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This page, and the other page, are still under construction, as of July 3, so expect them to change a little (and improve) over the course of the day. The forum stylesheet is also undergoing improvements; see the pinned thread for more details. -x
[welcome to the posting community of the future]
Remember when posts online were smart and fun?
Long ago, before the days when "the Internet" referred to four hellish websites owned by publicly-traded corporations, people felt a certain kinship with posts -- and with the places they posted.
But we've seen it get worse and worse over the course of the last few years, and today -- July 4, 2020 -- to post online usually means to participate in a demented society where the effortposter and shitposter alike are bound by the cruelty of the algorithm... the artist fears the censor... and the debater fears the ratio.
To hell with that! We are going to attempt something different. We are going to attempt something impossible. We are going to strike into the great unknown, and build our own thing. And by the power of your posts, it can be your thing too.
Who are we?
We are a few administrators and moderators who have spent a while running our own zones on the four hellish websites -- between us we've had a few million posts, and we have done a pretty good job cultivating communities where people who live all kinds of lives can get together and have a chat about whatever's going on; about stuff they care about, stuff they love, and stuff they hate.
Among us are some familiar faces -- for example, if you're on SSCD or any chat servers related to it, you will recognize most of our admin team, and if you're not, you will find us easy to get along with. We are pretty well-accustomed to dealing with large amounts of posts (we've got an organization chart and everything), from academic to jovial and everything in between.
Why a forum?
Over the course of administering millions of posts, we have become painfully aware of the limitations on sites like Discord, Reddit, and WordPress. They aren't set up to generate decent, intelligent discussions -- they're set up to generate lots of engagement, which means lots of content, which means lots of crap. What's more, the idea of having several years of posts exist solely because a company's business model currently deems it valuable is a little disquieting to say the least.
Forum software may seem like an antiquated way of going about things, but message boards have been a useful technology for over twenty years -- they're durable because they work. Threads aren't ephemeral words written in water; they're things you can come back to later and access.
What's your philosophy?
We consider it obvious that people who make posts online ought to be treated fairly, and as equals, and that they have the right to expect certain basic standards of justice: that they will not be subject to hostility and rudeness, that useful discussions will stay on-topic, and that their zone will not be filled with horrible posts. To secure this justice, administration is instituted among posters, deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed.
Under their administration, posters have the right to expect certain basic standards of liberty -- that they will be allowed to post freely, that they will be adequately informed of the limits on that freedom, and that they will not be censured for arbitrary reasons outside of these limits. To secure this liberty, policies are written and enforced.
The posters who constitute this Administration have laid its foundation on such principles and organized its powers in such form as to them seems most likely to affect their safety and happiness.
Policies that reflect the preferences of a large group are difficult to write and enforce with any degree of precision, since those preferences are hard to determine and change frequently. We try our best to give rules that make sense regardless. As we derive our powers from the just consent of the governed, so too do we derive our moderation philosophy from the things that people around here generally "love to see" or "hate to see".
If you want to know what the moderators here are like, get to know what the posters here are like -- they are the people whose preferences we try to represent when we make decisions.
But also, if you want a big fancy comprehensive rules document, we've got one of those on the way too, adapted from the battle-tested rules we've written for our other communities and made more relevant to the forums atmosphere (expect it by the 4th).
contact: x at memeware dot org
copyleft 2k20