WebWide Boycott

blue · Post by **blue** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 7:08 pm

we should make a songfight football team. mascot? The Fluffies, of course.

Oust The Mods · Post by **Oust The Mods** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 7:22 pm

Well Fluffy. I gotta hand it to you.

At least you are not playing THEIR game.

(The Let's Ignore And Demean Him Game)

I like your idea of an experiment and am talking to some people about this at the PHP company.

The software has to be developed.

The problem is that we have lots of technicians and lots of students are studying all this computer stuff but they are not learning the fundamentals of democratic tradition anymore.

But a backlash is due to occur on the Internet soon.

Gripes Law is something I stumbled upon. I believe that Gripes Law is going to have a major impact in the next 5 years.

I am preparing some experimants to demonstrate this law.

jack · Post by **jack** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 7:28 pm

ike fuckin diogu.

jack · Post by **jack** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 7:29 pm

blue · Post by **blue** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 7:42 pm

maybe they can draft the entire '05 gator team.

i'd get season tix if they did.

Dan-O from Five-O · Post by **Dan-O from Five-O** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 8:03 pm

I had high hopes for the Pacers this year, but they went and fucked up their lottery pick anyway.

Dicks.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 9:12 pm

Oust The Mods wrote:The software has to be developed.

I already linked you to two software packages which do a lot of what you want though. Why reinvent the wheel?

But a backlash is due to occur on the Internet soon.

Yes, but who against?

Gripes Law is something I stumbled upon. I believe that Gripes Law is going to have a major impact in the next 5 years.

I have a similar law, which I haven't named but I do name one of the concepts in it the "asshat quotient." Every site has an asshat quotient, which is the ratio of people who exist only to antagonize others to the active population. Every site's asshat quotient varies over time. There is a certain limit asshat quotient which I refer to as the critical mass (though perhaps a better term would be "critical ass"), at which point the asshats end up taking over because they overwhelm the well-meaning members of a community. This is not limited to online fora, either; many real-life cities (such as New York, Detroit, etc.) have had problems in the past where the number of criminals overwhelms the ability of the law-abiding citizens to keep it a decent place to live, and it suddenly spirals into oblivion.

From here, a variety of things can happen:

A. The admins give up and let things just keep on going the way they are, figuring that it's easier to let it happen than to try to reverse entropy
B. The admins give up and shut things down (like what J.Rowland did to the Wigu board, as you mentioned earlier)
C. The admins figure out a way to clean things up and restore balance while getting rid of the asshats
D. The admins figure out a way to clean things up and restore balance, while allowing asshats to remain without letting them get out of hand again

The problem with pure democracies is that it's always going to be situation A or B. Happiness breeds contentment which breeds apathy, which makes it easier for asshats to come in and tip the balance. By the time well-meaning citizens notice the problem, it's too late. (I have to admit that I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek about Kuro5hin earlier; this happened there and it never recovered. Scoop itself is still a viable platform, but the site which spawned it has basically turned into trollsville.)

A pure democracy will always reach critical ass pretty quickly, just due to the nature of the Internet. HOWEVER, a democracy with built-in limits to the freedom of the masses has a fair chance at working out pretty well. For example, the United States of America has specific protections in its constitution to prevent the "tyranny of the masses" from taking over. It's why we have a representative government which is supposed to reflect the will of the people but, more importantly, uphold the constitution. The constitution itself has built-in limits to prevent laws from being passed to remove freedoms from people, and to keep too much power from being vested in one place. Although it's possible to vote these statutes out of existence (via a later amendment), the amount of effort and conspiracy it would take would be enormous, and so the US government's critical ass is somewhere around 67%. (Sadly, its asshat quotient currently appears to be around 50%, though I expect it to go down sharply soon.)

