How to Control an Online Forum

This thread is for the linked post about disinformation and forum control.

Requested by >>1524 in the thread on gatekeeping. Add any other resources our thoughts about this topic. I think its also interesting to discuss if the tactics in the link above apply to sofiechan.

>>1031

The previously mentioned article in The Butlerian is relevant.

>>1183
>>184

The previous posts on social media also seem relevant. The article on the attention economy at >>1221 is one of the earlier uses of the term.

The shills seem to be sliding this thread, but this is a pretty good resource, thank you OP. The sections on psychological manipulation titled "you're dividing the movement" and "you're a leader" struck me especially. Man if that don't describe some people I know.

>>1650
An interesting feature implied here might actually be randomly resurfacing threads, though I am sure it might require more careful thought than my saying that.

>>1536
Many of these recall the necessity of gatekeeping, bullying, and brutal moderation.

I worry about 1.3 in any forum, as it's something that can happen organically, too (splitting into endless subfora, turning into purely a social club, not necessarily a bad thing but something which perverts the original "mission").

As I read through the first two sections, I can't help but notice that being stupid, thoughtless, and womanish is indistinguishable from being an op in many cases (e.g. 1.2, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.8, 2.9...). And on and on.

It's very easy to attract marks as something forms into something like a community, since people most susceptible to "you're dividing the movement/you're a leader" are those who most crave community. >>1367 gets at this, I think, and I can't say I have much to add beyond their proposed solution(s).

As far as identification, TK in Industrial Society and Its Future par. 213 onward is also useful here, though maybe his use of "leftism" may muddy the waters for some (sub in "resentful and oversocialized" if you can't depoliticize it for yourself).

>>1668
Currently, sliding is not a huge problem because the front page has everything (scroll down!). Though of course discussion seems to be concentrated in the top few threads. In the long run, we're going to deal with scale and prioritization with tags. There will always be at least one tag for which any given post is on the front page, until it dies. The front pages will be smaller than this current mess. The front page of bigger tags (and main front page) will select their subset by quality/freshness threshold, which is unrelated to bump order, so bump order will only affect order within a single page of links, and will never bump something off of a page.

We may also want to autobump old threads to keep people reading them, but I think about that more in the context of keeping collective memory up and reviewing the greats. Maybe some of you should get in the habit of scrolling down and bumping things that have been quiet for a while if there is still more to say.

Ultimately the best defense of our own ability to have high-integrity discourse is to educate ourselves and actively defend our space and attention. I'm trying to design this thing to give us the tools to do that, but walls are only meaningful if they are manned.

--admin