why do these damn websites keep turning into little Church-of-Scientology style cults?

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Abd
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why do these damn websites keep turning into little Church-of-Scientology style cults?

Post by Abd » Sun Feb 02, 2020 7:53 pm

Incoming link from Wikipediocracy, see this post about the claim. It's off-topic here. Post as linked:

Question posed:.
ericbarbour wrote:
Sun Feb 02, 2020 5:31 am
[...]
And you can't talk about this on Wikipediocracy openly. Not anymore.

This forum has had its problem users. ALL Wikipedia criticism forums have had problem users. I have been around long enough (2008) to remember that Wikipedia Review was an amazingly open and honest forum in dealing with WP abuses. People were rarely banned from WR. Then in 2012 Selina showed up and started actively causing problems. Since she was the sysop and DNS holder, she successfully ran WR into the ground. So many WR regulars went off, and what did they do? They started Wikipediocracy. And it worked decently well for the first few years. Then in 2014 the banninations started, and in 2015 the backstabbery became overwhelming. [Vigilant] was present and probably partly responsible for all such backroom dealings.

But you can't talk about that on Wikipediocracy....why do these damn websites keep turning into little Church-of-Scientology style cults? I can see reasons for that on Wikipedia, they've tricked 2 generations of Internet users into trusting them blindly. There's far less reason for a forum to become a paranoiac cult-thing. It's only a forum for crissakes.
[trollname for Vigilant redacted, my choice --Abd]
And answers:
boredbird wrote:
Sun Feb 02, 2020 7:57 am
Because they're run by sysops.
Dysklyver wrote:
Sun Feb 02, 2020 10:07 am
Every website is run by sysops, that in itself is not the reason. Instead I will suggest the reason is that nobody is being paid, so a particular type of person is being attracted. That type is the person who will do something for free because they believe in it, a cultist, an activist, someone with nothing better to do.
boredbird wrote:
Sun Feb 02, 2020 4:57 pm
Nytimes.com is not run by sysops though I guess they must have some. [...]
I could write a book about this and might. Let's start with reference to the Iron Law of Oligarchy. I agree with Michels, the Iron Law is a structural necessity. There is a way to harness the Iron Law, it's been demonstrated, but it takes a motivated and sophisticated community. That is not the norm.

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Re: why do these damn websites keep turning into little Church-of-Scientology style cults?

Post by Kumioko » Sun Feb 02, 2020 9:23 pm

Wikipediocracy can't even call itself a criticism site anymore. With arbs like newyorkbrad and admins like beebledork justifying even the worst conduct on Wikipedia, it's just another Wikipedia forum now. In fact, they all but implement WMF bans and the shutting down and pushing out of real critics like myself. I have no respect for that site anymore and honestly for this site either. Both sites are trash in different ways.
#BbbGate

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Re: why do these damn websites keep turning into little Church-of-Scientology style cults?

Post by Abd » Mon Feb 03, 2020 3:49 pm

I just checked to see if there had been recent activity on WikipediaReview.com. Only Newsfeed, endless crap. I tried to ignore Newsfeed, didn't work. It appears that the Bot usergroup cannot be ignored, which is about as dumb as I can imagine.

I tried to add a new link to this site. It was blocked as "spam" in Preview, obviously by a bot, obviously added since the last mention, October, 2018. In other words, the only visible activity has been preventing mention of this site. I assume the same is true of links to WPO though I did not check, I recall it has being prohibited before.

This is precisely how and why the site died, and the death is actively maintained by a mod or owner. Or it would have revived as a place to critique the rest of us. Sad, in fact.

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