Author Topic: If your website's full of assholes, it's your fault  (Read 9528 times)

kibitzer

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Excuse the title, folks, but that's the title of an article by Anil Dash which talks about building good web communities.

http://dashes.com/anil/2011/07/if-your-websites-full-of-assholes-its-your-fault.html

It's a long-ish read but I post it here since this forum is about the best exemplar of the good behaviours described in the article. I love this place; the article explains why. :-)


Spindaddy

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Reply #1 on: July 22, 2011, 04:44:38 AM
Good read. I think he made a lot of good points but overall I find if you disable annoymous commenting and log IP addresses, it cuts down on 75% and the jerks out there. When you need to, throw down with the ban hammer on people that are purely destructive.

You'll never truly eliminate all the nasty people on the web, but if you can get a decent fence to keep out about 95% I think you have a good thing going.

I'm not evil. I'm corporate.


olivaw

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Reply #2 on: July 22, 2011, 10:21:28 AM
I still have a soft spot for the anarchy of Usenet, where the only moderator was the reader's decision to read or not to read a post.

On the other hand, I acknowledge that the heyday of Usenet was back when most people accessed it from their workplace or university, rather than from home or anonymous IP addresses, so there was some kind of last-ditch accountability.



Anarquistador

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Reply #3 on: July 22, 2011, 11:41:11 PM
Meh. The one time I laid down the law in my forum, everyone called me a fascist, trashed the place, and left.

Of course, I was something of a fascist, but that's beside the point. Turned out using Machiavelli as a guide to governing doesn't work so well when you're trying to govern a bunch of Anarchist refugees from other boards. Who knew?

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danooli

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Reply #4 on: July 24, 2011, 01:00:52 PM
But, who's fault is it if your world is full of assholes?

(This reminds me of the Stephen Lynch song "Fishin Hole" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BBYCi12aAI )



stePH

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Reply #5 on: July 25, 2011, 02:03:04 AM
But, who's fault is it if your world is full of assholes?
At least that's better than having your asshole full of worlds. Trust me, I know.  ;)

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Anarquistador

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Reply #6 on: July 26, 2011, 12:21:46 AM
I don't know how comfortable I am with the implications of it. That people will not naturally behave civilly to each other. That the only way to get people to act like adults is to MAKE them. Set boundaries and award time-outs as if we're all children. Of course, I suppose if you ACT like a child, you get treated like one...


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kibitzer

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Reply #7 on: July 26, 2011, 02:40:43 AM
Well, when you get anonymity (perceived or actual) people do become very childish. Seems that for most people if there's no accountability/consequences, it's a free-for-all.


Bdoomed

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Reply #8 on: July 26, 2011, 03:16:29 AM
People here were generally pretty civilized even before the One Rule to rule them all.

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


stePH

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Reply #9 on: July 26, 2011, 06:06:37 AM
Well, when you get anonymity (perceived or actual) people do become very childish. Seems that for most people if there's no accountability/consequences, it's a free-for-all.

...or put another way:


"Nerdcore is like playing Halo while getting a blow-job from Hello Kitty."
-- some guy interviewed in Nerdcore Rising


kibitzer

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Reply #10 on: July 26, 2011, 06:38:34 AM
Gotta admit, stEPH, that's the exact webcomic I was thinking of. Kinda says it all.


Spindaddy

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Reply #11 on: July 26, 2011, 04:46:41 PM
Gotta admit, stEPH, that's the exact webcomic I was thinking of. Kinda says it all.
Same here.

I'm not evil. I'm corporate.


Anarquistador

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Reply #12 on: July 26, 2011, 11:18:19 PM
Makes me wonder if there even is a point to trying to build a web community. I mean, if you have to actually enforce rules, does it cease to be a community and instead become a government? And aren't most communities composed of individuals opposed to YOUR LOUSY RULES, MAN! To get people to act civil toward each other, a moderator basically has to be a benevolent dictator, which is something philosophically opposed to the anarchic, organic nature of web communities. But then again, if, as we've seen, it's in the nature of the web community to be composed of Fuckwads, maybe dictatorship is the only option.

Not that I object. I have no problem with authority, so long as I AM the authority...

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Devoted135

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Reply #13 on: July 26, 2011, 11:35:19 PM
I would argue that all communities have mutually agreed upon rules, and that is a good thing. Even our "in person" interactions will tend to have moderators, whether that's the teacher, the manager, or just the friend that holds the group together. The moderators here are mostly in charge of forum maintenance and helping the more outspoken (usually new) members of the forum to understand our mutually agreed upon rules. Rarely do they have to resort to even a benevolent dictatorship, and even more rarely a slightly less benevolent dictatorship.



