Concept Tuning: Anarchy
 

Ok, I'm looking for input in 2 areas. First, let me explain the situation:

An internet forum, much like the TFP, is set up and users are invited to participate. The forum is set up to model anarchy. All users are given equal, extremely liberal rights; editing, deleting, banning, opening, closing, creating... anything. There will be no rules for posting.. anything goes. The only thing that will matter will be how the users use their freedom.

So, with that in mind; how do you think it will work out?

Also, do you think there should be any limits/freedoms to the abilities of forum members that would better shape an anarchy model? Example: Is the ability to ban other users at will too extreme to fit the anarchy model, or is it perfectly in line?

I'm thinking of setting something like this up. I'd be interested in seeing how it goes.

Just because someone CAN do something, doesn't always mean that they will...

For total anarchy to rein.. the inmates probably need to run the asylum... that includes giving them the weapons necessary.

I would imagine it would get pretty frustrating pretty quickly and without some sense of order... people wouldn't want to play for long...

It'd be an interesting experiment...

Hmm. Interesting

Anarchy: Absence of any cohesive principle, such as a common standard or purpose.

So, if you have any purpose at all with this, you've failed already. :shrug:

I don't really know about the banning for all members. I mean it seems like a pretty true anarchist style, considering anarchy is just political confusion and lawlessness... how long before everyone but one is banned? Will someone just walk in and ban everyone from the start?? Or will we see a natural selection of sorts where the Estrong survive and the Eweak fail?

Hell, go for it. I want to see what carnage ensues.

It's definately a good idea. I'm not sure how it would turn out, as that would depent almost exclusively on who joins. If those of the calibur I've seen of TFP were to join, I could see this as a very important experiement in the social processes of an anarchy. I've never seen anarchy in action before (except on Fox), and this would give someone a front row seat, while at the same time having the limitation of it simply being an internet forum (not that it's a small thing to be a forum online). If you make this, please link it. I'd love to join.
Limitations should simply be in place to prevent the forum from leaking into the real world. No personal information should be put on the forum at all. In an anarchy more often than not one's emotional responses are seen more often than normal, and emotional responses can sometimes lead to violence. Other than that, no illegal content (anything that breaks national or international internet law).

This should be facinating.

Let's refer to this board as AFP, "Anarchic Forum Project", just to make the discussion easier.

Someone on AFP would get banned. That person would take it harshly and find a way back onto the board, and begin mass-banning others. Remaining users would try to sort out the damage. However, some users caught in the collateral cross-fire a few times would get tired of the whole thing and leave AFP for good. I think it would be hard to maintain enough dedicated users to keep it interesting.

My biggest concern with AFP would be that grudges created there would filter back to TFP and damage the trust that we have here.

then how about a rule where you can't use your TFP name on the other board? then it's somewhat annoymous

to a point - personalities come out and writing styles for some people - make them easy to pick out... :)

That's true, but I wonder how noticable it would be with all the (supposed) chaos abounding.

Take a look at pretty much any unmoderated forum on the net. Any one that is remotely big is unreadable garbage.

For instance, the imdb forums could be fantastic - a fan of a movie? Want to discuss it in depth with other fans? Sounds great. In reality each board is just thread after thread of immature pointless flaming. Even when someone tries to start a genuinely interesting thread, it degerates into banal crap after about half a dozen posts.


So unmoderated forums don't really work so well in my opinion. Not all are as bad as imdb, but on pretty much all unmoderated boards I've seen the "signal to noise ratio" is pretty poor.

Your "Anarchy" model is not quite the same as unmoderated. It is similar, but it goes much further. I imagine that it wouldn't be long before some jackass decides to delete all posts he/she disagrees with, or bans everyone he/she dislikes. Then there would be retaliation. Soon all posts would be deleted, and every account banned. Not so much fun.

But perhaps there is a middle ground between standard "moderated" and "unmoderated"/"anarchic" forums? For instance digg.com is pretty much self moderated. Like a thread? "Digg it" to increase it's visibility. If a threads gets enough diggs, it gets moved to a more prominent section of the site. This way, the majority of the users don't have to deal with spam, reposts, and all the other crap. Find someone trolling? Vote his post "thumbs down". If a user gets a net vote of minus five, the post is hidden from the thread unless it is explicity viewed.

This has some nice features. No spam, no trolling, but without explicit moderators. But it has problems too. Mainly that it punishes the posting of unpopular opinions. The "thumbs up/down" feature is often used to vote down, not just spam/trolling, but also just things that people disagree with. Go ahead and try to suggest that maybe, just maybe rapant music and film piracy isn't necessarily the most wonderful thing in the world. Your post will disappear. Try to suggest the sometimes commerical software might have an occasional slight advantage over open source software...bye bye post.

I suspect that a model such as this can be improved with further modifications.


Ok, I'll just wrap it up by saying that, no I don't think the anarachy model would work out so well. But I do think that there is plenty of room for innovation in this area, and that there are plenty of possibilites out there, including models which dispense with the idea of appointed moderators. But I suspect the really good ones would resemble democracy more than anarchy.

This is difficult to predict. I think Redlemon's predictions might come true but they seem like worst case scenarios.

