In my humble experience, having been WAY too active at sites like this since I was 12 years old.... and having been on staff at some of them.....
1. "He who governs best, governs least." (Ronald Reagan). It applies to internet discussions forums, too. Over moderation is, IMO, the single biggest destroyer of website communities. So far, IMO, this site gets an "A+" Sites tend to become "police states" by action NOT of the users (or even mods) but the admins and upper staff; such slowly die.
2. Rules should be few, clear, intuitive, communicated. IMO, so far (!!!), CH gets an A+ in this regard in my opinion. As staff gets bigger (in every sense) at websites like this, rules tend to grow and become less intuitive... it becomes a complex mess that even staff doesn't understand. The result is inconsistent arbitration. It also opens the door to POLITICAL moderation, where rules are abused to "silence" those staff disagrees with or simply sees as conveying things that are "disruptive" (this is always seen more in upper staff than among the mods).
3. Most such forums BEGIN as an open, embracing community where people and free discussion is what matters - often in reaction to sites that have becoming the antithesis of # 1 and 2 above. There have been at least a dozen such sites begun by former CF Admins (who either were kicked out or forced out or simply realized the site had become the opposite of what it once was) - ALL of them began as open, embracing communities were free discussion was stressed (in one case, it stressed there would be NO moderation at all!). Thing is..... the owner/admin/upper staff tends to have an "agenda".... politics and "favorites" tend to come into play.... the promotion and perservation of the site tends to "trump" communication.... a FEW "jerks" plague things.... and it starts: more and more rules, more and more bans, more legalism, more politics, more restrictions, more "sacrificial lambs"..... and the site begins it's downfall, either crashing down (and ending - like most of the CF spin offs) OR worse, they become "Mr Roger's Neighborhoods" promoting relativism, "Kumbyah'ism", and where there is nothing Christian except for the smiles... To ME, relativistic Christian sites are actually WORSE than not terminating, they do Christianity harm as opposed to a closed site which doesn't do anything.
4. Yes, there can be a few - a very few - "jerks." The day comes when such arrives at every site. Some are sincere (just weird), some seem to want to be jerks, but the common denominator is they are rude (what tends to make them "jerks" lol). Thing is: some think MORE rules....dictatorial powers... eliminating protocol.... turning the site into a police state helps, these things changes that. It doesn't.... jerks ignore all but themselves. Jerks remain jerks. Yes, occasionally, EDUCATION and truely helpful, kind "here's a better way" helps in the case of immaturity or poor working. Yes, simply banning them at times is necessary (this usually becomes obvious immediately.... banning one whose been around for some time proves they weren't all that disruptive). But usually the best approach is simply to ignore them. Yes - the emotionally touchy, the ones who are ruled by their feelings, will hit that REPORT icon and whine.... over and over.... about the SAME poster. Yes, some who CHOOSE to be hurt by a view will hit the report icon in hopes staff will silence them since they can't. A better approach: ignore them, just don't reply. Most jerks leave when they realize no one is reading their posts - or cares (although not always, some jerks seem to not care). In all my years at all these sites, I have RARELY reported anyone - and when I do, it's just to bring the poster to the attention of staff in case the poster is under the radar. When I came upon a jerk, I usually just don't reply. Works 95% of the time. Here's the thing: No one MAKES anyone feel anything. We CHOOSE to feel hurt or offended or angered, those feelings are OUR "stuff." Feelings are OUR choice. We need to own up to that. But all this (typically used as the EXCUSE to create a police state, to generate endless rules and revisions of them, to circumvent due process) is actually rare. The owner/admins/upper staff destroy the site with their politics, endless rules, over-moderating, police state - DOING the very thing (destroying the site) that these jerks would not have done (they being few and easily ignored).
I could say a LOT about CF (where I have some 20K posts and have been a part of for some 10 years and where I was once a Supervisor). It was - a long time ago - the largest Christian site on the internet. I remember when we had some 100 staffers. When Erwin - a CHRISTIAN - owned it and thought of it PURELY as ministry (not a business) with ONE (and only one) CLEAR, FOCUSED, OVER-RIDING "agenda" : to pursue truth together, in open unemcombered discussion. People.... smart, articulate, truth-seeking Christians flooded to the site and it simply became too big for Erwin (a full time doctor) could handle. The Admins that took over.... took over. Soon WAR was declared. Power.... politics..... struggles came to dominate. The problem was never the posters..... rarely the blessed "worker bees" doing the day to day moderating.... it was the Admins, the Advisors. That's still the case, IMO.... from what I know..... all in a site that is now a business and a tiny ghost town of what it once was. Thing is: I know most of them, LIKE most of them (trained a couple of them), good people.... who have lost any sense of what the site WAS for, having turned it into one of the most relativistic (and thus dangerous) sites on the internet, probably helping agnosticism better than anything. It's truly sad. For a LONG time, I worked to restore the site..... I kept hoping the good people at the helm would steer it back... but it just keeps getting worse and worse. I could say a LOT about CARM, too. In SOME ways, it's closer to the original CF but has much the same staffing issues - only in its case, to promote Evangelicalism rather than relativism (I give CARM higher marks here) but the same "police state" over-moderating, similar rule and protocol problems...... it's just what tends to happen to sites.
I have LONG been a proponent of appeals. At CF, I got maybe 20 or so warnings during my 20,000 or so posts. I appealed most - and in all but a couple of cases, won the appeal. I did so NOT because the warning meant much (in no case was a ban threatened) but as a LEARNING process for me and especially for staff. It's called accountability. It's called LEARNING through a specific example. Each "won" appeal was a change for the admin to discuss it with staff and improve moderating (these are good people who want to do good work), each 'lost" was a chance for me to learn how staff is currently arbitrating things - and thus avoid future problems. These give growth opportunities for staff and posters, and provide for accountability staff. What I've learned is.... the more power based, police state a site becomes, the less of a role is given to arbitration: it becomes worthless and moot as is now the case at CF and CARM, etc. Dictatorship - by definition - disallows accountability. Case in point: An Advisor issued me a "FSB" (forum specific ban) - even though at the time FSB's did not exist. She REFUSED - repeatedly - to tell me why. She ADMITTED -repeatedly - that my record was clean, I did not have a single active warning on my record. Over and over, I simply asked for reason for the ban but was told she didn't need to have a reason and didn't need to tell me why. I was told to keep it a secret for one year (if I told anyone, she would simply issue me a permanent ban) and I could not appeal it. I was told to "take it like a man" (which I found quite insulting). THIS is just ONE (I have many) examples of what I'm talking about (although that's one of the worse). The recent move at CF to eliminate the entire protocol and allow a ban (albeit only for a few days) WITHOUT ANY WARNINGS is yet another example of how extreme this gets in this "police state" mentality. I see lots of posts "how come there's no good discussions around here anymore?"..... isn't hard to know. But again, it's not the FEW jerks who did this to CF..... CF did this to CF. And it's not rare. Just sad.
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