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Ranting about the F_W deletion	June 24th, 2004 - 02:09 pm

Because God knows you're all entitled to my opinion.

You know, here's my issue with the whole deletion: the mods and their friends think F_W has gone to shit. The mods and their friends have

mockitymock.

Don't like F_W anymore? Don't think it's funny enough? Stop reading, stay in

mockitymock, have your refuge of pure, gleaming wit and utter brilliance.

The end.

Vocal minorities who think the quality of their groups - for just about any definition of that word, online or off - has declined and become a "cesspit" never, ever manage to "salvage" the group, because they're minorities. Sometimes they start successful spin-off niche groups, but they can never bring back "the good old days", if the "good old days" ever really existed outside their heads.

This shit happens everywhere. Fucking everywhere human beings interact and don't have a vested (read: economic) interest in making sure things function smoothly. I think it's accelerated online, but it happens everywhere - I've seen it happen to anime clubs, to RL writing groups, to LARPs, I've seen it happen to Linux usergroups, my mother's fucking garden club and knitting group and one of her choruses. I've seen it happen to MUSHes and MUDs online, to LJ communities galore, to mailing lists of all stripes, to message boards, to fucking internet Go servers - and for the most part, Go players are about the most polite, good-natured, intelligent, drama-free group I've ever encountered, online or off. It's universal. It's just part and parcel of how human beings interact.

Whether or not you're "right" about F_W going to shit (I think everyone is idealizing the past), you're in the minority, and any attempt to "fix" it is just going to exacerbate the problem. Because this isn't really about phoenix or any of the out and out egregious trolls - if it was, you could have just asked Zorro to find out his IP address and ban him. It was about "we don't like the majority of the people in F_W anymore", as far as I can tell.

No mod action can undo a demographic change. Sorry. Not even Republican jerrymandering can pull that shit off in the long term. Communities are made up of people, and short of turning F_W into

mockitymock you will never have the old F_W back again. Ever.

It's not just wanky to try, it's kind of delusional.

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