Online Soap-Operas

[Ivar T]

There's this forum that I haven't been much active on lately, turns out that it has went through quite history when I was distant though. I will try making a picture of what happened in a chronological list.

 

1. A member banned for continuously flaming members contacts the domain registrar of the site demanding it to be shut down based on presumed defamatory material on him on the forum - this guy is really just a truly irrational prick in my opinion. According to the following discussion a registrar isn't allowed to shut down the site, but they did just that for about four days just as warning.

 

2. Moderators decides to strict the rules because of inspection from the registrar. Several threads and posts are hidden that otherwise wouldn't have - this include threads that looks abit crazy like talk about conspiracy theories and stuff. At this time the moderator who is the wife of the owner of the city re-enters the forum after a long time, seeing mostly unfamiliar members.

 

3. Members gets upset about the censorship and begin to criticize the admins in a not-always-so-well-worded manner.

 

4. Admins suspends several people who show disagreement with the moderation for temporary bans, claiming that the bans are valid because of personal attacking against them. In this process the wife of the owner display an especially bad judgement to the members.

 

5. Members begin to move their community to an alternative forum.

 

6. Admins locks the whole forum and claims that the one establishing the alternative forum has with several other members orchestrated the whole mess and thus "ruined it for everyone else".

 

Right now I gave a try at asking people at the new forum to forgive the admins of the old forum, so that we may return someday - site with a long history you see. People seemed very upset about what that has happened and basically flamed me for starting that thread - reminds me of the jacobins in the aftermath of the french revolution that I'm reading about nowadays.

 

I hope this thing is an extreme case of what a soap opera can do to an online community.

[Wizard]

That's horrible... and yet I'm laughing.

What site was it?

[Ivar T]

Aspies for Freedom - a political site meant for autistic rights issues but has also welcomed alot of support for people on the autistic spectrum until recently (before the lockdown). A big concern is that this incident will discredit the wider movement, but AFF has a history of soap operas from before anyway.