Why we started this forum

[Hunny]

This is a comment I posted at a thread which had asked,
"Why did you start your own forum community?"

Does anyone want to discuss why to start a site? How to run it? Well, I put it here just in case.

"Hell there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something." -Thomas Edison

I had a horrible experience at a forum with 500,000 members that now has only a few thousand left because between the mods going overboard, and the bully clique infiltrating them, it was a nightmare of TOO MANY RULES. (they opened our mail, forbid us from talking, and even punished us for things done in the outside world. And we were paying customers!) Awful!

At another forum, they had the opposite problem: no mods at all. They just stuck report buttons everywhere, assuming the place would "police itself". Well it didn't. People began using the automated "push-this-button-nine-times-and ban-anyone-you-want button" to 'get rid of' anybody with an opinion that didn't agree with theirs. It quickly degraded into a morass of fear and suspicion, and members either locking down their accounts or fleeing in numbers. It destroyed the place.

At a third forum, we were discussing how to fix the problem with corrupt mods and overbearing rules. And they made me a mod, and well.. I hate cops! And now they had made me one. (yikes) Well I took the position gratefully, but I warned them I would never punish anyone. I'd council a "wrongdoer", I'd even befriend them, or mentor them, but I would never punish. It is simply wrong. It's the people who claim some magic "right" to be in charge of everyone else, doing the very thing they're telling everyone else is wrong: abusing people. And this is actually the basis of the 'threaten & punish" model of control: the idea that two wrongs make a right -or at least that those who gain power get to do the wrong things, while anyone else who tries to will get harmed by them. (This is incredibly awful. Even describing it makes me wish to divorce my species.)

Well, the subject of my learning throughout these experiences seems to be about how to run a community -or perhaps I should say "how not to".

I have long since noticed that people who take "jobs" as policeman or mod are just control bullies seeking to be allowed to make a life of what in their childhood was abhorrent behavior (bullying). The majority of the "rules" they abusively force on people are made only to show they're the boss of everyone, rather than appropriately being about preventing behaviors the community would find undesirable. These aggressive, callous people don't actually care what the community would desire. They dehumanize and oppress the individuals around them, and enjoy being a sick type of god of a community, while exempting themselves from any of the "punishments" they inflict. They maintain, not order, but that they get to do this sick shit, by using fear and abuse as weapons against the people who supposedly hired them. Far from preventing destructive behaviors, mods COMMIT destructive behaviors. In fact, at the over-controlled forum, the rules WERE destructive behavior (Hey the place went from half million active members, down to only five thousand now.)

So I finally started a site of my own, where I can put out my magazine and create threads, and work publicity -all the things I've been doing and love, but without anyone above me telling me what I can and cannot do (as if someone else ought to be making your decisions for you. WTF). Well, the only mod our forum has is me, because the founder by default is an admin. But we have NO rules. God didn't make me to order them around. So the members are instructed that its THEIR community which they build and own, so act like a group and take care of it as such. If we fail, I said, you will cause us to have to go to the method of having spying bullies threatening and abusing people ("mods& rules") like everyone else. Lets be better than that. Lets not act the way people do which always makes me want to ask "what century is this? Lets be evolved. People don't need to be punished or threatened to take care of their own things. They in fact need just the opposite, to NOT have the ability to take care of their own thing for themselves TAKEN AWAY by a bully layer. Heck, this isn't a new idea by the way; the entire business world had to change from top-down command style management, to a style that lets the workers themselves be responsible and make the decisions, back in the 90's (re, the teachings of W. Edwards Deming).

So I simply must attempt to let the members themselves be a true self-run society, a real democracy (unlike in the outside world where "countries" always boast of being democratic, but are not democratic at all. The people are not the rulers, they are ruled and DIS-empowered by those who rule them. {And how can a dis-empowered people accomplish things?}

I want to expose the lies bullies and their supporters ALWAYS tell about how we "need" stalking, threatening and abusing bullies, or else something awful would happen instead. (Yea, what, happiness?) (Freedom?)

And if this doesn't work, well, I may just die entirely heartbroken because my whole life has led toward knowing what is wrong and how to fix it. If people wont accept "good", insisting on needing to be treated like prisoners under watch as always, instead. If they reject being able to live and work as evolved humans with inherent rights, then yea, I will have lived only to find that humanity is a terrible thing, without redeeming quality, and lacking the ability to grow. Because no one is born with the "right", to eventually turn around and tell others it is up to him, whether you have your rights or not. No one.

Em, not that I'm saying I have my whole existence tied up in this thing . I'm just sayin'



So that's why I started a forum community.
That and because life and everything creative is in the computer now,
so it is the place to go, to try and make a mark.

[Hunny]

For the hows and whys of how we run this place, go here--> CLICK ME .
If you read that thread, you may just understand.
______________________

*Yea, we're like AA. We don't have rules or punishments, but we do have some "suggestions" we consider important and ask members to know of. Whether you follow those suggestions is up to you, but we feel if you care about your community and forum that you're building here, then you might just care to keep it running ok.

[Hunny]

Look at this poor bastard.
...I understand.



Now look what happened to his forum:
(His host locked it because he didn't follow THEIR rules!!!!!!!!!!!
...I really feel for this guy. Wow. That sucks.

http://www.forums-free.com/en/blocked?f=norulesforum