I'd be interested to see the results. The closest thing I can think of in real life is walking into a conversation people are already having and shouting "This is over!!" Unlikely. Although we can predict that there will be bannination, we need to see what the reactions will be. Will there be extreme retaliation? Let's see.

If there is an understanding, upon joining, that it's an anarchic e-society, perhaps people will be more interested in controlling their ability to ban.

The problem is there will be no differentiating the weak from the strong, if anyone can electronically kill (read:ban) anyone else. It would be too easy for a malcontent or two (note I said nothing about other mals....;) ) to ruin the whole thing.

there would still be weak vs strong - though not necessarily those words - it doesn't require physical strength to push the ban button... it's more about whether people have the "guts" to push the button...

it's be interestint to see if with banning -there was a time limit on it - and you knew who banned you ... once you knew that person banned you - when you recover - do you retaliate... and how? ban back? or something more insidious?

I would be wary about the relationship between TFP and AFP, but for a different reason. Namely that it would tamper with the "purity" of the experiment. People would act in a different way, because they already know the people involved. For one thing, they might have an emotional reaction towards them one way or the other. For another, people are likely to act differently knowing that they are going to return to the TFP and will interact further there.

So, if for instance the AFP was sucessful, how would we tell the difference between:
1. Look at this sucessful forum! See what can be achieved with an anarchy model!
vs
2. Look at this sucessful forum! Notice how the strong respectful relationships forged in the TFP have survived under the pressure of an onslaught of anarchy!

Imagine me setting up this board. I carefully set up permissions so everyone has these powers. I make the first post; it is titled "steal this post." It explains the site and it notes very clearly that I can be banned by YOU and this post can be thrown into oblivion with just a few clicks of the mouse. The post goes on to explain that everyone is given power and that the entire board is wide open. You can post anything you want because you have every freedom. At your fingertips is the ability to create, along with everyone else, something great. Will you use your power to help it grow, or will you destroy it?

I think most people would intend to help it grow- -but intentions are funny things sometimes... one person's great idea could cause the destruction of the board...

I would think that giving the power to ban indiscriminantly would not be a good thing.

I would rather see it set up like a meritocracy where users can give "good" points or "bad" points to other users based on what the users have posted. A flame would lead to an accumulation of "bad" points depending on how it is received and reviewed by the other users. A good post would generate "good" points and a me too type of post would generate no points.

Accumulate enough negative points and you start to get banned. First time your balance of "good" is, say, 50% lower than your "bad" you get a week long ban. The next time more time off, and so on. Something like that anyway.

even with the points system it really wouldn't be that hard to abuse it. When someone was approaching the banning levels people could easily just press the "bad" points just to get the person out for a bit. You would still have some people who would come in and start giving everyone "bad" points and then working from there. So, in time it would turn into an anarchist state anyway. /me thinks

:shrug:

It's a funny line to walk. Being able to ban without care is 'too much' however, instituting reputation is defeating the purpose.

Yes. I can see that, Gucci.

BUT... what if we all could see who was doing what? If someone was going around picking on users and giving an inordinate number of negative points for no reason, people would give them a lot of negative points in turn.

The person getting picked on might also get a lot of sympathy "good" points which would off set the "bad" ones.

It would take a while to weed out the bad eggs.

Here's a thought. Perhaps you do not get the power of giving points until you have earned a significant number of "good" points. One could assume that those who have earned enough good points would be responsible enough with power.

A new user would then have a time to learn how the board works before taking part as a full user.

Well, I'm visualizing this in my head. I see idealogical Anarchy as a sort of neutrality and balance. A delicate perch between chaos and order. When you're suggesting is a bias toward order, making it harder for chaos to develop. That would defeat the concept.

I'm with Hal. This really kinda defeats the purpose of setting up an anarchy board. Now I know you said you'd rather have it set up as a different type, but that's similar to what we have here now. The only difference is we have a political (mods/admins) party that holds the power. In your model, Cliques would abound and certain cliques would destroy other ones and try to gain the power. While that would in fact be an interesting study, I think the Anarchist model would be a more interesting model to begin with; especially considering the scope of relations on TFP. I'd like to see if people carry the same attitudes and traits as they do on here.. or if they go ape-shit and try to destroy everything in sight. I'd also like to see who isn't "scared" on the Anarchist Project. Some who may be a bit leery as to what they say here (for whatever reason) may in fact pack quite a punch.

Perhaps you could do the following:

The forum starts out as you described. Except that the very rules that it operates on can be modified - like an open source forum which can be modified on the fly. Initially there are a number of rules set up about how the system can be modified: say, a modification in proposed. A poll opens for a week. When the poll closes, if it got higher than 50% approval, the change goes ahead. The rules describing the modification process are of course, also candidates for modification.

Oh yeah by the way, I have dibs on the username Halx.


:P

I honestly don't believe that human nature will ever allow for that kind of system. There will always be someone who wants to graft the system and cause shit.

Just visit any unmoderated board. Heck visit the Politics board.

The key, in my mind, is to give users a set of tools to run the show. The meritocracy I have suggested has order but it also has an element of chaos. If you want to be a shit disturber you can do this too.

