Active Worlds: The Musical

Posted on 12 July 2010

I am oddly introspective as I write this tonight.  The Active Worlds community is in something of a state of flux right now.  Its discussion forum is being plagued by a troll called ‘Freedomf’.  If you’ve ever read the comments of a certain user by the name of syntaxgs on Digg, think of Freedomf as a malicious version of syntaxgs and you’ll have a fair approximation of the kind of uproar she causes on a monthly (and sometimes daily) basis.

Tom the moderator (who is also the primary moderator for the virtual reality of Active Worlds itself as well as the forum) does not believe that she is a troll, or at least shouldn’t be banned, because she doesn’t exhibit some of the more usual trollish behavior like calling users names, spamming threads, and so on.  Rather, she deliberately incites other users to react to her feigned idiocy by starting threads about “Lynsie Lowhand” and other similar caricaturizations of peoples’ names and activities.  This is a point of disagreement that has sharply divided a lot of the movers and shakers in Active Worlds into two camps; those who want her banned for the sake of peace and quiet and those who think she should just be ignored and allowed to look mean and petty.

And when it comes to the troll, SW City’s involvement in that unfortunate situation has stressed our relationship with said moderator.  The city and him used to be on real good–dare I say, friendly–terms, but that is no longer the case, and I think it’s very unfortunate.  I’m a part of SW City.  We’ve created SW City, which is the largest communal build in any virtual reality environment on earth, to the best of my knowledge.  We are a power house in the Active Worlds community for the sheer amount of content and building tutorials we provide to AW’s users.  So what we think and write can affect a large part of AW’s community and how they react.  Most of us have decided she ought to be banned because after some trial and error, we adopted a three-strikes policy several years ago on our forum and it has worked wonders for creating a positive community environment.  She’s close to matching Sammy Sosa’s record in home runs, except this time with strikes.  Tom sees things differently, and I think I can see his point of view.

First, Tom moderates according to the set of rules he has established in the forum.  These rules are intended to foster a positive and freeing community atmosphere.  Tom doesn’t just rule based on his emotions, as some have argued, but within a defined set of parameters. We do this as well on the SW City forum.

Second, Tom believes the troll has every right to make herself look mean and petty, but can’t understand why other users care.  He believes moderation isn’t necessary when mature adult users can and should ignore the troublemaker. And so he puts the kibosh on those who fall short of those he expects ought to know better and yet respond to the troll.

I see two problems with this system.  First, his rules fall short of their intended goal to foster a positive and freeing community of users, as evidenced by the prolonged existence of this troll, who manages to avoid overtly breaking the rules while breaking their spirit.  A user who intentionally plays the fool to incite other users to react negatively to her cannot be banned under the current set of rules because there’s no rule outlawing such behavior.  And worse, Tom doesn’t seem to understand the need for such a rule because he seems blinded by his expectations of how respectable forum users should act.  Tom is correct in expecting mature forum users to not react to trolls.  But the fact that they do anyway in every forum on the Internet is precisely why we need moderators.

This brings me to my second point.   What the moderator expects of other users shouldn’t enter into a moderator’s consideration, because being human, he will expect different things from different people, and as a side effect those he expects less of are allowed to get away with more before he notices them crossing the line.  Expectations shouldn’t even play a part, but rather the rules should be applied equally to all persons, regardless of standing or situation.  The way Freedomf has taken advantage of this gap of expectations is exactly the reason why philosophers of law first touted the equal application of the law.  It is precisely the opposite of the other big reason for introducing that ethical standard; that of cronyism, which is when one ignores applying the law equally when a friend comes under its judgment.

So Tom needs to do three things to fix the situation.

First, he should put equal expectations on each user to follow the rules.  Flattering as it is that he puts higher expectations on those he respects more, justice is supposed to be blind.  This means clamping down on Freedomf for inciting people to respond negatively to her as well as clamping down on those who disrupt the forum atmosphere by doing so.  Both the cause and the effect should be dealt with.

Second, since the forum rules should create and encourage a positive and freeing atmosphere, Tom needs to look for any holes in the current policies that allow people to diminish the positive and free atmosphere and plug them with more specific guidelines.

Third, and perhaps most controversially, Tom needs to start completely over on the entire ‘Freedomf’ situation, and act as if the last few years have never happened.  If he’s going to be changing the way he approaches the issue, it is simpler just to start completely over and ignore any variables that complicated the issue in the past. And yes, that means putting her recent admission of guilt into the category of inadmissible evidence.

