Warning - political rant. Apologies for length.
I guess it's no surprise that among the rejects of the rejects, one of the hottest issues has always been cliques.
This is one reason I think it's important to know and defend anyone the community decides they don't like. That's a principle Intensity was founded on - though WP moderators were the villains in question at the time. It's a losing battle because you can't please and accommodate everybody, of course. But I think it's important to catch the ones who can't find a place anywhere else.
At the time I was on WP, there was a kind of informal mentorship system going on. The less functional people would invariably run afoul of the law, and when they did, a person more skilled at communicating online would step up and advocate for them to the mods. These guys - for some reason it was predominantly guys - were coming online and like almost every one of us, finding kinship among other people on the spectrum for the first time in their lives. But then they were getting kicked out for being unable to follow social rules.
On an asperger's site, I thought there was something wrong with that.
Now I have no problem with drawing lines for narcissists. It's necessary, in a world where they'll rape you or worse if you don't. But almost invariably I saw that these so called flamers weren't malicious, just incompetent and struggling with as many issues as the next guy.
So when Neuroman and McJagger founded Intensity 1, I saw this need for a community that was free enough to handle offensiveness, awkwardness, and rebelliousness, but still a benevolent community. A place for the rejects of the spectrum world.
This is why I advocate for fighting and anger here, at the expense of those who dislike hostility and those who just want a casual place to hang out. There are many communities that accomodate peaceful companionship. There is only one where it's okay to tell the people in charge to stick it up their collective asses.
Only it's not, as Calandale so effectively demonstrated.
The whole time Intensity's been in place, ever since too many people told Neuroman where to stick it and he responded by shutting the first one down, I've been trying to figure out a workable system to make this kind of community possible. Actually since before that - my position at WP, for the short time it lasted, was to intercept the site political shit before it got to Alex, so people could be free to criticize him without provoking his narcissistic defenses and getting themselves banned.
My old theory was that the power on a forum had to be split between several people, so that there was always somebody to cover for anyone who was too sick of or vulnerable to any given drama. But that's not going to help the clique effect. Now I'm thinking that there should also be a more obvious divide between webmaster(s) and owner(s). Seems like a lot of what's gone wrong here is the web folks not wanting to have to deal with borderline drama, which makes sense in 20-20 hindsight. Should have been obvious to me that putting social pressure on code monkeys is not a way to get things done cleanly.
But the social pressure only happens because the code monkeys are seen as the ones with all the power. And there's a big difference between installing emoticons on a site, making backups, and all the day to day operation tasks that people like Renaeden are so good at - and making decisions about community policies, fielding bullshit and drama, and similar social tasks. They take two completely different skill sets.
So I wonder what would happen on a site where the one who paid for it was not the one who maintained the code.
