Community Standards
 

Some online communities have detailed Community Standards like these:

In the Cellar:

The thing is, most intolerably irritating people immunize themselves and are often the most intolerant of others.

It is human nature that people judge others by their behavior and judge themselves by their intentions.

I'm sure some folks don't intend to be intolerably irritating, and don't know that they are regarded as such by the community.

Re: Community Standards
 

Yes. I've always wondered why you were so oblivious to that.

Re: Re: Community Standards
 

I assume that was meant to be humorous. :-)

On a serious note though, how about adding the following:

"Don't post notes that ignore the discussion's topic, and only serve to offend the previous posters. Specifically, try not to post anything that's just an insult, with no recognizable content apart from an ad hominem attack."

Of course, that's all subject to personal interpretation, but it might discourage pointless flaming? Not that I'm adverse to a good flame, mind you - a well-placed insult shielded by solid argumentation can be pricelessly funny. :)

X.

How about a daily limit on the number of posts a member may submit? Say... mmmm... five? This would help reinforce the idea that this is a forum, not a damn chat room, cut down on annoying MLP, and promote the notion there is a difference between quantity and quality.

It would also irritate a number of members and keep some good discussion from happening.

It doesn't really matter what's in the registration dialogue, though... people won't remember it, and people won't abide by it anyway.

The community's own attitude determines what anyone finds acceptable or unacceptable. I've seen a ton of these kinds of forums populated by, well, morons, and some of them even had the tight regulations IIRC. People take their cues from everyone else. Usually.

There was at one time an effective posting limit imposed by a limitation on connect time, and I do think that it shaped the discourse; I think things here are quite different now. But that limitation was created to encourage fair use of a shared resource, not to encourage parsimony.

Every time I've ever heard the term "community standards", it's been connected with political logrolling and a powergrab by those in a position to set down what the "community standards" were going to be.

Whenever a person or group claims to speak for "the community", be on guard.

I doubt it.

The only the ones who would be irritated would be the ones who don't understand the difference between quantity and quality. (And fuck them anyway.)

Five posts a day would be more than enough for the average user. Nobody has that much (interesting) to say. Any Dwellar who can't get it done in five posts or fewer should spend more time in meatspace and less in front of his computer.

(I'd be willing to discuss raising the limit for Dwellars who called in sick for the day, or are temporarily unemployed, but that'd be about it.)

Who is goingot enforce this? UT? Lets not waste his time. Mods? God i hope not.
How about a democratic system - vote people off as such, survivor on cellar..... (joke)

Hey! That's a great idea jag.

We could have a TV show - "Survivor: Cellar Edition". There could be cameras in our computer rooms, watching us type replies, eat pizza and, in general, be pathetic. Then, every however long, we would vote someone off and the show would continue. The ratings would be HUGE! We'd all be millionaires!

Maybe a little history.

The mid-80s. Back in the day there was KAOS, a GBBS Apple ][ system with a 2400 baud modem.

It was as rudimentary a setup as you would find anywhere. You'd call into this thing, validate, and you'd have four areas to post in. While you were dialed into this system, nobody else could get in, you see - the modem was busy, and it was a single-user system.

This little community attracted a ton of people, albeit with that limitation. You'd get in, read, post, and get out so the next person could do the same.

Now, this was before the introduction of ANY of the Internet society. But the group was remarkably similar to everything you see today, in terms of the personality types that would show up.

Then an interesting thing happened: the sysop moved out of the house where the system lived. So suddenly there was nobody in charge.

Now the community had to aggressively self-police, because while this rudimentary software had some means to detect whether someone was abusing it, it couldn't tell if someone was being intolerably irritating. And there was no sysop around to manually remove the offending users.

The result was that the community developed tactics to deal with disruptive people.

Then as now, the most common irritating personality was the attention-seeking troll. Without the reward of a hundred other communities to disrupt, trolls could be more devastating to KAOS. The group came up with PISS - the "passive ignorance silence strike" I believe it was. Invoked on such a personality, it was deadly: everyone merely agreed not to respond to ANY of that person's posts, in ANY way. Once the attention of the group was gone, the troll had no reason to post. It was remarkable how well and how quickly it worked. It was as if the trolls said "that's it, they're onto me" and within a few days they would leave.

Now, having said all that, I have to say that I am NOT running this as a sociology experiment!! I just enjoy thinking about how the sociology works, that's all.

Anyway, it occurred to me that, oddly enough, for a strong community, and for a certain kind of community, the best sysop was in fact no sysop. Not a sociology experiment, but an anarchy experiment.

While we all want to play with the rules to see what would result, the funny thing is that you can probably get the result you want in other, simpler ways. Since the community takes its direction from itself, the easiest way to sway the community in your direction is to post, and moreover to start threads. If you think someone is being a dick, ask them publically to not be. Even start your own section and ask them publically not to read it. The judgement of the community is more powerful than any rule we could come up with.

And to go a step further, our best bet - always! - is to learn to get along, rather than to restrict everyone, or to kick offenders out.

If you feel that rules are what makes a place what it should be, how do you know that the rules won't eventually work against you? (My own personal qualifier in deciding whether to participate in a community is this: if I will ever be censored in any way, I won't post. Why waste my time?)

Well, I'm babbling, and I'll stop now.

I'll weigh in here. Thanks Tony.
I'm not an experienced tech person. I have no history with this form of communication before last Oct. But I enjoy checking out the cellar and commenting. If there were rules, moderation and crap, I wouldn't hang around to be dismembered. Its casual here.
This open, free and imperfect forum works well enough. Folks can question, chat, preach, ignore, joke, argue - The governance discussed would bring far more problems than it would solve, hindering participation and squelching opportunity for insight from underestimated, unlikely and diverse dwellars. Ya'll should just let it do.