Cellar as a sociology experiment
 

Thanks for the nod of appreciation, NBN.

I'm sure UT will weigh in here with his usual insights about community sites, and we'd be interested.

Rather than "intelligent" discussion, which could be the territorial imperative of www.adequacy.org and www.kuro5hin.org, and others, it might be overreaching to aspire to a position anywhere higher than the name the Cellar implies.

At its very best, Cellar might be regarded as Uncommon Sense.

At its worst, Cellar suffers from a lack of social decorum at times, when members abuse the community and each other by communicating in ways that are universally unacceptable in real world communities. In civilized communities in the real world, such misbehavior is rewarded with the lowest rung of society. In the Cellar, such miscreants have the run of the place.

Perhaps the Uber Toad is just running an interesting sociology experiment where we are the lab rats in the Cellar, to see if a society can evolve in a virtual environment without apparent social order at the outset, only three rules, and no government ever.

BTW, I deleted this "off-topic" post from the other thread as a courtesy to others in that thread. :) If the follow-up posts are likewise deleted, then that quality thread will be back on topic.

OK! The reason it seems like that is more because I don't interfere.

In the olden days of the BBS, you'd find all kinds of sysops making all kinds of arcane rules, deleting accounts, deleting posts, being little dictators. They want to create cults of personality; the problem is that their visible personality is poor.

But I don't want to be dictator. I only want to participate, because I enjoy it. I don't want to be the final arbiter. I'm a technologist. Nobody elected me leader. So my take on it is that I shouldn't do much at all. Maybe I set a little of the atmosphere by suggesting what it's all about, but otherwise, it is up to all y'all.

That is not the current fashion, I think... I think the current fashion in online communities is that the leader/owner is a very strong leader, sets more of the tone, sets more of the personality of the group, etc. But if this is the fashion now, all you have to do is wait and the fashion will change.

The architect-type personalities amongst us, and Nic you surely are one, will want to introduce more structure. It's almost instinctive. But I think that's part of the point. All there is here is US. If we screw it up, it will be all our fault. We have to be open, and we have to be self-policing. All the architecture is in the people, and the diplomacy that works between us.

Interesting that you mention Kuro5hin. From first appearances, I would have probably spent much more time there than here, just simply for the fact that they seem to discuss more interesting topics. But i was driven away because they self-police themselves to hell, and if you wander from a set topic, they chew you to bits. Here, i have no problem doing that.

I doubt that Tony is making this into one insane bigass socieology experiment because he has been doing it since at least '95, and even I dont have that kind of patience.

I enjoy not having a "government" set up here, its a small community. Its more like a group of friends (and the entire Ham family) that just talks and posts shit that we find interesting. Beats the living hell out of /. or k5 cause they are flooded with users. You get the feeling you know most of the people you are talking to. Besides, less people means less spam.

Its all good. I think Tony has something going here. Seems to be a real success.

I think UT is writing a book like:

Design for Community

It's guaranteed to be on the Best Cellar list. ;)

Heh. Yeah, V, and the other thing is that if we are really sharing with each other, and caring about the responses, then there are bound to be differences in style and personality, and some people are going to get ticked off.

It's just natural! Why fight it?

dead on verbatim, yea yea, just like any social interaction, personalaties are going to clash - i'd know ;)

Cyberpsychology
 

The Psychology of Cyberspace might provide some interesting insights for and about Cellar dwellers.

Somebody on El Saano said this place seemed dull.

Well, compared to El Saano, we ARE dull. But dull as a whole? Nah. :)

What makes a place not dull?

I haven't stopped by there yet so I guess I don't know.

What really turns me on is people being real, talking about what's important to them.

Now that I've been there, I see: it's attention whoring, sex, flame warring and porn.

I suppose the Cellar would appear to be dull by comparison.

Well, admittedly, I find it bizarre...some really weird shit. I don't think I'll be popping over there any more, but that's not to say it's necessarily bad. If that's what people are looking for in a forum...*shrugs*...go for it.

(UT, did you notice the plug I made for the Cellar? :) )

Naw, once I got the gist of it, I left --

It's age 18-25, is what it is. I know, I know, some of y'all are in that age range. Not all 18-25ers are like that. But that's sorta the attitude of a lot of 'em, an attitude that often changes once the serious stuff of life kicks in.

