I have a semi serious question for you TC: Do you think the reason that you see all this depth and all these things going on is because you're schizophrenic?
You act like I'm the only one who saw it.
I think in part, it being toxic and insane was what it thrived off of, and with it being too well moderated or moderators taken just a little bit too much power… it decreased the anarchist value of the site which is what made it what it was. A rouge ghost ship out in the sea of sites so well maintained and moderated lol, meanwhile SC was out here just being left to rot. It was part of its appeal. The common commrodary among users against its powerful creator (userp the dictator) is kind of what of what created a more interesting and powerful social dynamic that one is likely to return to.
Basically I think this place has been moderated to death a bit, though that is only one aspect of… what’s caused it’s inevitable dissolve
So your idea for how to improve it would be to moderate it less? Less than... what exactly? 🤨
Where did 'overmoderation' do the most damage here, taking down doxes? Are you... saying we ought to bring those back to fix the site Blanc? Or do you mean that when a single person, like Turquie, would flood the entire front page that it should have been left unaddressed, or perhaps even the daily bot posts should be left up? I'd personally argue this place is moderated less than Luna's SC ever was, and I say that as someone who modded on both sites.
I don't really see how that's specifically the issue, so much as I see this idea that people with mod tools that don't flip out or lose their shit are seen as boring. How many mistakes aren't being made gives less bait and sensationalism when compared to the constant problems the old site had. If less moderating had been done, people'd be saying that was why they left, as many had said during Luna's forum where ironically there was more moderating going on. People remember to some degree what was taken down, which gave an impression of activity, and now that there's less to take down it'd seem people like you assume the mod team must be doing too good of a job.
It's less so that there's too much moderating, and moreso that there is less to moderate in the first place.
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The real issue is over the state of the community; for every person that left there was a cascade effect on those who still remained. If we were to go through each user and see why they left, we'd see that it wasn't so much the state of the website's moderation that saw them go so much as how they were doing socially within the dynamic that had them leave. Either people they once liked (or hate-fetished) no longer attended or they became afraid of the place's effect on them, if not both.
The forum's just a framing device for the people who use it, it's moreover the conversations people found themselves having. People sign on here to interact with the place still, but if the few each day who sign on do it apart from one another rather than in unison they don't stick around. A lot of the bait was being triggered into responding, seeing something said that could not be ignored, but since losing people like Jim no one's really doing that now, at least not effectively.
We went through a period of overly verbose posting that slowly streamlined into single sentences, which streamlined into single words, which eventually streamlined into not posting at all as lurkers. Rather than drop the habit, those who found themselves 'stuck' here weaned themselves of it, especially so once Discord threw itself into the mix. We also peaked years ago, it's hard to top where this site's already taken itself before and those stuck in the past were mostly repeating themselves.
Even for those complaining about the ones who remain quote unquote 'undefeated' grew tired of how they weren't really interacting with other people so much as talking to themselves. The root to this place's success was having it be a vulnerability circus, but overtime people realized they can just not respond, as well as how it offered people a place to go where they wouldn't be banned like they found themselves being on 'other forums', which grew stale to many once Discord offered something similar where other sites once had not.
We also overall lost a lot of the innocence and naivete that let conversations not be interrupted by prior wisdom. Once people realized they can just not respond to it, there was less fuel for the dumpster fire as people took less risks. As we learned eachother over a period of years we also began to have less left to unearth from one-another.
Migrations from other websites, like PsychForum people and even some Kiwis (until Luna kicked them out) who visited here rather liked the lawless nature, but that doesn't mean what it once did now that forums are seen as 'too slow' to the current majority of people. The demand this place offers has become passé, the tolerance people once had's been whittled down, and those with a similar enough gumption for our former values prefer to be anonymous these days so that they won't become the next target (or their rules state they aren't allowed to cannibalize, like Kiwi). Where they could once come to SC to post what their own websites (or even lives) wouldn't allow them to, now that need is more easily addressed overall.
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TLDR; I've been moderating less since we moved over to Good's forum, rather than more, and based on the above your point makes no sense to me.