The amazing thing is that some things which are really close to a pure democracy <em>can</em> continue to exist, though. It constantly amazes me that Wikipedia continues to function pretty well. I don't think they've succeeded at their stated mission, but I do think they do a great job of self-regulation. However, there the asshat quotient would have to be EXTREMELY high to reach critical ass, because the built-in barriers to asshattery are pretty high (it takes one person only a few clicks to undo plenty of damage by any other person, and changing fundamental things requires a pretty large majority). But WP is structured more like the representative democracy of the USA than, say, Kuro5hin.

One thing you should definitely think about before undertaking the idea of a fully-democratic site is what exactly it is you're trying to create, though. Are you trying to create a self-regulating forum? Are you trying to create a self-regulating music sharing site? Or are you trying to make the Internet as a whole self-regulating? If it's the last one, I think several other people here have pretty well stated the case that it is already, at least in the macro scale. Do you want something like Songfight where people can vote to fundamentally change what the site is about? This is a place with a very specific function (post a title, get songs written for the title, share said songs), and allowing people to vote away that basic premise and turn it into, say, a dog breeding forum is somewhat anathema to the point of the original site, and it'd be a lot easier to just start up a new site which is about dog breeding to begin with (and if other people want to talk about dog breeding, they'll come and talk about it).

I hope I haven't bored you too much with this, and I hope I've given you something to think about.

Oust The Mods · Post by **Oust The Mods** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 8:08 am

I'm not talking about cahnging the nature of any site.

The community gathers for a purpose.

They need a space to meet.

They elect a Treasurer.

They Treasurer has to pay for the site.

They give him the money to pay for the site.

There was no means for the Virtual Community to organize itself in the early days of the Internet.

There weren't enough email accounts and web site.

Someone had to open the sites.

They had to pay for the sites.

They do not own the sites.

The communities own the sites.

Period.

I believe that the superior courts will decide with me:

That to retain ownership of the site is a betrayal of the public trust.

Bjam · Post by **Bjam** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 9:42 am

I'll be the treasurer. Give me money.

Post by **Spud** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 12:10 pm

I am more confused than ever, Oust. Are you saying that in order for this to be a valid web community in your view, we are required to charge admission at the door?

SPUD

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 12:27 pm

I have to admit that now I'm pretty confused too. I thought you were rallying towards a fundamental shakeup in how sites are run, but what you just described sounds more like a homeowner's association. But the Internet is not a physical structure, and it's cheap enouguh to rent "space" on the Internet that it's not really feasible to split the costs amongst everyone who uses it.

Many people have tried funding sites via micropayments, but I'm not aware of any experiments in that direction which have actually worked.

Aggregate subscription models (like Modern Tales) have a much better chance of working, though none of them have really gotten a fair shake since they've typically grown too big, forked off in lots of directions, then each individual direction has died. And that also requires a great deal of editorial control if you're going to prevent people from gaming the system.

In the meantime, although I don't know exact numbers, paying for the hosting of Song Fight is well within the means of the admins, and it'd be a lot more work for them to accept money for the hosting in any structured way than it would be for them to keep on doing what they're doing.

Also in the specific case of Song Fight, since all of the material is user-contributed and was contributed under the auspices of the site being free for everyone, it leads to some pretty major legal problems if they were to suddenly require money to listen to the music (since now they'd be essentially selling music which artists put out for free, which is a violation of the implicit contract between the artists and Song Fight). The admins can potentially charge for value-added services or for forum access or similar (that model working very well for Something Awful and The Straight Dope), but charging for forum access would completely kill a community this small (as enjoyable as I find it I don't think it's worth, say, $3/month to keep on posting here, for example), and there's a limit to the sorts of value-added services which could be applied to Song Fight (there's already third-party RSS feeds and complex hoobajoob with archive navigation and so on).

Oust The Mods · Post by **Oust The Mods** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 1:09 pm

No one is selling the music.

I can download all of this music and make my own archive.

(that's what JB and Spud did)

Then post a songfight every week.

And link it to a forum that is democratically governed.

Which community will grow?

Yours or mine?

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 1:13 pm

I don't know, let's find out!

But don't be reposting Song Fight songs. Remember that they ARE protected by copyright.