Frankly, I don't want to participate in an unmoderated board. That's why I make TFP home.

Count me in 100%. While I do have aprehension, not unlike that of Charlatan, my sense of curiosity is setting off fireworks in my brain. I have to see what happens. I wonder if I'm curious about the sociological aspect, or if I just like watching a train wreak?

Yes, but in an Internet setting, there is no consequences to the actions of the abuser.

In an anarchic physical environment, every participant must weigh the option that another can cause them PHYSICAL harm. Even in anarchy, their behaviour is modified.

Listen. If there are no laws, what is stopping me from shooting someone in the face? Nothing. Therefore, I must take steps to ensure that I don't get shot in the face. See? My behaviour is moderated, out of necessity.

Not so on the internet. What is stopping me from fucking the site over? Nothing. There is no consequence in my actions. I therefore reach into the pit of humanity and bring out the most disturbing parts of my id. I let them breathe. I post bestiality, scat and snuf. People ban me, but not before I have fucked with their minds.

I dunno. I think there should be one rule: No banning. there could be ignore buttons galore, though...

Ben, you have made concrete that thing I couldn't get my finger on... consequences. It's just the Internet, who gives a fuck! This is what runs rife through unmoderated sites.

The meritocracy provides concrete consequences to your actions.

Ok, consequences.

You're right, there is no way to develop consequences. The worst I can think of is retaliation. It would be tough to pin down anyone due to the ability to register many accounts.

A design flaw... yes. But is it a gamebreaker?

You could make it a democratic experiment by having the community vote and decide on consequences.

Although that kinda defeats the purpous.

Well, it's all down to the clientelle. I suspect that this could work, if it was kept small and the majority of the members found it from tfp. The people we've got here are just the mature, intelligent, respectful types that would be required to make something like this work. But given wider exposure - I doubt it.

I mean, you could probably get exposure for an "anything goes" forum, as it's something quite different. Imagine say that it got posted on slashdot or fark or some other high traffic website. I suspect it wouldn't be long before oodles of jackassery emerged.

Just bear in mind that there are actual trolling groups, who put in a lot of time and effort for the sole purpose of fucking things up on other forums/communities. I imagine that an anarchy forum such as this would be a dream come true for them, see Gay Nigger Association of America

I see it as a gamebreaker. I would have thought this was a great idea and totally doable when I was in my early 20s. I think I have just become too jaded.

Read up on the history of most communes. Most of them have ended in failure. While anarchy is a great goal to aim for, I see it like I see most absolutes. Unattainable. They all need some sort of tinkering to make them work... this is always to account for human nature. Human nature is a messy thing.

In the end, anarchy might work but it would be a lot of work and there would be little time left over to use the forum for anything but maintaining "the system". In the end, I predict it will grow boring because it will be boring.

I could be wrong though.

I like the idea of people being able to see who has done what to whom. That way, if you ban my friend, I know it was you, and I can ban you. Ah, the joys of retaliation. :lol:

However, my theory is it would eventually turn out like high school: one giant popularity contest.

I think it could work if we were to take the forum we have now and turn it into AFP.

The problem with starting fresh is the idea of how anonymous the internet is, and how anonymity can create carelessness. If we want this to be similar in type to a "real world" model of anarchy, then we must take into account that people aren't entirely anonymous in meatspace.

We all would start with equal and total power, but our current "social positions" among eachother remain the same. Halx would be Halx, cellophanedeity would be cellophanedeity, and such. That way, if someone is banned, then the community knows who did it, and is able to find out why, if they're interested. Also, there's no reason to believe that anarchy begins as a meeting of equals with equal status. I believe that just a state of lawlessness is enough to be considered anarchy. (And whoever said that anarchy by definition isn't compatable with order is mixing anarchy and chaos, which is very easy to do!)

It would be interesting to see how things would progress from there. I have a feeling that a certain sort of Social Contract would form, in which we would put up with certain people that we don't particularly care for, but are not harmful in order to keep the peace.

Say for instance that I don't like Maleficent (I really do! I'm just using her as an example!! <3) and I have the power to ban her. I also know that a larger group of other people do like Mal, and would be upset if I banned her. In order to keep the peace and my place in the social sphere here, I would settle with my negative feelings.

I also suspect that we would develop a sort of policing method, in which certain, more socially powerful, people take it upon themselves to sort out the good and bad guys. And yes, this would be a popularity contest. Most things are anyway, even if we pretend they're not.

And from there, the "police" would develop rules to avoid arguments within eachother, then the other people would develop rules to keep the police from being in total power of them, and then we would be back a a democracy and then back where we are, and while it's not perfect, we do it to get along.

Lord of the Flies somehow comes to mind...

makes a mental note....

I dont think those three people would be that upset - just show 'em pictures of you in your maple leaf skivvies and they'd make you queen :D

Aww Mal, you know I love ya! :icare: ^_^

It's a great concept, but people, imho, like order and there are some who love power. IMHO, within days you would see people wanting a leader and wanting to set up a form of governing body.

Within a month you would have TFP part 2, just maybe with different mods and perhaps with fewer freedoms.