Of course, it’s not all Tom’s fault.  Not by a long shot.  SW City had a few of its staff involve themselves in trying to force the moderator to take action on the troll about a year or so ago.  This, in hindsight, was extremely wrong-headed.  In trying to oust the troll, they only became annoyances to the one man they needed most on their side; Tom. And it seems to have just caused Tom to have dug in on his position.

It’s also soured some SW’ians’ (SW City people) experience with Active Worlds.  The fellow who spearheaded the attempted ouster has decided to move on to Second Life because he in good conscience can’t build in a program where Tom is in charge.  Tom, on the other hand, thinks this guy is an intentionally malicious user who let a personal feud with Freedomf spill over into the forum.  I take something of the middle of the road.  This guy is a really good guy.  He stands on principle to a fault.  It’s an admirable quality, but it’s gotten him into trouble and probably was what guided him to try to make the moderator ban the troll.  Yet I cannot say he should have compromised his principles.

I myself got banned for a few days in January when I joined in on a thread in which a bunch of users decided to publicly state that we had ignored the troll in an effort to get everyone else to join in, and bypass Tom completely.  Tom locked the thread and cut it short before it could gain critical mass and (imho) allow the community to solve the problem itself.  Thinking back on it, I’m not so sure he was wrong, as at that time it was still fairly nebulous as to whether the troll was actually trolling or if she was just unstable and stupid.  But it still would have been effective. Regardless of the legitimacy of Tom’s actions, this event caused me to re-evaluate how much time I was putting into community projects in Active Worlds, and that and a combination of real-life events led me to step back from wider community involvement to just involving myself in activities in SW City itself.  I think it also caused a few other people to do the same thing.

Fast-forward to this week, where the troll publicly admitted to intentionally inciting users to respond negatively to her and somehow avoiding punishment, and you see why I’m ruminating on this issue this week.

Where does the community go from here?  A user by the name of Bach Zhaa is making an admirable effort to make AW a cooler place by holding events and weekly town hall meetings.  But I don’t think that alone would help the community to grow.  It needs nurture from the caretaker.  And like a gardener and his garden, the weeds need to be uprooted by someone.  Active Worlds is a small garden, and even one weed can stunt the growth of the garden.  The questions then present themselves; how does a community grow?  And what is each person’s role in the community to help it grow?  I’ve presented some ways I think Tom as this community’s gardener can best fulfill his role and why I think his efforts to date have fallen short of his goals.  And I hope he listens and adopts an idea or two.  Furthermore, I hope I articulated Tom’s position as if it were my own.

Right now, I think the Freedomf situation has more of an effect on this community than it first appears.  And that’s because it’s gotten a lot of the users’ attentions due to how long it’s gone on, the attention people like SW City and others have given it, and past moderating decisions.  It has hurt my own and my friends’ morale.  And unfortunately because of all this, its now becoming seen as representative of the state of the community.  It baffles me how one user can have such an effect, but here we are.  It happened with Eep, and it’s happening again.

Speaking of Eep, I ran across this post that I made shortly after he was banned about Facter (who had Tom’s job) leaving his job and the community in 2001.

Oh, but there still is a problem. You are leaving, and you’ll be sorely
missed.

I’m not going to preach, but if you want a good example of a backfired
“community”, head on over to http://www.xwlegacy.net/ This little haven of
the Star Wars gaming elite is a hell hole. I was a staff member there
before political infighting, like this whole Eep situation only much much
much much worse, drove me away.

Before then, I’ve been in many situations on the losing side that have been
as bad as this (losing side meaning the side that didn’t agree with a
certain person who decided he wanted to control everything). Activeworlds
and its newsgroups are heaven compared to them.

It’s just a bump in the road, Facter. Please don’t leave.

SW Chris

Active Worlds and its forum are no longer that heaven.  It’s not exactly to the state of xwlegacy, though.  I think it can go both ways at this point.  Will AW’s community devolve into something like xwlegacy where the trolls run or ruin everything?  Will it stay neutral, or will it improve?  Will this play be a tragedy or a comedy?  Will our protagonist overcome his character flaws in time to save the day?  And will Freedomf get what she deserves in the end?  I’m not sure, but it seems as if Freedomf is running the show right now; she’s getting all the attention she wants and she is now starting to be seen as the person that will make or break the community.  She is right where she wants to be.

End of Act 2.