Cellar as a sociology experiment
 

Thanks for the nod of appreciation, NBN.

I'm sure UT will weigh in here with his usual insights about community sites, and we'd be interested.

Rather than "intelligent" discussion, which could be the territorial imperative of www.adequacy.org and www.kuro5hin.org, and others, it might be overreaching to aspire to a position anywhere higher than the name the Cellar implies.

At its very best, Cellar might be regarded as Uncommon Sense.

At its worst, Cellar suffers from a lack of social decorum at times, when members abuse the community and each other by communicating in ways that are universally unacceptable in real world communities. In civilized communities in the real world, such misbehavior is rewarded with the lowest rung of society. In the Cellar, such miscreants have the run of the place.

Perhaps the Uber Toad is just running an interesting sociology experiment where we are the lab rats in the Cellar, to see if a society can evolve in a virtual environment without apparent social order at the outset, only three rules, and no government ever.

BTW, I deleted this "off-topic" post from the other thread as a courtesy to others in that thread. :) If the follow-up posts are likewise deleted, then that quality thread will be back on topic.

OK! The reason it seems like that is more because I don't interfere.

In the olden days of the BBS, you'd find all kinds of sysops making all kinds of arcane rules, deleting accounts, deleting posts, being little dictators. They want to create cults of personality; the problem is that their visible personality is poor.

But I don't want to be dictator. I only want to participate, because I enjoy it. I don't want to be the final arbiter. I'm a technologist. Nobody elected me leader. So my take on it is that I shouldn't do much at all. Maybe I set a little of the atmosphere by suggesting what it's all about, but otherwise, it is up to all y'all.

That is not the current fashion, I think... I think the current fashion in online communities is that the leader/owner is a very strong leader, sets more of the tone, sets more of the personality of the group, etc. But if this is the fashion now, all you have to do is wait and the fashion will change.

The architect-type personalities amongst us, and Nic you surely are one, will want to introduce more structure. It's almost instinctive. But I think that's part of the point. All there is here is US. If we screw it up, it will be all our fault. We have to be open, and we have to be self-policing. All the architecture is in the people, and the diplomacy that works between us.

Interesting that you mention Kuro5hin. From first appearances, I would have probably spent much more time there than here, just simply for the fact that they seem to discuss more interesting topics. But i was driven away because they self-police themselves to hell, and if you wander from a set topic, they chew you to bits. Here, i have no problem doing that.

I doubt that Tony is making this into one insane bigass socieology experiment because he has been doing it since at least '95, and even I dont have that kind of patience.

I enjoy not having a "government" set up here, its a small community. Its more like a group of friends (and the entire Ham family) that just talks and posts shit that we find interesting. Beats the living hell out of /. or k5 cause they are flooded with users. You get the feeling you know most of the people you are talking to. Besides, less people means less spam.

Its all good. I think Tony has something going here. Seems to be a real success.

I think UT is writing a book like:

Design for Community

It's guaranteed to be on the Best Cellar list. ;)

Heh. Yeah, V, and the other thing is that if we are really sharing with each other, and caring about the responses, then there are bound to be differences in style and personality, and some people are going to get ticked off.

It's just natural! Why fight it?

dead on verbatim, yea yea, just like any social interaction, personalaties are going to clash - i'd know ;)

Cyberpsychology
 

The Psychology of Cyberspace might provide some interesting insights for and about Cellar dwellers.

Somebody on El Saano said this place seemed dull.

Well, compared to El Saano, we ARE dull. But dull as a whole? Nah. :)

What makes a place not dull?

I haven't stopped by there yet so I guess I don't know.

What really turns me on is people being real, talking about what's important to them.

Now that I've been there, I see: it's attention whoring, sex, flame warring and porn.

I suppose the Cellar would appear to be dull by comparison.

Well, admittedly, I find it bizarre...some really weird shit. I don't think I'll be popping over there any more, but that's not to say it's necessarily bad. If that's what people are looking for in a forum...*shrugs*...go for it.

(UT, did you notice the plug I made for the Cellar? :) )

Naw, once I got the gist of it, I left --

It's age 18-25, is what it is. I know, I know, some of y'all are in that age range. Not all 18-25ers are like that. But that's sorta the attitude of a lot of 'em, an attitude that often changes once the serious stuff of life kicks in.

"Show us your tits!" has new meaning, for example, if your loved one has suffered from breast cancer. Or if you have a one-year-old daughter whom you treasure above anything else in life, realizing that in time she'll have to deal with the same pit of dopey sexist attitudes.

Not that either of those things has happened to me. But I've seen enough other people experience it.

None of our resident 18-25ers yelling at me?

I was going to but you were nice enough to include a disclaimer stating we aren't all like that. And seeing that I agree with you about the rest of the post, yelling seemed like a worthless thing to do.