Also, another wrench is the inevitable bad feelings, rivalries and negatives that would spill over into here.

All that said, I'd be up for the experiment.

Look at the Yahoo message boards.

It is basically anonymous, and what people are really thinking comes out.

They are racist, hate fat people, gays suck, stupid people suck, Bush is evil, every hot girl wants to have sex with them, etc...

If it was truly anonymous, what would happen if child porn got posted there. In Anarchy, it's not illegal. There are no laws. People would create multiple accounts in case one got banned, and ban everyone else and say negative stupid things about one another.

Anarchy only works in nature. The birds have no laws, there are no fish in prison. It is survival of the fittest. Humans are intelligent and have emotions (revenge/jealousy/lust ...), which makes anarchy not work very well.

If there were only a few random people and they sort of know each other, but never team up on one person, it might be ok. But, a true anarchy message board would go nowhere if there wasn't some kind of goal and equality within the members.

Yeah, I think it is. Not that this isn't a very interesting idea... but anarchy on the internet will inevitably lead to more noise and less signal.

Look: let's say I come across your "steal this post" post. You know the first thing I would do? Delete that post and ban you, just to see if it was true. I'm a software guy at heart, and my instinct is going to be to test the system.

But I'm not accountable for that, and you know it. And you, being a human being, get pissed off that you're now banned, you log in as Hal2, you ban me. I come back as ratbastid2 and ban your second account, and lock out your IP address. You get friends to come and flame me for a while, then ban me. And then the forum looks an awful lot like the hundreds of undermoderated trollfests already out there on the internets.

Ben nailed it: in meatspace anarchy, there are consequences to your actions. You're a meat body with a physical location, and there are things that can be physically done to hold you accountable for your actions. That's the only thing that might make it work.

Ok, I suppose in order to create accountability, we must institute a system. Give in a little to order. Here's what I am thinking.

Phase I.

Upon its release, the forum is released in the method I am suggesting. We see how it goes. If lawlessness overcomes it, I'll wipe it clean and start again with Phase II.


Phase II.

vBulletin has a reputation system built in. We'd use the reputation as status. Restrictions will be put on registration.

The top 50% of the population will be able to moderate posts.
The top 10% of the population will be able to ban users.

This changes the dynamic of what I was looking for originally, but it's more stable. It forces people to establish themselves, thus promoting accountability.

Probably the better way to do it. By making the population accountable to itself rather than a select group of moderators and/or administrators you remove much of the formal structure but maintain some semblence of order.

Ok, i'm not assuming that it will fail. I'd even prefer to say that "Phase II" isn't better.. it's just MORE. We don't know if it's better until we put it into action.

I'm sure this would add even more concerns, but would the users also be able to remove bans?

I think this would actually work, if there were a lot of people, and you could only ban, say, 1 person every hour. No chance for someone to have a bad day and wipe the whole board, and and plenty of time for retaliation. All you need to do to survive is make a couple of friends to back you up, and you'd be safe, as anyone who tried to ban you would find themselves gone in short order.

This will not work, however, if, like I said, some one can have a bad day and just ban everyone. The speed at which this could happen is the major difference between the real world and this.

I'd be very interested to see how this pans out. I can imagine groups of people banding together for protection, maybe group rivalries, even wars. Sign me up.

oooh that'd be like Survivor TFP Internet... :) with our own alliances...

Banning would probably be amusing for a few days, then it would settle down... As long as bans weren't perma bans... then it's not all that different than getting killed in a game... you can always heal yourself after a certain amount of time...

Alliances that retaliate would make a person think twice about doing the ban in the first place... Except for those that would just be gunning for Halx because it'd amuse them to no end to ban the boss... Be careful with that - he could be like a suicide banner... you ban him - and he bans 10 people at the same time... :)

There's no justice like mob justice!

At which point the chaos in the system will give rise to The Anomaly, or "The One". The function of the One is to return to the source, allowing a temporary dissemination of the code he carries, reinserting the prime program. After which he will be required to select from the matrix 23 individuals, 16 female, 7 male, to rebuild Zion.

I like the idea of limiting bans. However, that is kind of pointless in the whole Anarchy ideal. I'd like to see which cliques form, and how they function <i>without</i> the use of a rating system. All in all, failure or success, I see this to be an interesting experiment in the lives of current TFP'ers. The only way to really see what would happen is for us to get on with it already and just try it out. Really.. what's stopping this from happening? I say, if you are against it then just don't join (although I wonder how many people are bluffing not going just to so they can raise some higher level of annominity and then come and wipe us all out)

Phase 1 = Bathroom wall

Phase 2 = TFP with different mods and some leftover tension from Phase 1

Consider me skeptical.

This will work even less than real world anarchy.

Hal,

Go into this 100% sure it will work the way you wish it to. Do not doubt and make sure you can be totally committed to it's success. And it will work.

Any doubt, if you get upset and slack off, it may get out of your control fast and not be what you want it to be.

I know you want it to be a certain way, and it can work that way, but it's going to take hard work and patience and you have to be prepared for that.

Just some unsolicited and probably, unwanted advice.

To those skeptical and sure it won't work, you aren't participating right? I mean after all why waste your time in something that you have deemed won't work?

