Many of us have grown up online, and have been part of more communities and specifically more boards and forums than we can remember. Let us gather our collective experience here as input for those looking to build this community’s successor. Please submit ideas based on your internet experience, including suggestions for a name. Those of you considering hosting the new forums, please listen here!!
Absolutely critical: ACTIVE TOPICS page. This isn’t a 5 most current threads list, or any other sort of categorized list like the New Content list at austrianforum.com. This is all the threads on the forum, ever, listed 50 to a page in accordance with which one has been posted to most recently. This style is clearly distinct from standard threads! This style unifies the forum together as a community, I hate to compare to 4chan and Facebook but there’s a reason this method builds community. This as opposed to standard/classic forums which are immediately divided into a discouraging isolationist list of categories and subcategories. I could go on all day about the theory of why an active topics style is superior, but suffice it to say other users here have already acknowledged the importance, and that FB and 4chan figured it out as well.
1a. Active Topics needs to be the MAIN PAGE—when you click this forums google link, it will take you to this Active Topics page.
1b. You compose a thread from the Active Topics page, not from a divided category or subcategory. However, when composing a thread, at that point you can choose from a strict minimum of categories, among which is “uncategorized”. These categories are listed in a bar/collumn on the left or right or top of the page, and you can browse them if you choose, but the whole idea is that the forum is unified and the categories are strictly optional. There should be no more than 4 categories, NO SUBCATEGORIES, and a 5th category called “uncategorized”.
Absolutely no moderation whatsoever—with the sole exception of real spam. Not trolling, not offensive content, just spam. Everything is allowed without exception, except for illegal content and bot-spam. This is the essence of anarchism, let the community manage itself. I cannot stress how absolutely imperative this is. NO CENSORSHIP OR MOVING POSTS, EVER. Swearing is allowed, trolling is allowed, being a complete asshole is allowed—if the community doesn’t value such content, let them build community by establishing social norms about how to deal with such content in an environment where force (moderation) is strictly absent.
As related to 1 and 2, a unified, unmoderated free forum won’t have moderators moving threads to that tucked-away area that nobody ever goes to.
I’m not aware of any software that allows voteban. Regardless, the last thing an ancap forum needs is for 4chan or whoever to flood the forum in order to voteban people for fun.
Also submit suggestions for a name. I like the sound of LibertyHQ, but I also think we all realize the looming reality that these forums are what they are because they’re the official onsite forums of the Mises Institute, and not just some libertarian or intellectual forums.
I don’t have very much to say about the rest of these suggestions but the idea of no moderation is a horrible idea. I’m not big into moderation, but material needs to stay at least appropriate, as does attitude and language. Call me a moderate but I think that some moderation is needed in order to ensure that discussion stays respectful and appropriate.
This is pretty much what LibertyHQ is. On the freeforums software, you have the “all topics” view, as well as an easy way to view threads you’re contributing to.
Unfortunately, a little bit of moderation judgment is required in terms of trolling/offensive behavior, even though it is admittedly difficult for such moderation to remain objective and non-partisan. Such is life.
Currently you can adjust the austrianforum New Content page to show all the threads on the forum that have been posted to in the past year, listed in accordance with which one has been posted to most recently. This isn’t “all the threads ever”…but it’s pretty close. And I’m sure it could be expanded. Tell me…when was the last time you clicked through the active topics list here to reach a thread that hadn’t been updated in over a year?
…You mean like the “Start New Topic” button on the top bar of the AustrianForum?
Voluntaryism forums. May I recommend these forums to individuals here who are enjoying Voluntaryist Reader? Others may find the LibertyHQ forums more enjoyable (economics-focused). Or sign up on both.
But until someone can give me a good reason to feel otherwise: Down with austrianforums! grumpy-face
Do any of you know of a good way to organize membership to various forums? I guess I could do a google search, but maybe some of you have some experience with this.
Well, if I’m going to be a member of LibertyHQ Forum, Voluntaryism Forum, Austrian Forum, and potentially others (is VR going to have one too?), then I would like a way to keep track of them easily. I guess I could just use a standard bookmark or just type in the addresses, but I wasn’t sure if anyone else had experience tracking their memberships on multiple forums.
Just use the same username/password for all three?
And, yes, we are planning to make Voluntaryism forum the “home” for VR. We’re thinking of a “Longite” forum. Does anyone have Roderick Long’s email address? Maybe we can get the Molinari guys to come over.
Can we try to keep posts to this thread on the topic of suggestions for how to make tge sucessor forum?
Re: moderation, ive used well over100 forums/boards and neve once seen moderation that wasnt abusive or couldnt be managed by users. If youre afraid of the boogeyman then make like 3 rules, no illegal content, no porn, and…? I dont know…really forums are just naturally self-managed by community mentality and the fact that people tend to not join or not be active if they arent interested in the forums focus.
I’ve been a heavy contributor on probably at least a dozen forums since the late 90’s (1998-ish). I’m not a lurker, so if I participate, I say what I have in mind. And for that, I prefer to have a little moderation in place because it’s too easy for the losers who have nothing of any value to contribute to drown out the substantial, thought-out contributions which, in turn, dilutes the incentive of the better contributors to contribute in the first place.
But yes, the rule-list should be as short as possible. Reddit is fairly exemplary in this regard. I think they have it about as streamlined as you can get.
Even if you do tell me, I can’t hack it. And what is there to hack?? LOL “Oooh, look at me, everybody, I’m gotlucky!”
Seriously, though, the forum software doesn’t reveal your password to the person who’s creating the forum. So, that’s not a reason to use the same password on all 3. Just a suggestion… if you’re concerned about being impersonated, don’t let me dissuade you…
