Lurker Lounge now a hack site

[Bolty]

At times I've been a bit taken aback by some things here.  But I have to admit that people like Pete do act like a dose of chlorine in the gene pool.  :P

Right now, I like the metaphor that the LL is an ecology of ideas - in some ways, a harsh, Darwinian one.  That's what makes it so valuable - the strongest/best ideas survive.  I don't know if that's what Bolty originally intended, but it's an interesting result.

Hehe, Celtic, as if I have any real control on what gets posted here. :)

If I were a psychology major in college, I know I'd love to do long-term studies on how online communities develop and react to events. Your thinking of the forum as a "harsh, Darwinian one" does seem to apply to most online communities. But they come about that way on their own, I think. I have always tried to be as hands-off as possible on the LL forums, trying to strike that impossible balance of keeping the peace, keeping trolls out, and personal participation. After all, it's a lot harder to maintain an unbiased attitude on conversations you're involved in personally.

I try to guide the forum in the sense that the material posted on the site attracts a certain kind of poster while driving other kinds of posters away. After all, if you are not interested in formulae and strategy guides, you probably wouldn't be reading here, so that naturally rules out certain populations in general. The less focused a website is, the less focused (and thus, greater in size) its readership is. The concept is that if I run a site based on strategy, tactics, and mechanics, one that discourages cheating heavily and attempts to have a more intellectual bent on gaming, people who are interested in that will show up while those who aren't, won't. Then I (and the mods) just have to take care of the exceptions. Which I think we do a pretty good job of, although not everyone would agree.

Those who have been here a long time noted how sharply the readership went up at certain times, such as the LoD beta. I realize now (all too late) that it was because of a number of things, some of which were mistakes on my part - I reduced the focus of the site from one dealing with strategy to do more general coverage of the beta test. This brought in more readers who weren't visiting here for the "right" reasons. My thinking was that the site could be a discussion board for its regulars to discuss the beta and their thoughts; instead, I hadn't counted on how many NEW people would show up for that coverage. Not that this was so bad - after the beta ended and the insanity died out, a number of great posters who had not been here before the beta remained to become good community members. But was that worth having to nuke 10+ threads a day?

-Bolty