This idea can work and can be a success, the outcome is based on the beliefs of the people who participate. If they work to make it successful, it will be. If they go in with the belief it will fail, it will.

Well, you're all assuming we're gonna keep it inhouse. That's not my intentions. Why create a social experiment designed for only a finite number of people to use? If anything, the TFP influence would be small. Hopefully I can grab the attention of other groups on the internet and hopefully it can get going like that.

In any case, is all of this "It will never work" a lack of support? Let's get some constructive thinking going on. How can it work?

banning seems to be the biggest stumbling block - while anarchy is the absense of rules... what would the circumstances (rather than rules) surrounding banning be.

Length of a ban:
Can you do anything while banned
How many bans to you get a session


For players of this game - or users of this envirnment
will there be levels of users where one level gets more power than others - or can i ban at will from day one?

ahh, see I thought this would start out as a site with mostly TFP'ers and then grow outside of that after an initial trial run. If it's set to outside influence from the start.. well fine with me :)

As far as the bans go, I think you should limit it to not being able to ban IP addresses. This would allow more retaliation, if necessary, or the ability to come back and state ones case.

I'd also like to see maybe a max of 5 bans per day. This would eliminate the possibility of just coming in and wiping everyone out.

I say all that and then wonder if that really sets a tone for anarchy. Some sort of disclaimer will have to be made that any illegal activity such as child porn etc would naturally have to be pursued by *IRL* authorities.

Of course, given the nature of the site, I'd assume that if someone did post such trash, they would be banned immediately and their post deleted. Hence we will see who emerges as protectors of the site and who emerges as destroyers.

Whatever you decide I'll give it a go.

True.

Unless people are talking here about how well things are going over there, I don't plan to visit. I really appreciate the rules on TFP.

(Is anyone going to invite Bones over to AFP? :lol:)

For one thing, don't use "Anarchy" or any of its derivatives in naming the forum. As this thread demonstrates, it's too loaded a term that would undermine any noble intentions.

It's funny you mention Bones. I started to wonder about him in my last post.

I don't see Anarchy as an absence of rules or laws, rather it is an absence of heirarchical authority.

There is nothing to prevent the users from establishing laws and rules.

I think the key is to have a system that allows for a level playing field while giving users the tools of onsequence. It's why I still say some form of meritocracy is the key.

It isn't order or law, it is just a system. A system like survival of the fittest or the most diplomatic.

Here is one scenario to think about:

A group of people who have amassed a great number of negative points, but not enough to be banned, form their own sub-forum in which they can hang out and grant positive points to each other for their good work in tweaking the nose of "the Man".

A user, let's call him Bones, becomes the leader of this wayward group. Perhaps they set the rules to their sub-forum so that anyone with too may "good" points cannot gain access.

... anyway you can see where this is going.

The point is "meritocracy" in a system as I describe it doesn't have to be all law and order as some seem to think it will be.

Well, once again, I'm not doing this to prove a point, but rather to just observe what happens. Charlatan, wouldn't it be fascinating if that did happen?

Hal the Puppeteer :) watching in the background - gleefully rubbing his hands together... :)

It's be an interesting experiment

especially if everyone came in at the same level - and with unknown names - or assign them a random number so they can't even exercise some power positioning with a name... who do you align with and who do you ban...

I think this could be a very interesting forum that would definately draw some attention.

I think if you are truly going for "no rules" then you may see people register and post the nastiest, foulest, most racist, prejudicial things just for attention and to see it fail.

I do believe there should be an application process or a tiered process that will weed those people out. But in doing so would that not defeat your whole idea?

It is quite a complex problem, how do you keep something totally without rules and yet make sure it is not ruined by people who wish to see it fail or want to try to make power plays?

I think just about anything that comes out of this will be fascinating to observe.


How will you track all that happens? Will there be a logging program that will make all that happens available to you? I imagine you will need something like this as you are just as likely to be kicked off the board as anyone.

Hmmm... what happens if the site is hacked and the "system" is changed or you are locked out of the logging software... do you let it continue or do you pull the plug (literally because you no longer have the passcodes)?

By this, I mean I think the very concept of anarchy as applied to a forum is doomed to crash and burn. There is no way to force accountability for actions when we are talking about an internet forum without creating something that isn't anarchy.

I wouldn't participate, but I'm not hating on those who would... why would I?

Well, i dont anticipate any script kiddies. That's a whole other monster - then you're getting into basic website security. In any case, all activity can and will be logged. I would have an ultimate admin account that would be the only one capable of changing the structure and settings of the board, however all other accounts would be able to manipulate the content.

See this is the point. I think it's an observation on how it will work or if it will work at all.

I think if done the right way, the results could be surprising. Anarchy doesn't necessarily mean things are going to be bad.

I think it does if you are involving people on the internet. :)

I think that there are a number of things that could be done to help this Anarchy experiment.

One is to make people's accounts "valuable" to a certain extent.
Bannings mean nothing if someone can just create a new account on a whim. So at least some effort should be made to ensure that 1 person = 1 account. Of course it's pretty much impossible to ensure this, but you could make sure that only one account comes from any given i.p. address. Sure, there are ways around that, but it will at least be a mild annoyance and deter those "casual" users.