(By the way, in all the time you've spent trying to convince us that your experiment will work, you could have been actually implementing your experiment and trying to find out.)

teh real goatfucker · Post by **teh real goatfucker** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 1:18 pm

ya d00d put up or stfu up

Oust The Mods · Post by **Oust The Mods** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 1:21 pm

Read my post.

I can download all of the archive and publish it on my own site.

That's exactly what JB and Spud did.

Are you claiming copyright on all of these songs?

Tonamel · Post by **Tonamel** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 1:23 pm

No, he's saying that they have permission to post the songs.

Adam! · Post by **Adam!** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 1:45 pm

Since he's dropped the troll speak, I don't feel bad about posting.

Goob, why do you hate freedom? I think the system you are proposing sounds at least somewhat feasible, and I get the idea that deep down you have idealistic intentions, but I could never, ever support you because what your proposing curtails the freedom of individuals to run private organizations. That's a right I believe we should all be entitled to, both in real life and on the interbutt, and few people will support anyone that argues for the abolition of that freedom.

Also, FYI, no one is afraid of the mods here. Have you seen them? They're like big teddy bears.

Post by **Spud** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 1:45 pm

Song Fight! takes the position that people who submit songs are asking us to post them at a publicly accessible site, and to maintain them in the archive, and are thereby giving us that right to do so, and this is clarified in the faq. They give us no other permissions, and we do not claim any other rights.

Our claim to be the current rightful caretakers of the archive is backed up by the fact that narbotic redirected songfight.com to songfight.org when he abandoned it.

Song Fight! takes no stand on anyone else's rights to repost individual songs, as the owners of the songs have given us no such authority to take such a stand. You will have to take this up with the individual copyright holders.

By the way, I would like to than you (Oust) for changing the tone of your posts to one that allows for a rational discussion of these issues. As I said before, I am not inherently opposed to a more structured community-based leadership/ownership here. If there was sufficient evidence that that is what the majority wanted, I would pursue it. On the other hand, I am of the opinion that we are pretty close to that anyway, as JB and I took control of the site with the support of the active community, and are doing pretty well under the current structure for the time being.

Adam! · Post by **Adam!** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 1:51 pm

Oust The Mods wrote:Are you claiming copyright on all of these songs?

I don't know how copyright works in Brazil, but 99.9%* of these songs are copyrighted.

* I believe at least Kompressor has made his lyrics Public Domain

Sober · Post by **Sober** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 1:52 pm

Wait, so you want to take all of Songfight's songs from the past 5+ years and charge people to listen to them?

A. Why will people pay for something they can get for free?
B. Many songfighters aren't interested in having their music sold
C. More than half the songs in the archive aren't worth a penny

It sounds like what you're suggesting isn't about democracy or freedom at all, but money. You want to make money off of the backs of songfighters. Many of us have gone to the trouble of copyrighting our music. Try to sell it without our permission, go ahead.

Oust The Mods · Post by **Oust The Mods** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 2:06 pm

Read my posts carefully.

No one is talking about charging to hear the music.

We are talking about the form for governing a community.

Mostess · Post by **Mostess** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 3:00 pm

Oust The Mods wrote:Read my posts carefully.

Start writing your posts more carefully. No one is understanding you. It's really not their fault. I only think I hear what you're saying, and it's because you're being cryptic on purpose. Complete paragraphs will help you clarify your bullet-points so you won't be so misunderstood, and you won't have to keep telling people to read what you write.

I mean, come on. Everyone is reading your posts. You're uppity that no one is reading your mind.

Yes, you can download all the songs in the SongFight archive and post them on your own site. And people might come and listen to them. That would be nice of you to mirror SongFight, and as long as you kept the records intact and didn't mess with the content of anyone's songs without asking permission, and didn't act in bad faith in general, people would be glad for it. 'Cause why wouldn't they?

And the fact that your mirror site wouldn't become de facto as popular or exciting or whatever is hardly the fault of this community.