Re:Shiichan Anonymous BBS (2004)
by kodah on Monday August 02, 2021 @10:04AM
(#28036657)
I've been working on a terminal based BBS for a bit. There really isn't any function that makes a BBS inherently better or worse than the alternatives. You can effectively make a couple choices in BB design:
- who you let stay
- who you let moderate
Who you let stay
Influencing who you let stay can be hard, as it's affected by a number of things. Moderators have the biggest hammers in terms of squelching and banning but users can exercise their voice via ignores and on some boards reputation. The unfortunate part about reputation is that it is usually enforced post-to-post, so it usually represents whether a poster links content that the community is already in a position to accept. This sounds nice but also sounds like the long-form of an echo-chamber construction. If your board supports hot-linking then new people will show up at your forum seeking their place in your community. They'll be influenced by the tools moderators and other users use on them. r/The_Donald r/ChapoTraphouse, and r/politics are all great representations of how when this system all works together it creates an environment that allows one type of poster to thrive while all other posters and repliers are muted into oblivion.
Who you let moderate
Moderators set the pace and trajectory for a community. Places like Reddit attempt to distribute power based on a topic. BB style forums can be run as moderated centrally or they can allocate moderation to individual board moderators. The moderators, based on their scope, will guide posters over time. Some do it like dang while others rule a kingdom with an iron fist. I do think this choice sets a tempo for the community, but I have no data to prove that.
Vitality and sharing makes each of the small problems above much larger, mainly due to dealing with sudden change. HN users might be acutely aware of this when new people exhibit Twitter-style behavior in the threads. Normally this is okay, but on certain topics people leak over more than not. What I'm describing is a network effect of the norms and culture of one community leaking into the next. At a certain this is probably fine, but at peak rates it becomes untenable.
- who you let stay
- who you let moderate
Who you let stay
Influencing who you let stay can be hard, as it's affected by a number of things. Moderators have the biggest hammers in terms of squelching and banning but users can exercise their voice via ignores and on some boards reputation. The unfortunate part about reputation is that it is usually enforced post-to-post, so it usually represents whether a poster links content that the community is already in a position to accept. This sounds nice but also sounds like the long-form of an echo-chamber construction. If your board supports hot-linking then new people will show up at your forum seeking their place in your community. They'll be influenced by the tools moderators and other users use on them. r/The_Donald r/ChapoTraphouse, and r/politics are all great representations of how when this system all works together it creates an environment that allows one type of poster to thrive while all other posters and repliers are muted into oblivion.
Who you let moderate
Moderators set the pace and trajectory for a community. Places like Reddit attempt to distribute power based on a topic. BB style forums can be run as moderated centrally or they can allocate moderation to individual board moderators. The moderators, based on their scope, will guide posters over time. Some do it like dang while others rule a kingdom with an iron fist. I do think this choice sets a tempo for the community, but I have no data to prove that.
Vitality and sharing makes each of the small problems above much larger, mainly due to dealing with sudden change. HN users might be acutely aware of this when new people exhibit Twitter-style behavior in the threads. Normally this is okay, but on certain topics people leak over more than not. What I'm describing is a network effect of the norms and culture of one community leaking into the next. At a certain this is probably fine, but at peak rates it becomes untenable.