Also, a ban should not be a permenant one.
Perhaps it should be the case that a ban lasts one full day. But if multiple people ban you, the bans are served sequentially not concurrently. So if ten people ban you at the same time, you are banned for ten days. Also, any particular person can only place a 'ban' on any other person once every....day? two days? week?

Another is to make everyone's actions fully visible. So if someone bans someone else, everyone can see that. Also, if a post gets edited, it can be seen that it has been edited, and the edits can be viewed through a posts "history". So the original post can be viewed in a "pre-modded" form. Think of how wikipedia does it. Deleted threads/posts should end up going to a "recycle bin" rather than being literally being removed (except of course for anything ilegal).

Making all actions visible and making accounts non-trivial to set up, may encourage people to take responsibility for their actions on the site and give people an incentive to make it work.

Just a few thoughts.

How about having the person who started the thread be allowed to ban people from posting in thier threads only.

That way no one is banned from the forums, but banned from annoying those who offend them.

As far as simply creating a social experiment within a forum goes, both of your ideas sound great and I see no reason not to try them out. However, I would say that the first sounds like mob rule and the second like meritocracy.

We're so conditioned to thinking of a society as being divided into leaders and populous that it's very easy to miss the point of anarchy and think of it as being what arises when you take away the ruling classes. Of course what really happens in those situations is that everybody fights to become the new ruling class. An anarchistic society should really be one in which nobody imposes their will on anybody else, not just one in which the ruling classes do not impose their will on the populous. If people go around shooting each other then you're about as far from anarchy as you can get.

If you wanted a true model of anarchy, I would say take away the deleting and banning powers. After all, by not giving people these powers you are not removing anything from them which they had before, you are simply not granting them the ability to impose their will on others.

If you wanted to then keep some sense of order, maybe you could have the forum only open to invitees, who would be able to invite others etc. That way, everybody in there would have at least some sense of mutual responsibility towards other members of the forum

Ah, see there's the problem. In an anarchistic society, no one imposes their will upon another, but at the same time, they can, being that no one will stop them, as that would be imposing. To limit the people's power would be to impose the will of the forum's creator on them. While they will have some limitations, due to the nature of the forum, for this to work they need to have as many freedoms as they can. It's a delicate balance.

Anarchy requires that everyone have the same goal, a stable society, and the same idea of how to achieve that, by not imposing their will on others, and this would be a test of that.

Phase I sounds like something I would liek to try. Your decription of Phase II literally made me feel sick to my stomach.

Well, allow for accountability. List each account that has banned other accounts recently. If anyone wants to develop a sense of community at all, they will not want to have to continually register new names.

Wikipedia, to an extent, follows an anarchial approach. It seems to work quite well with only an occasional hiccup now and again.

So my thought is that you aren't going quite far enough with this anarchy thing.

Banning is a form of minimal state saying, "You are no longer welcome." So I honestly think banning should not be possible at all.

On the topic of deletions, I think that can be okay too. Wikipedia allows anyone to edit anything with only a nominal level of protections to maintain a degree of factual consistency. However, since we are talking discussion, I think we are okay. So don't allow deletions either, unless in some sort of automated way to keep clutter down (I.E. Abandoned threads) It would probably really help to have a weekly auto-prune.

With editing, my only concern is that there be some evidence of editing. Sure, let A edit out something wrong or offensive in B's post, but make sure the world know's that A edited the post so that it is not ascribed to B directly.

So where is the safety net? Well, there are a couple options. One, allow for the creation of passworded forums. This allows a limiting of posters without creating the outright tension of ban-and-return. Secondly, allow for usergroup-only boards. This is similar to the first except that, perhaps, it is more dynamic. Additionally, viewing priveledges can be limited to members of usergroups so that nobody even notices that they are not allowed somewhere.

It will rapidly devolve into spam, porn, and porn spam, with a sprinkling of links to very shady websites. It won't be a message board. It will be a billboard for the entire Internet.

In other words, it's genius.

Exactly! I really don't think you need to impose much order at all. If given adequate time and such, the forum will find order on its own.

I'd like to add that I think the notion that you could 'ban' anyone from an anonymous forum on the internet is pretty naive anyway. So, no one bans and no one deletes. Allow everything else just make the process transparent.

Phase II...sounds horrible. The 'good' can do just as much damage as the 'bad.' Point systems? Reputations? It will only give rise to a board run by a clique comprised of members with 'good reputations.' Clique members, who have and will continue to, reward each other (you know, they need help doing the 'right' thing) until they control the top 50% (or whatever). The forum will turn into a wasteland of non-offensive, homogenous threads because the voices of dissent have been silenced by the clique's ability to delete the 'inappropriate' and ban indiscriminantly.

Phase I sounds interesting. Phase II sounds too much like high school yearbook committee to me.

I really find it interesting that a concensus seems to have emerged here that it is consequences that might help bring an order out of the anarchic chaos. My instinct upon reading the original idea was the exact opposite.

