You know, from reading a few of the comments in this thread, some of them very surprising, I had a few thoughts. I thought about commenting by including a quote from Benjamin Franklin, and another from Voltaire, but I decided someone might mistake me for a graduate of Harvard Law School, so I decided to skip it. rolleyes:
What I decided to mention was a question about the utter lawlessness and out of control personal violence of OT. Interesting. Sort of a question as to why anyone who had ever appreciated the benefits of hand sanitizers would ever wade in a cesspool.
I was a member of OT from about the third day, if I recall correctly. The TSO forums had been very emotionally, distressingly, transferred to Stratics when the folks in the EA administration apparently decided a fractious fan community wasn't either profitable business or the cakewalk they anticipated, given the minor beta problems... or not so minor. The joke was, when Brekke posted the notification that those of us with stronger opinions, and other discussion interests than recipes or favorite pop music would be better placed in the OT NHB forum, was jokingly referred to as another cattle car to Dachau. We'd already met Crazy Joe, who came in to our forums as a "gun-totin' cleanup expert" with "three amigos," to fix us up. I kind of think he got more flames than he expected. Funny how that happens, even when you're trying to be nice and reasonable. Look at Afghanistan.
I have no idea what anyone means by OT deteriorating. I don't seem to remember any time when DIAF was not a commonly accepted greeting. I don't really remember any time when the standard rule of discourse was not at least six or seven ad hominem remarks as a challenge to further progress.
I'm a big fan of rationality, myself, but if you want to spread the gospel, perhaps you don't preach in the choir stall. Maybe you'd be better employed at the cathouse on the other side of the track. Maybe the terrain would be more challenging.
There's a few things I would have had differently, naturally. On slow news days the requisite personal attacks for the hell of it were pretty boring, but there were many interesting threads from all sides, albeit not every day. The baptism of fire for all new posters was extreme, and although I was at work and missed the precipitory events, I rather suspect one "Steb" probably got the full treatment. But, as has been mentioned, in every one of those episodes, there was good advice, good humor, and a willingness to welcome, depending on how well the candidate made it through the first 24 hours. Of course, if the candidate has power and not much understanding of the process, the nuclear bomb sort of trumps the local custom, doesn't it. I'm sorry I missed it. I doubt anything I might have said would have made a difference, but, who knows.
OT was the Theatre of the Absurd. It was an exaggeration of the Internet's worst, but it was definitely self-parody. You could insult someone's intelligence day after day, and if you had the right genes, you could log off and log onto WoW and be perfectly comfortable teaming up with them for a dungeon or a pvp event, and cheering. Hard to understand, perhaps.
But, you know, above and beyond the disclaimers, OT was equipped with this clever feature called an Ignore button. Believe it or not, I must have been born with the hide of a Triceratops, because I was never tempted to use it. I guess some people don't get the joke. OT was not real. It was a play. It was sometimes boring, but never incapable of surprising. It was definitely wild and loose, and not for the security conscious. Deciding that the hood was a bad risk for the general peace and well-being of the nice people everywhere...
Maybe I will quote from Benjamin Franklin after all. "Any society that is willing to give up a little liberty to gain a little security, deserves neither, and will lost both."
If I had been a moderator on OT, I would not have changed not one god-damned thing, and yes, LC, you are a sheep, and do not deserve to run with the goats.