Dawkins:
Be that as it may, what this remarkable bile suggests to me is that there is something rotten in the Internet culture that can vent it. If I ever had any doubts that RD.net needs to change, and rid itself of this particular aspect of Internet culture, they are dispelled by this episode.
I think there is a tendency to underestimate the strength of communities and relationships on the internet. "It's just a message board" "it's just a chatroom" are exceedingly ignorant comments (or implied comments) that demonstrate how little experience the speaker has of being part of an internet community. Internet communities are a type of community that simply doesn't exist for the vast majority people in real life, often bringing together people who cannot find each other in real life. What modern situation is comparable? People don't gather the way they used to. Essentially, the vast majority of productive internet forums (of which the RDF Forums were a shining example) are social discussion societies. They remind me of a kind of 19th century gathering of intellectuals. People meet every day in the same coffee shop and discuss. Sometimes, those discussions are intensely academic, other times their personal lives sneak in-- as must inevitably happen as people get to know each other.over-reacting so spectacularly to something so trivial.
There is some regulation and organization by some leaders, but it runs primarily because people want to show up. They may get into fierce arguments with people they dislike, but they come back because it's fundamentally a safe place. Over the years they are active, the society that maybe was started by one person, now exists as its own entity. The founding individual may not even attend the meetings very frequently any more.
This is what the best internet forums are. They are not groups of crazy people who have no lives, they are profound expressions of productive human discussion. They represent a kind of deep productive social discussion that does not happen in our society very often any more. Perhaps it should, but it does not.
I wasn't a member of the RDF forums for very long (less than a month), so I cannot presume to be part of that particular profound society. But I am and have been part of other forums. I know what it must feel like and how all the members who belonged to the community must feel. You have my condolences.
What happened at the RDF Forums is the real life equivalent of the founder of the 19th century coffee shop society's clerk (whom nobody in the society has ever really met) coming back suddenly and announcing that the society is over. Not only can it not meet in its habitual place any more, it can never meet again in the same form. The founder is coming back and discussions will now be lead by him only. Everyone will now speak their turn and personal discussions between the people who have now become friends will be banned. "It's just a society," the founder says.
It is not only a matter of "has the right to do this". Most people I think agree that it is RDF's forum. It is simply inhuman to expect that people would not be upset and would not express their anger in a meaningful way. To express shock that they would shows a strange lack of understanding of people.
