Digital Forums

Intermittently, I seek out and engage with digital forums throughout the internet.

I do not live on, for, through or, by them. Apparently some people do such.

I visit them somewhat frequently. I use them as a tool to augment my education on various subject matter. A learner by nature and desire, I tend to reference them most often during the earlier stages of learning something new.  Forums can be great supplements to (and often better than) manuals or generalized instruction. Forums also act as hubs that bridge knowledge between platforms. Forums value retaining a repository of history for future reference.

Forums invite debate and different opinions, but also understand that some level of moderation is required in order to maintain the health of the forum. Without that moderation, the intent of a forum drifts away from the exchange of information about the core subject matter on which it was founded, and into a primitive activity in which digital primates hurls feces at one another; the victor being the one who howled last; a meaningless space in which there are no rules and no intellect and only base levels of behavior are understood and expressed; lands of infants and toddlers vying for supremacy over things they do not understand.

Those of us who value and have participated in healthy forums welcome healthy moderation because we understand its necessity through empiricism. We have seen the unfortunate results when it is absent. No forum is perfect. No forum is for everyone. Forums are specific to shared interests. Forums are distinct. Forums are purpose driven.

Forum origins are distinct from those social platforms that seek to prioritize and encourage contrarian dialogue between individuals. Forums do not seek to incite, but rather develop. A forum is a desire to bring people with shared interests together so that they may further share and exchange enthusiasm between likeminded people. A forum is a communal bond in the cold digital universe where there more dark matter nonsense than meaningful material. Forums are a necessary means to flush out meaning in a nonsensical universe. They are a place where acceptable egalitarian debate requires rules, respect and refraining from poor behaviors that insult the intellect and good faith.

They are also a great place to observe and learn semantics, nuances and culture. Such exposure enables learning to further progress beyond a rudimentary level.

I’ve participated in varying degrees in many community forums over the years. My limited participation comes and goes with the winds of my educational interests. All forums have ebbs and flows in moods, participants, and focus.

Forums were much more prominent during the earlier years of the internet. Or, perhaps they were just a larger percentage of the content found in the early days. During those years, many of us who loved to read and were open to new ideas and new ways of doing things, expanded our search for information to include the internet. For many or us, the internet was a digital expansion of the library.

The earliest years of the internet looked nothing like the virtual world it now tries to be. Originally, the environment was text based. Limitations in hard drive space, memory and processing power and knowledge meant the internet in its infancy could not support visuals. It was a world developed by text and landscaped with text. Eventually, minimal digital pixel art became possible. Later we had access to low resolution photos. Video was once seemingly elusive.

Hobbyists and enthusiasts embraced the digital age as a means to connect directly with distant people about shared passions. Connected through the fundamental skills of reading and writing, these communities tended to gather people with curiosity and a desire to move beyond the constraints of legacy media and its unidirectional avenues of discourse. The internet broke down walls and permitted an egalitarian connection between people and encouraged engagement though the sharing of information and ideas. It collapsed time by permitting people to go direct to sources for comment and receive answers within moments rather than seeking obscure physcial documents that may never be found.

Perhaps you lived in a little farm town with dirt roads a single traffic light and limited resources, but you loved professional cycling. Suddenly you could connect with people in distant places that had access to information you lacked. Better yet, you could transcend oceans and connect with people in the very locations that were most knowledgeable about that interest. You could engage in broad discussions and obtain, direct perspectives from folks who were often active participants in the very subject matter in which you were enthused.

The earliest days of the internet was a figurative Eden of sorts. Cheap, no ads, few economic vultures, limited in conflict. The vindictive trolling of poor faith participants and the taint from ruthless oligarchs putting their filthy fingers in the pudding was largely absent. Over amplification of messages through rigged algorithmic manipulations was not a concept.

Debates were to be had, to be sure, but they adhered to a more academic mindset where logic and reason and politeness were understood as necessary. Emotional immaturity, belligerence, missives, ad hominem attacks, trolling, serial posting and their ilk were frowned upon as intellectually stunted and regressive practices. People treated participants as though they were neighbors living next door whom you wished to have civil relationships with because everyone understood the value in stable, conflict free communities where ideas and knowledge could be easily shared and spread.

