91 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
91 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: Postdrome
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date: 2022-02-25
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series: freenode
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---
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The darkness flailed around, the millions it expected did not follow. The
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numbers the darkness was fostering had faltered more and more. The replacement
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to the halls the darkness destroyed continued on like the old halls never
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existed.
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The darkness felt true loneliness for the first time in its life. Everyone was
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leaving. Attempts to grow its influence failed. Association with the darkness
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became an indelible stain like the mark of Cain. Every attempt to scrub it ended
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up staining the mark deeper and deeper until the stain defined the darkness even
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more than its namesake.
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Ideas spring forth. Public works blossomed for brief moments. Ideas on how to
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leverage new discoveries were put into place, only to rot into decay and
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eventually succumb to their inherent irrelevance.
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---
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In the early phase, communities often fail. For every success you see in the
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wild, hundreds and thousands more have failed.
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Everything has to go right. If any of a hundred thousand things go wrong, your
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community fails. If you mess up, you fail. If one of your moderators
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misinterprets a vaguely defined rule due to fundamental differences in worldview
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and ends up creating a scene as a result, you fail.
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If you build it, they will come. If you don't know what you are building or the
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people that want to use it, you will never be able to predict the kind of people
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that show up.
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Those people that do show up may not be the people you want to show up at all.
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Even if they can be good in the moment it doesn't mean they'll be good
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persistently. Every rose has its thorns, some are more ignorable than others.
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Some are more palateable than others. Some are more viable to pivot from than
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others.
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---
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Not to mention the meddling effects of the urinators stirring up fake activity
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to later defecate all over the community in a thick slather of oil that scared
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away new people even more.
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The good name of the halls had been shattered and there was nothing the darkness
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could do about it. It was irreparable. The darkness had destroyed his reputation
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in turn with those halls. Bardic inspiration failed too.
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---
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If the wrong people come, you run the risk of [accidentally creating a Nazi
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bar](https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromYourServer/comments/hsiisw/kicking_a_nazi_out_as_soon_as_they_walk_in/).
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If they fester, your community suffers a fate worse than death. Your community
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becomes a stain on your name.
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You become associated with that community if you don't kick them out, yet at the
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same time if you try to kick them out you'll kill your community instantly. At
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that point your monthly active users will all be the people you don't want and
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it becomes easier to kill the community outright than it is to try to trim the
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wheat from the chaff.
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If there is any wheat left.
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---
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High charisma and low wisdom created a fuel to blast the darkness into
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irrelevance, and into that irrelevance it faded. The relevance of the darkness
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has since vanished like a grain of sait in an ocean.
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A lesson for the ages: do not destroy communities and expect to have good will
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from the people in those communities.
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---
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Sometimes communities need to die and it is hard to pull the plug on them. It
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always hurts. You will be tempted to leave it on life support, even just to not
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feel the emotions. It gets worse if you wait longer. It becomes more agonizing.
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It is better to rip off the bandaid and clean the wound than it is to let the
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infection grow. Each idle question by someone that means well about how that
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community is going rips into you like serrated knives coated in salt. People
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desperately try to make the community cling to life but one by one they give up
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after realizing the futility of it all.
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That doesn't change how much it hurts to even _conceive_ giving up on that
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community in the moment. It's understandable why someone wouldn't want to throw
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in the towel and would instead opt to let things fade naturally.
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