Scattercat

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Reply #14 on: July 27, 2011, 03:52:41 AM
The problem is anarchy dissolves.  Even the purest-minded anarchists forming a tiny commune somewhere have to agree to rules that govern them and their interactions, or else they quickly fall apart.  At the very least, they'd have to have basic unspoken rules such as "Don't punch people in the face for no reason."  You could probably create a tiny website with no overt "rules" if you only let your close friends on, people who shared your philosophy and goals for the site, but even then, you've established rules in the sense of setting up borders and denying non-members access in addition to the unspoken agreement to treat each other in mutually beneficial ways.

Once you allow membership to grow, you have to have some sort of moderation or your site collapses under the Asshole Wave.  All it takes is one Asshole who disregards the unspoken assumption that people won't get punched in the face for no reason and your once idyllic rec room is full of a handful of frightened individuals clutching couch cushions in front of their faces and cowering in separate corners, unwilling to risk interaction for fear of face-punching. 

In other words, when there are no rules, when there is pure anarchy, then the strong can impose their will on the weak and there is nothing to stop them.  (Unless the weak band together and overthrow the strong, which is war and/or rebellion, and afterward quickly returns to the strongman scenario unless the weak take steps to establish a government that protects individual freedoms.)  This is what strident Internet Anarchists and Internet Libertarians (i.e. 14-year-olds who espouse these philosophies on the internet) fail to understand, which is that one of the fundamental roles of government is keeping the peace.  It is possible to have a strong and supportive government that isn't OMG REPRESSION; not all laws and restrictions are limitations.  A good law is one that supports personal liberty while preventing the strong from imposing on the weak simply because they can.



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Reply #15 on: July 27, 2011, 02:09:48 PM
There's a LOT of power in a mob.  If you've got a well established community that has established a stable environment that is mostly asshole-free, there will be a tendency for more people to come in and act the same way.  Assholes will come in, get roundly thwarted, and skulk away to another target.  However, if the assholes get a foothold in the early days, their ways will become the norm, and good people will go away.  I call it Forum Inertia. 

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Anarquistador

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Reply #16 on: July 28, 2011, 12:42:16 AM
See, I always thought the best way to deal with an internet Asshole was to give them enough rope to hang themselves. That is, engage them on an intellectual level until the depths of their Asshole-ery are exposed for all to see. Is it better to just nip them in the bud, then?

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kibitzer

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Reply #17 on: July 28, 2011, 03:04:03 AM
There's a LOT of power in a mob.  If you've got a well established community that has established a stable environment that is mostly asshole-free, there will be a tendency for more people to come in and act the same way.  Assholes will come in, get roundly thwarted, and skulk away to another target.  However, if the assholes get a foothold in the early days, their ways will become the norm, and good people will go away.  I call it Forum Inertia. 

This. Exactly.


stePH

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Reply #18 on: July 29, 2011, 08:08:37 PM
Not that I object. I have no problem with authority, so long as I AM the authority...

Or as George W. Bush once said: "If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier... just so long as I'm the dictator."

"Nerdcore is like playing Halo while getting a blow-job from Hello Kitty."
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Anarquistador

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Reply #19 on: August 01, 2011, 04:18:37 PM
...you shame me, sir.

 :-\

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childoftyranny

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<tangent>
"Rarely do they have to resort to even a benevolent dictatorship, and even more rarely a slightly less benevolent dictatorship"

Does being a benevolent dictator indicate your actions towards outsiders as well as insiders? Because I can imagine a dictator who acts wonderfully to his people but kills all outsiders, are they still benevolent because of how they treat their citizens?
</tanget>



kibitzer

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<tangent>
"Rarely do they have to resort to even a benevolent dictatorship, and even more rarely a slightly less benevolent dictatorship"

Does being a benevolent dictator indicate your actions towards outsiders as well as insiders? Because I can imagine a dictator who acts wonderfully to his people but kills all outsiders, are they still benevolent because of how they treat their citizens?
</tanget>

Well in the real world (i.e. a ruler of a country or something) possibly not. However in this context, I would hope that how the dictator(s) and their serfs react to outsiders helps to draw them in :-)

That's right mods, I just called you dictators!! Especially that Tania. Talk about a fist of iron ;-)


Anarquistador

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Reply #22 on: August 12, 2011, 12:56:41 AM
I'm pretty sure the term "benevolent dictator" refers exclusively to how the dictator treats their subjects. It didn't really apply to how countries related to each other. Diplomacy is a relatively new idea in the history of the world, after all.

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birdless

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Reply #23 on: September 08, 2011, 03:36:16 PM
People here were generally pretty civilized even before the One Rule to rule them all.
I didn't even know one had been instituted. When was that?



kibitzer

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Reply #24 on: September 09, 2011, 03:48:45 AM
People here were generally pretty civilized even before the One Rule to rule them all.
I didn't even know one had been instituted. When was that?

27-01-2010. The One Rule.