That is, I worried that if the experiment succeeds in bringing about a stable anarchic order, there will be limitations on what it can tell us about real life precisely because unlike real life, the stakes here are just so small. No one has anything to gain but an online ego-stroke by banning you without provocation.

I'll admit that I'm far more interested in the results of Phase I than Phase II. I'm not even too concerned about the ban-and-return thing. Think of it as death and reincarnation; if we're lucky, we can play out the evolution of human morality as we slowly stop banning each other and over multiple iterations, realize there are cooperative strategies with which the game can be played.

To bring us sadly away from the philosophical side and back to the boring technical side, my biggest concern is automated spamming which could bring the server and the experiment to a grinding halt. We should find some way of excluding machines and professional spammers from our little social experiment.


For Phase II, what might really make it interesting is if the most popular forumer can become an admin and start changing the very rules of the game (though his powers would somehow have to be kept proportional to his 'mandate' among the other users.) It might be fun if we TFPers thought of a way to secretly signal each other amidst the internet riffraff, and then slowly mounted a campaign to take over the board, seeing how long it would take for us to convince the other users to allow us to enslave them. :lol:

Having discussed the safeguards ad nauseum with several Wikipedia admins, I can tell you with certainty that this is entirely untrue.

guthmund: Maybe I'm just not cynical enough, but I disagree with your assessment of "phase II". If I'm understanding the whole thing correctly, there is nothing given that cannot be removed; that is to say, someone who gets up-voted (for want of a better term) can also be down-voted. The part about this that is interesting to me is that it creates a self-moderating community. If, at any point, the majority feels that those at the top are not acting in the spirit of the community, said folks may be removed and/or replaced. If it does turn into a non-offensive, family friendly hug-fest, it would be a safe assumption that this is representative of what those present are looking for in a forum. That's just as interesting a comment as any that might be made through an anarchistic forum.

Unmoderated or self-moderated forums as presented here are not a new concept. Mind you, I'm not saying I'm totally against the idea of trying it or that it will never work. I'm just skeptical that without some sort of balances to the power given to the average Joe, it could very quickly become very chaotic.

Another of the dozens of hypotheticals that can be made. Let's say I, as a non-user of TFP and a random internet denizen, stumble across this. I might register and start banning and/or deleting as much as I can. That may seem alarmist, but I don't think it is; after all, an outsider's attitude coming in like that may well be "it's not my forum." There's no accountability, there's no consequences.

Maybe what might be more practical, a phase 1.5 if you will - base a user's abilities on either time or post count. It would be a bit like the distinction between rookies and full member here on TFP - we restrict access until the user invests something into the forum, creating a vested interest for said user. The key difference, of course, is that instead of basing it on a panel-type review, as we do here, we'd want it based on something arbitrary. I reckon having one person or group of people doling out the abilities is against the spirit of the venture, but maybe restricting those abilities to those who show real interest isn't.

Do really think that members are going to 'down-vote' those at the top simply because they aren't 'acting in the spirit of the community?' I imagine they'll act on everything but...

The reason moderation (at least in the context of online forums) works at all, in my opinion, is because there is a level of autonomy a moderator enjoys that separates him/her from the whimsy of the general public. A level of autonomy that just can't be expected if you're under constant evaluation from those that you 'rule.'

If populism is the preferred '-ism,' then measures should be taken to ensure that the means to elect our 'ruling' class favor the notions of true election rather than those employed at American Idol.

All that aside, I just don't see how Phase II would resemble anything other than 'TFP redux.' If the point of the experiment is to create a quasi-anachronistic forum, then it would seem that the fewer rules there are, the closer the forum would be to its ideal.

The only thing that makes us civilized is the way we chose to use our tools. In class I could pick up a pen and stab someone with it, but I chose not to.

It won't. You're using the classic definition of anarchy - that being the assumption that people can and will govern themselves properly without help from a formal government. In practice, it simply doesn't work, and we get the more modern defintion of anarchy - that being "a bunch of idiots running around shooting each other." If you set up a forum where users are allowed to ban each other, it's going to degenerate into a situation where the only one (or few) left are the people that got to the ban button first.

Even the user reputation system listed above wouldn't work. Let's say you're in the top 10% and then you delete a post you feel is trolling. 40 of the board's trolls down-rep you in retaliation and suddenly you find yourself unable to delete posts anymore.

The trouble with anarchy, on the net or in real life, is that if you have 100 people in the experiment, and 99 of them are decent people who want it to work, that 1 jackass is all it takes to send the system into chaos without a "government" to keep the jackass from effecting the rest of the population.

These thoughts aren't part of a system - I'm just responding to different things individually, just because one part is instantiated in the final forum doesn't mean that every part must be, there are an almost infinite variety of ways this thing could be set up finally, some will work and some will fail, but the only way to know is to try.