"Show us your tits!" has new meaning, for example, if your loved one has suffered from breast cancer. Or if you have a one-year-old daughter whom you treasure above anything else in life, realizing that in time she'll have to deal with the same pit of dopey sexist attitudes.

Not that either of those things has happened to me. But I've seen enough other people experience it.

None of our resident 18-25ers yelling at me?

I was going to but you were nice enough to include a disclaimer stating we aren't all like that. And seeing that I agree with you about the rest of the post, yelling seemed like a worthless thing to do.

Of course not, it would prove your point. :-) Stiil, I'm surprised you're willing to bait them at that level...looks like a prima-facie case of old-fartism to me.

The core belief of young adulthood for some is: having escaped from the clutches of childhood, one is finally free to act upon one's hard-won complete understanding of Life, the Universe and Everything. Since the lives of your elders are comprehensible at a glance, clearly nothing lies ahead that will deepen or sharpen your understanding of What's Important or How Things Work.

Any suggestion that there might be things yet to be learned must be a result of elitist oppression by the Grups. Furthermore, things are always "so different now" that there can be no important commonality of experience with previous generations.

And it was exactly that way thirty years ago, too. :-)

Though you're completely right, people of all ages respond best when they're treated as equals. Even if they aren't.

Well that's the thing... in the online world, like here, I don't really associate people with their physical age, I associate them with their mental age.

And that's the other thing... there's nothing that makes a particular age better or worse. People are people, and they all bring their different mix to the table.

It is too bad we cannot do this in the real world. So many things that we put an age limit on should not be done by many people of that age group, though others should be able to do it sooner. Driving is one example. I know many people who should not have gotten their license when they did, and other I am sure would have done just fine if they had gotten it earlier. Drinking is the same way, some people who are 40 should not be drinking, and some 17 year olds can be responsible when there drinking.
Of course, this is coming from someone who's 20 and feels he should able to go to the bars on a Friday night so you can draw your own conclusions.

Well, how much energy they've put into demonstrating that they aren't worthy of respect does influence how much effort I'm willing to put into humoring their delusion that they are. But that isn't really about age.

This kind of touches somehow on that psych study about how dumb people often are also dumb about how dumb they are. :-)

Isn't it kind of a perception though. Until you reach the point in your education where you just kind of step back and say, "Wow, there is so much more I can learn" you can't possibly realize how little you know. And the fact is those that are "dumb" most likely havn't reached that point so are going to consider themselves nearly equals of everyone.


edited for the sake of my sanity in three days :)

Let's give that one 3 days.

Now, now. We all have been told repeatedly that typos and misspellings are actually indicia of how important and busy the writer is, and that we should be grateful that they deign to grace us with their presence at all. :-)

Cam, just about *all* thought is rooted in perception. And let's distinguish between education, wisdom and intelligence.

And as much as I'm a believer in what Steve Vai calls "Love, peace and good happiness stuff", I still reach a point at which I no longer "suffer fools gladly". The fact that they'll probably be wiser later sometimes doesn't make up for their present obnoxiousness.

It ain't age. It's children. Having children turns you from a normal, rational person into a member of the societal hive mind. You start viewing everything through the perspective of "how will this potentially affect my children", and "right" and "wrong" become synomous with "good for my children" and "bad for my children". You additionally lose all sense of perspective; anything which could potentially affect your children in a negative way MUST BE DESTROYED.

I'm told the usual way OUT of this is more children -- eventually jadedness overcomes this attitude. However, I don't recommend it. Better to never start.

(Full disclosure: I'm 30, no children)

tell me youre joking.

~james

Easy there Russ, if I'm not mistaken we chart pretty close politically. Now get back to work my kids need you to be productive. ;)

That does happen in cases, but it's far from inevitable. Furthermore, there's lots of members of the societal hive mind that never had kids.

Having kids can teach you a lot about people...if you're paying attention. (Not everybody does.)

Even as a spawnless adult, I dont find anything wrong with a guiding concern for future generations. Seems a bit healtier perspective than concern only for oneself. Societal Hive? buzz buzz.

Oh course some people don't get over their immature attempt to start fights now matter how older and wiser they continually and endlessly claim to be.

I'm not going to yell at UT either - he's correct and I’m 17 till January ;)

People always IMHO in real life form a circle of friends in and around their socioeconomic bracket, and close friends around their intellectual bracket. This place bring together a vast range of people that otherwise wouldn't talk like and opens the way for some very interesting discussions, and allot more friction.