The Future of the Forums: A look by Lowtax

F

Fatcat

Swabbie
Banned
Lowtax, (Writer and Owner of www.somethingawful.com) was recently asked to speak at the University of Illinois. You can go to http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=3318 to download the huge file. He brings up some very interesting points about maintaining an online community, from his 7 years experience with Something Awful. I'm proud to say that WcNews has managed to do all of them, and that's why this site has been together as long as Something Awful. It's about 104 megs and a hour and a half of video, but I suggest that everyone at least listen to the middle section on Forums.
 
I took a look last night. It's very amusing and Lowtax is a lot more pleasant than I would have imagined him to be.

I agree that he's right about internet communities, though as he points it out he figured it all out by accident rather than applying some kind of theory.

For my part, I do have some long term theories on keeping a community alive involving how these forums and the CIC are run... though I guess our goal really is to create more of a 'Star Trek in the 70s' community to keep the fandom alive rather than a specifically social group like SomethingAwful.

(On the other hand, a lot of moderation is also because I'm a jerk.)
 
the thing is loaf, we like you being the jerk, it keeps the rest of us from having to do so. Every forum has the person whose an jerk of a moderator, here its you, over on megatokyo it cynwash and hardraker, in sluggy its either me or weremensch. the point being someone has to do it, someone has to be that way, otherwise the idiots take over

edit: note, in sluggy i'm not a mod, just a jerk with a point
 
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