Given a system of accountability, mirror it on real life, in that if enough people support a single person, they will become their 'ruler'. Given the nature of the experiment, I believe that the majority of the forum would NOT want that to happen. If anyone not banned is allowed to mod people up or down and post, only those modded 50%+ are allowed to post new threads, only those 80%+ are allowed to delete/edit posts (to a history, Wikipedia style), the top 10% are allowed to ban, and the first person (only one at a time, people may settle for a representative 'democracy', but it's doubtful they would settle for a monarchy) rated 100% is promoted to über-moderator (ban more than one person in a day, actually delete posts [as opposed to having edits go to a history], and anything else you all can come up with. Perhaps they would have every power that Hal has, except the ability to change Hal's password or modify his priviledges.). I think that people would want to prevent anyone from getting absolute power like that, and so would really put effort into modding people down, and so on. If someone did get that power (even if they didn't abuse it) I think most people would quickly come into action to pull them back down to their own level.

As far as bans go (and edits, deletions, and really any act of public moderation) not only should they be logged, but they should be prominently presented to the community, and a reason should be given for each act of moderation. Some reasons may be simple ("posted illegal material", "racist comments", etc...), but someone going around thrashing people's posts would have several entries, right on the main page, and if all the reasons were the same (or going between a couple things) it would be likely they were abusing their power, and others could mod them down. I think there should only be allowed one ban per day per user - why would any one person have the need to ban five people in a single day? If there happen to be five people causing a lot of trouble on a certain day, there should be several other people around to take care of the rest.

Bans shouldn't be permanent, or by IP address (it's useless - I'm on AOL dialup [I know, it's not my choice, and I can't get any broadband but prohibitively expensive satellite where I live], which uses dynamic IPs, so you ban my IP address and I can sign off and get back on and be right back in the action. Ban a higher-level IP group [172.129.22.*, for example] and you've just banned 128 possible users, which may have had nothing to do with me, since sometimes I sign on and have a different top-level IP [ie... 152.x.x.x] ). A single day ban, by username, should be fine for most cases, if someone is really really causing problems, I suppose Hal could do perma-bans, but at that point we're starting to wander further from the anarchistic principles.

Some things (adding new forums, deleting old forums and such) should start with a request-for-comment, having the entire board (including those modded below priviledge) discuss the change. At the end, have a final poll, and if it is approved (51%+, let's say) Hal would have to implement it, even if it is in his better judgement not to. I don't think he would be against that, considering the ideals of the proposed community. (Granted, I just joined a few days ago, so maybe I've got Hal read totally wrong :) )

I'm not sure about how to be (relatively) sure that 1-account=1-person, and that permabanned users don't just re-register. Maybe allow them to post a membership request in a special new-members forum (a forum I used to regularly post in did this), and after proving their worth to a member (any member with the 80%+ mod-ability, let's say - in the other forum, it was only those with actual moderator titles) their account could be fully instated. I think this would give some opportunity to the community to recognize writing styles of banned members, try to spot spammers, and even hear out the cases of people who were permabanned.

In my opinion (regardless of dictionary definition), an anarchy is a society which has no formal governing body, no enforced rules (in this case, prevention of the dissemination of illegal content would have to be enforced, it would be one thing if we were all on an uncharted island in the middle of the Pacific, but there are underlying laws in our case, which must be followed), and operates on the will of individuals, as opposed to committees or elected bodies. There may be some elements which would fall under a meritocracy, but what makes it neccessary that meritocracy wouldn't be a part of a true anarchy? There may be a 'governing body' of sorts, but even someone with an approval rating of 1% could have their voice heard, and moderate someone within that 'governing body' right out of it.

Some people will never want to make their own decisions; anarchy means freedom. Freedom to chose the way you want to live. Freedom of expression. Freedom to murder your friend and take his property. Complete freedom. Any type of government creates limitation, some of which are absolutely necissary.

The humanistic approach would defend that people are inherently good, and that it is the environment, and decision making that will change that person. I've seen violence out of spite, and jelousy; people who will not act to change from their ways of immorality. Not because it is truly impossible, but because these people are either oblivious, or too centered on themselves to observe their actions against those around them. People are born inherently good, yes; people are also invariably cruel and incapable of empathy. There are people in this world who strive out of greed, and will always take advantage in order to gain power. In this world anarchy would be chaos, and atrocity.

Probably irrelevant at this point, but I once read something that made me stop believing in anarchy.

The only way anarchy works is in small groups with like-minded people. More or less you need a town with frequent town meeting, which everyone attends. If someone isn't doing their share, they're basically guilted into contributing like they're supposed to. It's easy to keep this going after the first generation, because you simply raise children to believe that it's their duty to do...well, their duty, for the good of the group. In the end, you end up with a morally governed socialism situation.

I didn't like the concept, but it made a lot of sense.

As for the relevance to an anarchic forum:

If you kept the forum small, you could do the same thing. Everyone knows eachother, so everyone knows whose responsible for anything that goes down. If someone abused the power to edit or even kick their fellow forum members, everyone else would punish them, perhaps by kicking them, or ignoring them. Eventually, you remove the threat of someone acting out, because they don't want to face the consequences. But if your forum grows to a large scale, you have the possibility of people "slipping between the cracks," so to speak. Someone functions as an unkown, and is therefore able to get away with deviant behavior without reprocussion. (Imagine a lone thief in a city of thousands.)

The only way to ensure the safety of the forum (or any group) is to ensure the quality of its members, make sure you all believe the same things (at least about matters of group functionality), and keep the entire thing exclusive.