A few observations about the recent push for "anarchy" in forums. All strictly personal observations, of course
:
- It's (in general, there are exceptions) the "anarchists" who seem to take it the most personally and who have the shortest fuse. "Anarchy" is OK as long as it is imposed upon others and not imposed upon them *by* others. The sad, funny, thing is thes kids have no idea what REAL anarchy really means, and would be among the first ones to be eaten up and spit out like Bambi's mother in a real anarchy.
- Contrary to the opinion of many of those "anarchists" who have been on this BBS for a long time and gotten spoiled by their freedom from responsibility for their actions, the childish idea of hiding behind a fake personna so one can just throw all the rules of social public behavior away and act like a drunken asshole in a public forum is a very recent abnormality and not an accepted part of "the online culture". Some of us have been participating in online forums - public and private - since the days of the Byte Information Exchange (BIX) and Compuserve, and were ground floor user group activists on the Internet back when it was mainly in the domain of Archie and Veronica. Sure there are always going to be some assholes in any group, but it was never considered acceptable behavior, and the "anarchists" and assholes were usually the first ones to get booted.
Of course, that was back when when people were actually attracted to forums based upon the quality of the moderator. Dictator moderators had boards that didn't last very long or weren't very interesting, but the unmoderated boards were considered even worse, rather like "the bad part of town". The best boards were the ones actively moderated by hosts who knew how to take care of the assholes and posers and yet also took an active role in keeping the board interesting. Kind of like moderator as party host who knew how to direct the party and keep things rolling, yet knew they had to act as a bouncer as well to keep the party from getting completly out of control.
That art of quality moderation seems to have been largely lost or forgotten these days. "Moderated" has somehow turned into a bad word, and the words "free" and "responsible" have somehow become antonyms.
- There is a rather signifigant difference between the normal human nature of being facinated by the warehouse fire down the street, and the abnormal behavior of comitting arson in order to satisfy that facination. We all may slow down or stop to rubberneck the car accident as we drive by, but most of us don't purposely throw a case of ball bearings across the road in the hopes that maybe one will happen or purposely cut off the other driver to try and get them to spin out.
In the same way, it's normal for people to be - at least initially - attracted to a quality argument, but it's pretty abnormal and irresponsible for someone to hang around a public forum attempting to provoke or prolong them for their own amuesment.
G.