It was great.

Things change.

Fashion changes over time and so too does how people engage the internet. Forums still persist, but they are not as prominant as they once were. They are a minuscule share of the digital pie. Anecdotally, today‘s forums seem most used by an older demographic that came of digital age when forums were more pervasive. These may include people who probably read cereal boxes and comics when they were young. People who certainly read print newspapers and specialist magazines.

There are younger members of course. There are also older.

The forums that function best are those supported by passionate enthusiasts. Without enthusiasm there is minimal traffic. Without traffic, few ideas are shared. Without the sharing of ideas, there is no discourse. Without discourse there is only an empty forum.

Enthusiastic forums also tend to be the most satisfying forums. Especially in the short term if your goal is to come rapidly up to speed on some form of new to you subject matter. Content and discussions in these forums have a lot of breadth and depth. They grow to cover every nuance, nook and cranny of the subject matter on which the forum was built. All forms of information, controversy, heresy and banality can be observed and pondered. An enthusiastic forum can be a solid place to search for common answers to basic newcomer questions or complex answers regarding the most nuanced topics; they can be posed and answered by people who have empirical authority demonstrated through their active, shared, engagement with the subject matter at hand.

Whoa is the forum without enthusiasm. Such a forum shall surely perish by winter’s onset. A forum without enthusiasm is a forum that has no audience. Sad are the millions of forums that never gained an enthusiastic audience with anyone other than that one passionate fella with the username DollarBill who just loved the hell out of that first generation, the only generation, Blitzo 9000; who posted five of the six threads found on that forum. The sixth was the first forum post labeled “TEST” created by username Admin. Only one thread was enjoyed by any other user. Someone with username (Anonymoususer) had provided an enthusiastic response; visually indicated through a positive emoji found at the bottom of the bottom of the only text found under the thread labeled “Did you get yours yet?” The last post, obviously by DollarBill was almost poetic soliloquy and read: “Haven’t posted in a while. Just wanted to share. Blitzo 9000 didn’t work out for me. Sent it back, take care!”

Often, I lurk on a good forum for a few years until I get enough footing to feel I can contribute. That may seem excessive, but I am a cautious respectful person who goes at a speed that suggests thoroughness.

I can’t confess to understanding every reason why people participate in forums. There seem to be many reasons and many characters. Not knowing how others view forum protocols and etiquette, I cannot conclude, for example, that each participant operates under some form of code of ethics or if they are simply driven by passion alone.

Transparently, I find people without a code of ethics suspicious. How can you not know what to expect from yourself any given situation without a code of ethics? Is it not considered dangerous to wander about civil society without such? Such people may brandish weaponry. How can one know when and when one would and would not employ that weaponry in an attempt to justly or unjustly harm another without some form of ethical code? Lacking a code would seem to risk poor, rash, dangerous behavior.

I believe most people have one, however. They may not call them out as such or even be self aware of such. The ethical code may be very simple like “Don’t be a dick!”, or very vague as in “behave yourself!” I find that most people seem to operate and behave as though some form of over arching internally understood code of ethics is at play in their lives.

Note, I say most. I do not say all. I believe a comfortable plurality has a ethical code. But that’s just an informed swag.

Some of us go a step further and develop situational specific ethical codes that are subsets of the over arching code of ethics that we employ to our life in general. Those of us who develop these sub codes, seem to believe that ethical codes may require further analytis for us to interact with different perspectives that may contrast with our own. These sub codes serve as translation layers between varying perspectives and help varying perspective to peacefully coexist.

For some this creates problematic conditions whereupon a person naively engages in various irresolvable bouts of cognitive dissonance. Others, such as myself, try to facilitate consistencies between those differing perspectives; simultaneously refusing to abridge or adjust the letter or spirt of the code of ethics we so very carefully developed and pressure tested in our daily lives even as we seek to accommodate as much space as possible for others to coexist peacefully with us.

My code and subsequent behavior highlights that personal desire to prioritize peaceful coexistence with my fellow denizens. A forum exists to support a range of interests that are narrower than the broadness of life in total. One's general interests in a forum are secondary to the primary interests of the forum.

