uses their points up, they are out of power. Now another interesting thing that happens is that the post writers gain what is called “karma.” If your posts get highly rated by the moderators you can earn karma in the system and get special privileges. Your next posts then begin life at a higher rating than normal and you are more likely to be chosen yourself as a moderator in future sessions. Not only does this system encourage quality it sets up an environment in which the community leaders can rise to the surface.
How has this worked in real life? It is working towards these goals and you can judge for yourselves by taking a view of their site but there are still some complaints. Some people think that anything should go and it should be like the Wild West and untamed. If they want to be miserable and share company with other miserable people, this system weeds them out. Further, others want more fluff. They like the chitchat and don’t want to spend time writing well-developed and interesting posts but just want to have some fun.
Is there a way to make everyone happy? I suggest in this case a further modification of the system. The moderators are not so much rating posts with points (much like Simon’s current rating system but in this case only the mods get to play during their jury duty) but they rate posts in TIME as well. What I mean is that if a THREAD becomes a big name calling match or is nothing more than flame bait, or whatever…the thread itself can be sentenced to go backwards in time! For example, let’s say Fred Hall ran out of cat nip and decides to muck up a thread and gets everyone stirred up where it becomes a name calling flame war then the mods can not only rate the posters (assuming they want to use their precious points) but they can send the whole thread back a day, a week, a month or more in time so that the thread is harder to find by someone new coming to the board. Each mod voting their “time” vote could send a post back on the “active postings” list 24 hours. If all the mods voted together, then each additional time vote would send it one day further back. Out of sight, out of mind.
I see the end result as keeping the troublemakers in purgatory and the rest of us either on earth or heaven. The really interesting posts would be at the first few pages whereas the normal fluff stuff would be a few pages and further back for all to enjoy if they wanted to play there.
Any comments or views would be appreciated.
Skipper