wingspan33 wrote:Well, I'm imagining that I'm sitting around a campfire ...
I like that analogy ... especially when compared to sitting around Jack's living room.
While not explicitly stated, a campfire conjures up the notion of being "in the wild" where no one person owns the land. The people around the campfire share equal rights with one another. Any "authority" must arise from a consensus of the participants. That's my vision of the U.S. Hawks, and I think we've done very well in that regard. Thanks to everyone who's helped!!
Of course, unrestricted discussion around a campfire isn't always to everyone's liking. Sometimes people want to constrain a discussion to achieve a specific result. That's why we have the Blog Forum. Anyone starting a topic in the Blog Forum has the authority to create and enforce their own rules with regard to subject matter. They can even make rules that are unfair. Of course, everyone will likely recognize them as unfair, and that will not be helpful to the person starting the Blog. And, of course, we still apply the "no anonymous attacks" rule to the Blog forum and Blog rules cannot be used to attack someone without granting a right to reply.
The Blog Forum gives us a very nice balance to the wide latitude granted on the main forum. A nice side effect is that together they make fair moderation very practical. In the main forum, there is virtually no need for moderation other than the extreme cases (like "hawk891"). And in the Blog Forum, each Blog "owner" makes their own decisions. I just carry them out. Once people fully appreciate that system, they will understand why the moderation here has been so minimal compared to other forums. It's because we've designed a good system that practically "takes care of itself".
Aside:
As an engineer, I was taught the difference between stable systems and unstable systems. A stable system is one that will generally stay where you want it without any effort. Imagine an airplane with its "tail" (horizontal stabilizer) at the rear. Conversely, an unstable system requires constant control input to keep it from diverging from where you want it. Imagine an airplane with its "tail" at the front.
You can turn unstable systems into stable systems (and vice versa) in various ways. In the unstable ("tail at the front") example, you can make it stable by moving the tail to the rear. The same is true with interactions between people. There are stable configurations and unstable configurations. I believe, for example, that anonymous attacking is an inherently unstable configuration for a forum. It just gets worse and worse, and there's no inherent mechanism to keep it in bounds. It just escalates until it explodes. On the other hand, by requiring people to put their real names (and reputations) on the line, people are much more cautious and the system is stable.
Now, inherently unstable systems can be controlled, but it takes a tremendous amount of energy and/or skill. You can, for example, control an unstable aircraft if you are quick enough on the controls and if you maintain constant vigilance and you are in sufficiently smooth conditions. But even with all those conditions met, it takes a lot of work and you're only one "screw up" away from disaster.
I believe the theory of stability explains the problems we've seen at hanggliding.org, at Oz, and at USHPA. In the first two (both forums) we've seen Jack and Davis constantly "overcontrolling" to force discussions in the direction they want. They are constantly on the look out for anyone speaking the wrong name or posting the wrong link. Even then, they can't keep up with it, so they have to ban people or lock topics to keep their limited control authority from being overwhelmed. It's like they're balancing a broom - they can never rest.
The same is true of USHPA. They are perpetuating situations that will continue to produce accidents and deaths. So they have to continually tighten their grip on members and even Directors. It's an unstable system and it can only last if they can keep each and every member under silent control. They have to expel anyone who speaks up and hope that sets an example to keep the rest quiet.
So getting back to the U.S. Hawks, our "moderation" has been virtually non-existent because we have rules that create a stable environment. Yes, there were vicious attacks by a few members, but amazingly, they were never banned. It was their own recognition that they were harming their own reputations that eventually quieted them. There was no need for anything else.
The bottom line from this loooong "aside" is that we should implement rules that create stable systems that tend to take care of themselves. We should stay away from systems needing constant meddling unless we want to end up being Jack or Davis or USHPA.
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