“But the guy who puts up one of those names thinks he’s the most startlingly original thinker since Einstein. Assuming Einstein was a coprophiliac.”
And with that, I would like to tell you guys where I’m ranting at this time.
One of “my” guild leaders from back in the Camelot days has been a pain in my ass and a thorn in my side for so long now that he’s practically a friend. One day, he pinged me and said, hey, you know what the world needs? A forum that is totally unmoderated.
Put down the bong, was my translated reply.
Fast forward several days, and I was on board to wrangle editorial content, and rant. What can I say – he’s got a plan, and even though it’s not foolproof (the internet is really good at inventing bigger fools), I do believe that his plan *can* work – and if anyone can pull it off, I think he can. Also, while there isn’t going to be traditional moderation, we can and will delete spam and kiddie porn and the like. But the intent is unmoderated, occasionally foulmouthed, always interesting discussion of games and the people who play them.
Think about it this way – what plan has a greater chance of success:
1) Attempting to compete with the market leader on its own terms, or
2) Identifying an underserved niche and owning it?
I realize that if you are the head of a major gaming conglomerate or functionally illiterate, you cannot help but choose the first option. I know. I also know that I have been watching a lot of people leave a lot of niche money on the table going after the mass market. A comfortable living can be had with the niches. There are plenty of forums for pontification, plenty with overwhelmed staffs of moderators trying to hold back the floods, and these days plenty of official forums. I think this forum will serve a pretty big niche (normal players, not analysts, savage but not automatically on the attack), and is a pretty interesting experiment. I admit, I was starting to get a little calcified in my thinking, and if I’m gonna try something new, this is definitely new.
Side note: I am working in a number of different niches right now, ranging from straight reporting to ghostwriting to editorial. I hope to be able to show off the links to some other projects really soon. Unmoderated, however, will be the only place you’ll find foul mouthed ranting. I tune my voice for every outlet, which sometimes confuses people who aren’t writers.
I have to admit… I missed foul mouthed ranting. By the way, if you have any good rants, confessions, or something you need discussed in an environment where nearly anything goes, but the other members are more players than game analysts, sign up at Unmoderated.info and submit your screeds. I’m not just a ranter, I’m also the editor.
I wish you all the best of luck! But I can’t help but be afraid. YouTube comments are generally unmoderated, and look where those end up.
tyvm, but I’ll stick with the old addage, “Whereas I can, doesn’t mean I should.”
The world already has an unmoderated forum.
It’s called 4chan.
The problem with 4chan is, that because of the anonymity the “forum” as you would like to call it (though I don’t think it can qualify for that, as it just misses several common and standard features for a forum, image board is what it is.) can not build a community, make people feel stupid (others will laugh at you openly on unmoderated) or in other “soft” ways force users to have some common sense. All this is available on unmoderated, as for youtube the size of that site causes almost the same anonymity that you have on 4chan.
Sounds suspiciously like old-school Usenet with more editorial content thrown in the mix. I am off to check it out.
It totally won’t be for everyone. And that’s okay. (This message has also been brought to you by anyone who ever tried to make a niche game!) I do hope people come and check out the content, because, um, I’m a writing whore.
Thorn… that’s what I’m hoping for
Bwhahahaha!
Sorry. I’m an old broad and remember the days when we had to chip our 300 baud modems out of flint to access unmoderated discussions. The occasional gleam of interesting thought was almost impossible to find under the morass of shit flung by the disturbed, the bored and the destructive (who are not always separate groups). People would always be starting new boards or discussions figuring the problem was just the way it was configured, or the fact that a particular bad user took over, and this time, things would be different.
I don’t think it’s a matter of it not being for everyone, as there being no way to deal with people who are actively hostile and destructive. That tends to drive out the people who might in fact contribute to, and enjoy, interesting content, as opposed to those who see a thoughtful editorial and think “Cool, I can wipe my ass with this.”
I wish you the best of luck, but do consider adding the option of a bozo filter.
Sanya,
I’m not clear what Unmoderated will offer than various other sites don’t. Or is it that there aren’t any really “good” unmoderated forums out there? Or there just aren’t good ones for these specific games (Aion, Darkfall, SWTOR, etc.)?
I get, for example, why a number of the old CoH fans left the official forums (by choice or force) when the management changed to hang out on a new forum. But what would bring me over to Unmoderated other than the occasional foul-mouthed rant?
You can add a board user to your own ignore list. Isn’t that enough of a bozo filter?
Jesse, a lot of MMO gamers would prefer to have continuity on one site for the various MMO’s they play. This is one of the reasons the Vault is popular. Of course, on the Vault you can be banned or censored on a whim, much less for something like expressing dissatisfaction with a game or particular policy.
I added the RSS feed for your rants to my reader, but based on how quickly some of those comment threads deteriorated, I suspect I’m not really the right audience for the board as a whole. The rants are funny though
Still some good unmoderated USENET “forums” running. Mind you, I won’t tell you where they are as I’d like them to stay that way…
Deyth – “ignore list” is what you whippersnappers call a “bozo filter”. Now get off my virtual lawn.
Unmoderated forums can work great if the community is mostly sensible and confident enough to self regulate. A great example of this is the politics board on F13.net where there are a large number of knowledgable and thoughtful people to temper those with less well thought out opinions. Having had a quick look at UI however it appears that the crazies are front and centre and that will tend to drive away the less excitable elements that would be needed for any useful discussion to take place.
Hopefully there’ll be some talk about games so I can ignore all the painfully bad stuff in the off topic area.