Comments on: Is self-censorship justified for building a community?

By: Dr. Bhooshan Shukla

Dr. Bhooshan Shukla — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 06:34:23 +0000

It is nice to see discussion whipped up by my casual and lighthearted comment. It was made with a certain sense of humor to highlight vanity of professionals particularly doctors !! ( all pathies included). I do not see any negative meaning in my first comment ( all doctors are best) at all !

some thoughts-
1. moderator should not vote and be just what it says on the tin. If their is a tie up of votes for a prize then may be moderator should cast the deciding vote like speaker in loksabha.
2. some online test for judging sense of humour as essential and unique human characteristic should be promoted ! any takers?

By: asuph

asuph — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:07:12 +0000

Interesting question. However, let’s put this in perspective:

moderator is NOT the only person influencing community demographics. if moderator is being the most vocal of the community, to the extent that moderator’s opinions start affecting community demographics, unilaterally, I for one won’t want to join such a community .

I think so far as you’re being generally non-authoritative, and your opinions don’t come across as flagstones of community beliefs, you should get away with your opinions.

Many a times, it’s not WHAT is said, but HOW it is said, also …

regards,
asuph

By: Farhat

Farhat — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 04:08:22 +0000

I will go so far as to say that self-censorship is not only justified, it may be essential. Communities are largely defined by who they let in and who they keep out and even if this is relaxed once a community is going the early character of the members sets the tone for a while to come. You can see this online in say Facebook or LinkedIn vs MySpace. Facebook restricted membership to people with .edu addresses, even if this was removed later the effect of this decision is still apparent in the demographics there. Same for LinkedIn which, in its early years, was an invite-only community. MySpace was anything goes and this shows in the pages over there. Not that MySpace doesn’t have a community but its tone is distinctly different. From observing online BBS and fora I can also say that even seemingly minor decisions about moderation can make noticeable changes to the kind of community that happens.

By: Dhananjay Nene

Dhananjay Nene — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:17:47 +0000

Stop worrying about what response you should offer and start wondering about what “kind of” community you would like to be encourage to be created. There is no one universally appropriate “right kind of community” so there are no universally true answers to the question you pose.

Community character is defined by their participants and one participant influences it more than the others – its the founder. If you want the community to have an attitude – make sure you push in some. If you want to the community to provide a warm and fuzzy feeling, be the nice one.

But to go back to @kshashi’s comments – whatever you do you (and as do other community members through their participation) it will discourage some genuine participants (for all possible values of genuine).

So just take a chill pill (does homeopathy offer one?), and just be natural (for any reasonable value of natural) – the community will find a way

This would be a great place to acknowledge your contribution to the community. But I get bored of stating the obvious.