What is the purpose of the forum?

[bazwal]

@paul_dennehy

Here’s my own potentially unpopular view: if the purpose of democracy is to give everyone a say and then select the most popular opinion, then democracy literally is “stifling contrary, unpopular, misunderstood, or just plain daft ideas” by another name. If I’m free to say a thing and then everyone else is free to tell me I’m wrong if they disagree then the system is working.

That’s exactly my own view, which I expressed in a different way in my first post above. To me (and to most other people, I would guess) this view of democracy is “completely normal and expected”.

In my second post, in accordance with the forum guidelines, I was assuming the OP had made “a good faith effort to express their thoughts” and I was trying to find the most charitable interpretation I could of it. As I pointed out there, the OP’s statement only seems to make sense if they somehow disagree with your/our common sense understanding of how democracies work.

@paul_dennehy

that the democracy is unfair or not egalitarian

Very few democracies are even remotely egalitarian, since not everyone is allowed to vote (children, prisoners, foreign nationals, etc). However, although this forum clearly isn’t a democracy, it is intended to be fully egalitarian, in the sense that equal participation is available to all members of iNaturalist (which I know isn’t itself open to everyone, but that’s not the point). When the OP says “disagree out”, it would be quite a stretch to interpret this as literally meaning exclusion from further participation. So what else could it mean?

Maybe the post by LostInCR gets closer to trying to answer this. When it comes to the question of purpose, all the philosophical niceties go out the window. In the right hands, anything can be turned into a weapon - even freedom of speech (which can so easily degrade into might-is-right).

All in all, perhaps the best way to keep everything in perspective and preserve one’s mental well-being is to just assume from the outset that every discussion on every forum is always effectively a Topic Going Nowhere - including feature requests. Often especially including feature requests

[paul_dennehy]

@LostInCR

it performs what I see as the purpose of this forum, to provide users with a place they can provide feedback, ask questions, and promote iNaturalist without letting any messy conversations get in the way.

I like this, personally. There’s Discord and Reddit and plenty of other places to have a chatroom-type experience talking about iNat. Having a hyper-focused forum to discuss one thing at a time in a slow methodical way has its place, as does having a more open conversational place to chat in an unmoderated way. I wouldn’t want every online space to be an unmoderated gab fest any more than I would want every online space to be a focused moderated forum.

[astra_the_dragon]

I sympathize with the overuse of the “off-topic” flag. I think it’s often chosen as a flag category when “inappropriate” or the fill-in “something else” is a better fit.

How important is it to stay on-topic? Here’s my arbitrary ranking from “needs most focus” to “do whatever”

1. Bug reports
2. Feature Requests
3. Curators
4. News and Updates
5. Third-Party Tools and Apps
6. Tutorials
7. Educators
8. General
9. Nature Talk

and the truth is, we sometimes allow threads in Nature Talk to get very messy - which simultaneously requires less work from us, but makes spotting and sorting out any rules violations more difficult when it does happen.

In my eyes, @LostInCR 's points are basically spot-on. Where I think we may disagree is that they want a bigger, livelier, more freeform experience here, whereas I think the benefits of a controlled environment are worth the sacrifice of stodginess and bureaucracy.

To speak very personally, this forum is one of the only places on the entire internet I go to where antisemitism is rare-to-nonexistent (not counting spaces made by Jews for Jews). That is no doubt partially due to the fact that one of the moderators - me - is visibly Jewish; but it’s also in part because we are extremely strict about personal attacks and very carefully watch political discussions.

I have also had several shy people express gratitude that we try not to let especially loud and argumentative people dominate conversations too much. It only takes a few rude, pushy people (and I speak as a confident, pushy person who speaks too much) to totally drown out those who are marginalized.

most of the internet is dominated by the rules of capitalism and little else. bullying is rampant, because anger sells. spam, scams, and chaos rule the streets. the owners of a platform have no reason to reign in abusive moderators, because despair and confusion are profitable, and admitting liability (or worse, doing something about it) costs money. and if you want to get even more cynical, there’s a couple dozen world governments that actively sow chaos and discord in order to further their own plans.

It’s selfish, and I’m aware that I’m saying this from a position of authority, but I feel safe and comfortable here, even if I have to stay polite and straightlaced and boring. I really do prefer to make trouble, whine a lot, and hang loose, but I do that in my private life and on other platforms.

[LostInCR]

@astra_the_dragon

In my eyes, @LostInCR 's points are basically spot-on. Where I think we may disagree is that they want a bigger, livelier, more freeform experience here, whereas I think the benefits of a controlled environment are worth the sacrifice of stodginess and bureaucracy.

To be fair, I don’t really know that I want anything from the forum. It is what it is and I think I stated what I thought its purpose was. I do feel compelled at times, though, to point out when I think a site’s actions do more harm than good. It’s enough that I appreciate the fact that we no longer hear the repeated refrain that you shouldn’t post photos in threads. That one was really pointless for an app that functions almost entirely off of user-taken photos.

I agree with your list of ‘needs most focus’ but would offer that the number of moderator interventions in the first seven is virtually, if not in reality, non-existent. Maybe the third-party tools programmers get a bit carried away, though. If anything, I would just recommend that moderators take a moment to ask themselves if cutting off tangential conversation on topic serves any real purpose or if it is just done because ‘it needs to be done.’ Tangential conversations are often formed by a spark that has been lit in someone’s mind and can lead to all sorts of learning and discovery. Slamming the forum door on someone just because they didn’t adhere to what the moderator viewed as the topic likely produces only hurt feelings and a sense that someone has been caught for misbehaving. Maybe great for getting people in touch with their inner angst but not great for getting in tough with nature.

I also offer that my response to you, and your response to my earlier post are both off topic and little to do with the purpose of the forum and more do do with the moderation of the forum, yet, it hasn’t been a useless exchange worthy of stifling. You agree with some of what I said and I agree with some of what you said. We couldn’t have had that exchange if a moderator has chastised you for veering off topic.

[AdamWargon]

Part of the purpose of a Discourse community, by design, is to provide a knowledge base where users can support other users by providing solutions, and thus save paid staff time by preventing the creation of tickets.

Some of the moderation is designed to facilitate what I wrote above. If you need to find a technical solution, but it involves wading through hundreds of rambling and off-topic responses, it reduces the usefulness of a Discourse community for fulfilling this purpose.

[antsbyleo]

Well said

[LostInCR]

@AdamWargon

Part of the purpose of a Discourse community, by design, is to provide a knowledge base where users can support other users by providing solutions, and thus save paid staff time by preventing the creation of tickets.

Some of the moderation is designed to facilitate what I wrote above. If you need to find a technical solution, but it involves wading through hundreds of rambling and off-topic responses, it reduces the usefulness of a Discourse community for fulfilling this purpose.

What you describe is a community FAQ, not a community discussion to facilitate learning and understanding. If the purpose of the forum is just to create FAQ after FAQ so people can google an answer more quickly, why would anyone want to participate?

[AdamWargon]

I asked the same question!

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-do-some-passionate-inatters-not-use-the-forum/

[jnstuart]

I suspect that any iNatter who uses the forum, at least occasionally, and browses the various topics has a better sense of how iNat functions, what is acceptable and what isn’t, than someone who has never been here. I certainly wouldn’t be aware of the site’s functions and rules if I’d never visited the forum since I’m one of those who never reads instructions.