Actually, they were. Subjectively obvious and mathematically provable. But thanks for playing.

My posts on Terra Nova weren’t especially long — they just disagreed with the orthodoxies of the contributors and their fanboyz.

Re: “…that a statement I believe to be true is a fact until proven wrong.”

That’s the case for every single person contributing or commenting on a blog. People gather evidence from their own experience; they read; they think; they look at whatever “facts” are out there — usually from Google or Wikipedia. And they pronounce something to be true. Oh, like Bonnie Ruberg thinking that sexual expression has been “suppressed” in Second Life. Oh, and like Nick Yee thinking avatars have a “gaze” and their behaviour reveals their RL gender! Yeah, stuff like that!

And when they’ve made their statement, which they believe to be true, they don’t leave “the burden of proof” on others; they wait to see if anything else that either they find out or that others press upon them could disprove their belief in something as a fact.

All I’ve done is describe exactly what everybody else does everywhere, but is too arrogant or ashamed to admit.

I don’t know what my “blog ranking” is but I’ll wager it’s higher than Nobody’s.

State your point of view clearly and succinctly along with a couple supporting arguments if needed and leave it at that.

I agree with the “if you really need to hear yourself speak alot, take it to your own blog” view. Then those who want to try to divine your pov in more depth can choose to do so while keeping the original discussion more succinct and cogent.

Yeah, nothing destroys a good system/method like people using it.

I don’t see it happening. Prokofy is too narcissistic to post one of her diatribes under the the handle of ‘Joe’.

I do agree that having the comment thread was silly, I don’t think they intended a ban, because in reality they can’t enforce it. When Dan Hunter got fed up it probably just stuck, hoping that the accused didn’t realize that they could take on a new identity…

That said, the real mistake was to announce a policy set-in-stone with big letters, and have people discuss it. If you’re claiming to have a huge dramatic problem, you’ll increase your chances of getting one. You either propose a set of policy options for discussion or just establish a well-established-policy as the most natural thing in the world, preferably during some event where it fits in (like when you are doing major redesign of a system).

What is surprising is that people are reluctant to learn from the downfall of USENET in 1995. Small narrow groups with an established focus suriveved, wide inter-disciplinary groups died. Inter-disciplinary groups shold have moderation policies set up-front. Obviously.

Besides, Terranova could do more to encourage their inter-disciplinary focus, like actually explaining the theories they refer to in their posts so other participants actually can follow. Most people don’t have a good grasp on Structuration Theory, Actor-Network Theory and so on, but not because said frameworks are terribly clever and hard to get. (Well, the books on them make them hard to get… but that’s mostly due to exessive verbosity.) I guess there are many ways to moderate, but moderation through obscurity is the less flattering one…

As I said immediately afterword (as I’m sure you noticed) I corrected my typo in the Terra Nova comment. What I meant to type was that public ANNOUNCEMENTS of bans was counterproductive. Which is in fact true. You don’t announce bans for the world to comment and posture about. You tap people on the shoulder and silently escort them to the door.