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[upthorn]

I mean seriously, the only reason anybody is here in the first place is because they find that sort of thing revolting,

I'm just here because that's where most of the key players at Pyoko have gone; I don't hate any of the people involved, even though some of them have been/are being juvenile.

You miss the point. Here wouldn't be here if not for people from pyoko finding power-mad mods revolting.

[Brentai]

I just kind of thought we had this forum set up in case the other one exploded without warning except to a bunch of people who didn't visit that forum.  Power abuse is sort of a cornerstone of this so-called community and you just gotta have to live with it.  I mean look at how many times I banned Brentai.

[McFrugal]

Power abuse is sort of a cornerstone of this so-called community and you just gotta have to live with it.  I mean look at how many times I banned Brentai.

I'm not sure that can be called abuse.  He was a pain in the ass who never contributed anything of worth.

[Thad]

I just kind of thought we had this forum set up in case the other one exploded without warning except to a bunch of people who didn't visit that forum.  Power abuse is sort of a cornerstone of this so-called community and you just gotta have to live with it.  I mean look at how many times I banned Brentai.

"Abuse" is a term open to interpretation.  I've always felt that, say, changing Killbot's avatar to naked Cheetara or moving Vance's increasingly retarded image-only posts to The Thread Where You Can Only Communicate via Links or Image Macros do not qualify as abuse, but banning someone for calling your boyfriend "dangerously stupid" does.

There's gray area -- I never banned a user or deleted a post except for eloH, but other admins didn't think stuff like that was as big a deal as I did.  And I don't have a problem with it if fair warning is given.  Locking threads in and of itself isn't abusive, but doing it out of the blue with no provocation and threatening to ban any admin who unlocks them is, if not abusive, then at least really dickish.  Especially if it's on a subforum you set up for the explicit purpose of you not doing that shit.

[Zaratustra]

maybe for the sake of brevity we should just call it The Community.

Then we'd need to change the icon from stylized Sharkey & co, heroes of the revolution, to a penny farthing.

That was 'The Village'.

[jsnlxndrlv]

This is a fascinating and relevant article which I should have brought up a lot sooner.  The guy there basically says that there are all these online communities that have been perpetuating the same patterns over and over again, and people should start paying attention to the patterns and stop being surprised when predictable outcomes appear.

There are three things to accept, and four things to design for.

First: it isn't possible to separate the social issues from the technical ones.  You can't just hand somebody the keys to your forum software without also involving them in the social moderation process.  You can certainly try to keep those two things distinct; you can also try to fly by jumping off a cliff.

Second: not every user is also a member.  Somewhere in your community, there's a core group that cares more than average about the health and sustainability of your community.

Third: the core group's desires are sometimes more important than the desires of the majority.  It's the basic idea of rule by the majority, limited by the rights of the minority.  The core group has to be able to defend itself against the whims of the mob.


These first three basic concepts are inevitable.  Even if you don't plan for them to happen, if your community is going to last, you'll find they happen to you anyway.


Four things to design for, then.

First: our accounts need to accrue weight.  If I do something ridiculous and get a bad reputation for it, I shouldn't be able to just create a new account and instantly have all the privileges and powers my old account had.

Second: there needs to be a way of having "members in good standing".  This is an inevitable product of interaction over time; a karma system would just make it all the more obvious.  Karma probably isn't necessary, but I think it would be beneficial.  (Besides, it's handy to have that record so that you can see why a person has the reputation he has, for good OR for bad.)

Third: there should be barriers to participation.  It should take work and commitment to gain the privileges afforded a member in good standing.

Fourth: you've got to find a way to deal with scale.  The more people you get into a single thread, the less depth any person's able to contribute.

In conclusion: salted sunflower seeds are salty.

[Thad]

We had all those things on the old forums.  Didn't really seem to prevent everything falling apart.  Course, the "single insane moodswingy person having total control over everything" problem sort of tends to overshadow the rest.

The structure you're talking about sounds a hell of a lot like a standard social hierarchy to me.  Those things need not be technical.  People develop reputations over time; you don't need to institute karma or limit newbie posting privileges for that to happen.

A core of users who hold sway over the community isn't inherently a good thing either.  That's pretty much been Pyoko's entire userbase for about the last three years.  And while I like damn near the entire core group over there, it was stagnant.  New people are a GOOD thing.

...In principle, anyway.

[Sharkey]

[Bongo Bill]

New people are a GOOD thing.

I'll invite all my friends!

[Sharkey]

New people are a GOOD thing.

I'll invite all my friends!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdmVtPvMvA8

[MadMAxJr]

Drama aside, I am here for a few things:

People who like games.
People who like awesome games.
People who sometimes enjoy pen and paper games.
People who genuinely enjoy bad games.
(Do you see a trend here?)
People who on occasion create unique little gems of some kind, but I don't expect them to keep doing so on a regular basis.

And once in a great while, a community event that is pretty cool.  (Example: The santa thing, until the non-senders began to build up.)

Other than that, people with squabbles just need to solve their problems in a gentlemanly* manner and get back to the basics (games, common interests, etc).  I could really care less about faction X vs. Y, and perfer not to see it that way.  The other ministries seem to be doing a good job of this so far.

Carry on.

*Chainsaw guns at 20 paces,  your choice of any three american gladiator events, or the GUTS Agrocrag.

[Kayma]

I did not remember how much pie throwing was involved in that video.

[Thad]

That'd be a good avatar.

My name's already Thaddeus.

[Cannon]

...I've been meaning to talk you into a Dr. Sivana avatar for a while though, actually.

[Sharkey]

NOT ME!

[Thad]

Snowball did it.

[A²]

Hey wait I just realized something reading this thread.
I haven't slept with Sharkey, and yet I don't hate him.

[R^2]

Oh, I figured it was Arcturus responding to Kazz's dickwaving in True HURRRRRR Fasion.

[Classic]

That seemed unusual even for Arct's antics.

[François]

My guess is, the Bullshit thread finally toppled over and crushed everything. We all knew it was bound to happen.