As such, behavior on a forum should respect those needs and boundaries. There are other platforms to express other interests. If interests are overly divergent the best remedy is the offending party to seek out or create a different forum that better aligns to the offending parties intersts. Poor behavior is that which attempts to destruct the forum. By nature, it is necessary to observe topical boundaries lest the forum devolve into a forum of unstructured chaos in which the central theme under which the forum operates erodes in such a manner that the forum collapses without the pillar of its central purpose being available to support it.

I do have an ethical code that I expect myself to comply with when I seek to interact with various forums. The code is based on my general code, but modified situationally for clarity specifically considering forum behavior. Those behaviors are then codified into simple rules that I try my best to remain adherent.

What is it to be a good forum citizen? There is no universal consensus, unfortunately. They are not, nor should not, be divergent to our social citizenry expectations. Forum citizenry is, after all, a subset of citizenry at large. As such I would imagine most of us develop our excpectations according. Those behaviors that we agree to have managed at large, are likely, mostly, those we should apply to our forums. To accommodate the occasional specificity required for forums specifically, we may refine the rules of society at large to a smaller portion of the pie for the forum. We may have a forum that is centered around enthusiasm for tractors. Citizens will not expect to inclusion of discussions centered around sea mollusks without some reasonably easy explanation for the connection. Citizens feigning a belief everything that everything is connected, but espeicially sea Mollusks and tractors above all else, are being intentionally obtuse, propducing bad faith argumentation, and bearing a form of false witness by gaslighting us of their feigned ignorance in authentic.

That said, we know how our own individual ethical code overlays with society's at large. We already understand through experience, that there is no universal code shared between us. We have endless variations of codes. Most of which are quite similar and coexist easily and happily. It is unnecessary, impossible and often lethal for our species to seek and enforce a mythical unified code as it would stunt the growth of possibilities that we require to sustain our intellectual selves.

Sadly, once in a while, an oddity in the cannons of ethical codes arise. These oddities desire only to destruct the communication across the forum. Render it unusable. Nihilist in behavior, such an oddity, when it arises, causes quite a stir. It creates endless, nonsensical calamities. Those disruptive naughty ethical cannons are not what they appear. No, those cannons are void of ethics. They are ever changing amoebas that cannot commit to a common effort of good will.

Sad for them as they blindly dither hither and yon to and fro with no direction.

Meanwhile the vast majority figure out how to get along with others of our digital citizens and we work together to help insure we not only don't harm each other, but we also help each other by doing simple things like "Don't be a Dick!"

Be that as it may, we each have our own code of ethics. When we walk through the holy doors of the forum, we begin our behavior with our general codes and we refine from there.

Primary on my list of ethics is that I try to only demonstrate good behaviors and refrain from socially destructive behaviors. Sounds simple. Quite complex. Extraordinarily broad. Rather than applying that easy seemingly open ended code to all of what I do on a forum, I narrow it. I ask the question “what is the purpose of a forum?” If the answer is to “share information”, I will modify my broadly stated goal to demonstrate good behaviors and refrain from socially destructive behaviors to “I will refrain from posting anything that is not a contribution."

I then consider the understanding of what I propose to codify. I will ask if I can measure this for insurance of adherence. With no measurement, there is no value. I am merely stating forms of word salad; tossing them up against the wall and hoping myself and others see meaning.

If I want to contribute, what does it mean to do so? So I define it. My definition for contribution is “shared information that adds value to some element of the community using the forum.” I considered defining contribution as ”shared information that does not detract value from the community.“ But I felt I more comfortable with the bar set at a more restrictive level, easier to identify and measure, so as to best safe guard from irreverently abusing participants with random irrelevant incites posing as contributions that people they need to frustratingly weed through.

For what it’s worth, I defined value as “provided some element of joy. I didn’t define joy. Personally, I feel joy is as it sounds and doesn’t require further clarification.

When I contribute, I require that I provide something new to the community. I don’t want to rehash or restate.  I may ask the odd question, but I generally find my question has already been answered and if I am diligent I rarely need to post questions.  (More often I will get answers to questions I did not know I had just by reading through forum content).

