The problem with forums is that if you don’t moderate them, they turn into a microcosm of high school. Like without moderation, you can either have a Reddit clone or an anonymous imageboard. The anonymity of imageboards is important, because users become “known” and subject to constant harassment.
Usually what happens is that a small circle of hipsters autistically police the hobby and pick fights with everyone who don’t meet all of their crazy standards. It quickly becomes exhausting, and you have to start blocking people. Eventually, all of the normal, sane people get sick of it, and the site dies.
If you go onto any forum, just assume that you’re going to have an unpleasant experience.
Another frustrating thing is how they all have “likes” and “reactions.” So every single thing that you right is being scrutinized, and you have no idea why people are leaving the reactions that they do. Imagine talking to someone in real life and constantly seeing “disapproval” or “angry” emojis appear over peoples’ heads. There’s a reason why we keep those thoughts to ourselves, but on forums, it’s all out in the open.
People like to imagine that they are tough guys who are “more authentic” than the common folk. But nobody likes being treated this way, and it is beyond irritating.
So on Briar Fray, we don’t have reactions. And we make people get along. Because that is just the normal way that a community is supposed to function. You can say controversial or even offensive things here, but don’t get personal. It’s so annoying. I don’t want to fight with people and worry about my personal insecurities. I just want to talk about ideas.
It seems to be that all internet communities fall somewhere on a gradient between reddit and 4chan. Forums are a sort of a proto-reddit, because much like reddit they are insular, by design. Because of that, the few power-users always end up dominating the conversation and form a clique, making any casual user/lurker feel like an outsider. Most forums I’ve participated in I ended up leaving because I dared disagree with the reigning clique of nerds and got piled on. I completely agree that over-moderation and points systems are always at the root of the problem.
4chan on the other hand is basically a proto Twitter when you think about it. While twitter is not anonymous they way 4chan is, (after all, twitter invented the blue checkmark) because of the way twitter is decentralized and due to how fast everything is moving and the number of conversations running at one time, you might as well be anonymous. In the torrent of millions of messages, posting there feels like screaming into the void. This makes it a fun place to lurk and troll.
The thing is, I don’t think it’s the censorship that makes Reddit Reddit. While the site does have extremely sensitive mods, the mods also let the users fight with each other. It’s entirely the wrong kind of moderation. It’s basically a crybully site where they verbally abuse the users and then cry like a pussy when someone doesn’t follow their politics.
When you go on a site like Agora Road, the users kind of “take over” for the mods and do their crybullying for them.
To me, Reddit is when you deal with Karens, and 4chan is when you have insulated chaos. The problem with 4chan though is that it’s just a news / bait pit. Hardly anything interesting on there
Without reactions, it feels weird not being able to close out a conversation. What am I going to do, post “I understand your point now”?
Or when someone makes a post I really like I could post “This! so much this!” but that isn’t really in the spirit of a no-reaction forum.
While it is a slight bother, the combo of no reactions and be nice is absolute. Reactions distort by carrots, bullysoy distorts by stick. Restrict both and you remain balanced.
That is a good point and I would like to elaborate on it:
A forum that (on paper) lets other users be antagonistic to each other, but has moderation, is probably doomed, because even though there is no rule saying “try to avoid being antagonistic to each other”, the jannies will pretend that such a rule exists the moment a user they do not like acts antagonistic.
Meanwhile, I feel that a forum that does have a rule against flying off the handle at another user, really needs to be careful because:
It is too common for the jannies to conveniently forget that rule when a user they like starts spewing insults.
Alternatively, it is too common for jannies to conveniently remember that rule the moment a user they do not like starts spewing insults.
For example, I shall give you a cyber history lesson. There was a Wikipedia editor named Eric Corbett during the late 2000s and late 2010s. He would fly off the handle at other editors constantly and usually suffered no penalty for it. Because the jannies loved him and he was viewed as a skilled, veteran editor.
But then in the late 2010’s he thought it was a good idea to fly off the handle at female editors and transgenders, even though his admin friends had expressed their support for both of those groups.
Suffice to say, Eric’s pitbull chimpout finally earned him a permanent ban. Many veteran editors who questioned the admins for saying “Transgenders are totally valid, bro. Consensus is settled” got banned.
TLDR: A “Try to avoid flying off the handle” rule IS good, but only if the jannies are willing to enforce it without bias.
In theory, I like people being uncensored and being able to handle conflict, but in practice, I notice that every place on the Internet that has flown the banners of “free expression” has always let social pressure driven by, ultimately, feelings–mainly of discomfort or imposed guilt–make them make very sudden, very impromptu ‘amendments’ to their policies, either because
they didn’t state the obvious ‘as long as it’s legal’ caveat, and so, with said caveat being treated as a development rather than an unspoken thing that had to be spoken, even though it shouldn’t have, it became a slippery slope to actual censorship
the site got a reputation for being mean, and the founder, incapable of handling this most obvious and frankly tolerable consequence of freedom, decided to go full Hyacinth Bucket
or
the founder felt icky : (
So, in the absence of any actual free speech platform in existence that doesn’t cop out of its basic role, a platform that’s willing to admit from the outset that it’s not completely free is better, assuming there’s no creep in moderation towards more of it