Ping Clarion 7

Art posted a classic reply to a post entitled “Ping Clarion7″, which was asking if there has been any recent news.

Following is Art’s response,

C:\Documents and Setting\Programming\Clarion> Ping Clarion7

Pinging Clarion7 with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for Clarion7:
   Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

C:\Documents and Settings\Programming\Clarion

 

Ha ha. I likey.

The Flame

Spend a few minutes on any major gaming forum, and you’ll discover the idea of “Flaming”.

Something like, posting something simple to raise the ire of other folk.

On the newsgroups, it’s almost completely different. And this is mostly because of moderation. Good (and I use that descriptive wordy thing, to differentiate) Gaming Forums have Moderators who keep things under control. They might have ego issues, I’m not sure, but I’ve seen forums run very well.

Anyway, back to the Clarion Newsgroups.

“The Flame” is not someone posting to incite anger. It’s a topic. Any topic that someone has issue with. People might be annoyed about something. They post. Responses flow in, opposite. Then the backlash. Peppered with “Let’s not get fired up” posts.

The Flame burns bright, and then ends abruptly, probably carried into the hearts of the people in the middle.

 

Dan Pressnell had a couple of quite interesting posts. The first generated some .. discussion.

As I was reading through the posts, the solution came to me.

Take down the newsgroups!

Ha ha. No. Seriously. No. Well. Maybe.

What I would like is to see someone bring about VR for everyone, so we can get in a boxing ring, beat the living crap out of each other, then get back to work. Seems to me we (and I’m including myself here) don’t know how to handle heat on the newsgroups.

I’m leaning (not totally given, but “leaning”) toward the Moderation idea. That the discussion is moderated. It’s a community. Any community needs rules. And needs those rules enforced. Arnie did it with awesome calls like “I let him go”. We could do it with some clear rules, and some .. ruling.

I know for most folk it’s an issue of being treated like kids.

But that’s got it the wrong way around. Anarchy might be fine for your mindset, cool. But we’re not a bunch of individuals. We’re a community. So send in the marines already. Well. Perhaps the SAS. Or whatever we have over here in Oz. Start moderating conversations, not because we’re badly behaved children, but because it establishes a level of trust in the community, for new people coming in seeing that things are in order, and for old folk who if they take issue can go talk about it somewhere else.

Clean it up. Only good will come of it. Sure, some winnowing (? not sure if that’s the right word) might occur. This happens.

Anyway, as I step of this high and oh so mighty pulpit, I’ll leave you with something less preachy.

Here’s my rundown of the situation.