I’m a limited participant in other regards as well. My time is spent doing many things and once at a task I am generally at it without distraction. As such my time spent perusing the internet is time constrained due to many competing interests. 

My general assumption is what when I am new to the party I need to spend more time listening  for comprehension than posting and that further limits my participation. I need to learn my place. I assume I know nothing and hope to learn rapidly through active listening. I’m not great at the “hi, how is it going” stuff. I’m introverted by nature, and that constrains me further.  

However, when I do engage in communication, my tendency is to be verbose. I am almost incapable of succinct correspondence. This is due to a futile attempt at clarity and to pre empt misunderstandings. I am a man in which semantics, nuance and situational conditions matter. That is tiring to many people.

I am longwinded.

Obviously.

Dammit.

I often miss a lot of the daily grind on any given forum; I am often late to the party; if something captivating draws everyone’s attention, seemingly forcing every member to comment, I'm entirely lost.  If a thread takes off and suddenly has 15 pages of conversation, I will likely not post on that thread as I have no idea if what I am about to contribute has not already been said. I don’t want to be "that guy" who endlessly contributes needless thread bloat. I don’t have time, energy or desire to wade through the 15 pages of what often appears to be heated if not outright hostile discussion about something I find personally irrelevant to my personal situation.

 I’ll scan through it form minimal validation, but that isn’t really reading for comprehension, is it? Doing that takes time. I don't have to read anything I don't want to. Still, maybe I'll miss something? Should I actually scroll through all 258 pages and insure comprehensiveness? Certainly there is bloat. But if I don't how will I know if I missed a worthwhile nugget. A statement of interest I had not considered and is valuable for its novelty.

No, I haven't the time. I have other things to do. I will air on the side of believing that anything of value will become self evident through skimming. Besides, I am not going to contribute to this thread as I will not be properly informed given my hasty approach. But that is ok, because I am not making the committee suffer. if what I was about to utter was of value, certainly it has already been said.

My intermittent activity means I also miss a lot of smaller individual threads.  As such any contribution I provide is made with a certain degree of trepidation as I never know when I may inadvertently step onto the grounds of a sensitive topic, a tropic already drained, or an idea the community has determined not to worth pursuing.

All this to say, I am a thoughtful when I post and attempt to be a good community member. 

Because I use forums selfishly and I use them sporadically as time and constraints permit, I often feel like a bit of leech to these communities. I force myself to make the effort to give back, even if it is in a limited manner.  My approach is not wrong, per se, but if everyone did only as I do all, forums would have so little traffic they would eventually cease. Fortunately there are often several members who engage actively and keep the community enthused. We should praise them, not chastise their eager engagement. Nothing is sadder than the forums that lack engagement. Best too much than too little.

And yet I talk about how valuable they are to me because of the engagement of others freely sharing information and yet I still engage only in a limited manner.

A hypocrisy.

To alleviate this guilt and make amends, once I feel I have something to contribute, I do so, even if I am oftentimes really loathe to do so personally. It can be a lot of work.  I am prone to giving much thought as to how I chose to present my ideas. I’m wordy. I am constantly editing. I make word usage mistakes that tap in to the trappings of culture in which words to change context situationally and between communities.  There are times when I finish a response and realize the ship has sailed and that I have wasted my time carefully editing a response for a forum. The ship never left the shipyard and the entire fleet sailed away.  

I praise digital forums even as I lament that try as I might, I confess my idiosyncratic nature makes me a poor forum member in most regards. I am well intended, but limited in my ability to contribute day in and day out. I am entirely too verbose and could easily become a community nuisance. I believe I provide limited value, but am not the bread and butter of any forum. Rather, I am one of the supporting cast. Less a Guildenstern than a Voltemand. A bit player. We have a role to play in the community. We pop in enough to keep the play rolling. Sometimes we get a larger role, but are never the stars.

I am more apt to write a long form expository; a concoction motivated by something I read on a forum. A response that got out of control and missed the train; something then reworked into something more literary than conversational and then posted it some where more appropriate, forever detached, from the adjacent thoughts from which it germinated.

This piece, for example.