The ideal discussion board

I know we might have a better chance at finding the elixir of life than the best answer to this, but the question just came to me. What would be the most ideal platform for fair, civilized discussion and debate on any topic? What features would it have to ensure that all sides are on equal ground, unassisted by their popularity or the clout of their advocates? Two platforms can immediately be ruled out due to how they affect the visibility of messages. The first is "comment section"-styled sites like Reddit, with post ranking systems that push the highest-voted messages towards the top and make them more visible than all other posts. Vote brigading to influence public opinion is possible, whether it's raising a desirable opinion, burying an undesirable one, or even raising a ridiculous opinion on an "enemy" board to make it seem like it's the popular viewpoint there. The second is social media sites; here, the social influence of a user directly determines how visible their message is. It doesn't matter if their message is right, all that matters is their follower count, so a liar or idiot with more followers is more "correct" than a truthful or smart user with few, because the popular user's posts are seen and shared by more people. From this, we could say that the first step to finding this ideal place is to look at sites where all posts are equally visible. Such a site is unheard of, but I can think of two that come close: traditional forums and anonymous boards (be they imageboards or textboards). These sites have discussions organized in a linear, chronological format, making it very easy to see all points being made in a discussion. Each of these two has their own advantages and drawbacks. Forums: >Requiring user accounts ensures a level of trustworthiness, making trolls, sockpuppets, and strawman accounts easy to spot >However, this can lead to imbalance; people are more likely to listen to the guy with 3000 posts and a shiny "supporter" badge than the new guy who's barely made 20 posts, even if the latter has interesting things to say >Threads are paginated, which skews visibility in favor of posts made at the start of a page, and makes the last post or two in a page less visible; also, people are more likely to view just the OP and the last page or two in a thread >It is possible to game this system by waiting until the last post in a page is made before making your post, placing it in the start of the next page and maximizing visibility Anonymous boards: >Anonymity ensures that one's reputation can't be used to inflate the "correctness" of their messages >But this also leads to trolling, strawmanning, etc. that traditional forums have measures against (this can be mitigated, but not fully stopped, with poster IDs) >All posts in a thread are on one page, with extra visibility being given to the first few posts in the thread as well as the last few, as they are featured on the thread's preview in the board index >There is still a system to game, though, as you can post enough times in a thread to push a message you don't like out of the preview Forums are seen as having more strict moderation than anonymous boards, but this just due to tradition. It's very possible to have a forum that's total anarchy or an anonymous board that's ruled with an iron fist. Is it possible, though, to have a synthesis of both these types of boards? To have an anonymous board with a system that inherently curbs trolling, or a classical forum where people can't expect to be more "right" just because they're influential? The former could be accomplished just by introducing better moderation, but moderators are humans, and humans are biased. For instance, a mod might invoke a no-strawmanning rule to delete a post that makes their opinions look bad, even if it's made in earnest. Meanwhile, they might look the other way when there's a dumb post misrepresenting an opinion the mod doesn't like, even if it's obviously someone strawmanning, because "they're all like that, amirite?" IDs are an unbiased system that gives everyone in the thread a temporary identity, but it still doesn't stop someone from using their phone or a proxy to sockpuppet. The latter might be a step in the right direction, then. We start with a basic forum and make changes that help prevent someone from leveraging their influence, without introducing too much potential for disorder. For instance, removal of post counts and other status symbols. If a moderator wishes to take part in a discussion, they may not do so under the same account they use for moderation. Instead they must have a second account, one completely separate in every way from their first one. No one must know which mod has which "civilian" account. This solves the problem of mods leveraging their status in discussions, while still allowing the site to maintain transparency and help users find a mod when they need to. Or perhaps a new paradigm is needed, one completely different from any type of community created before. Who knows.

Here are my somewhat underdeveloped immediate thoughts. >humans are biased I would think that this is the biggest hurdle, but until we all have cyberbrains and can install logic and probability modules I suppose we will have to make do. Suppose we have an invitation-only community where each user receives one account upon accepting the invitation. The posts of one account are associated but not accessible to the general userbase. Temporary IDs are assigned with each thread, as you mentioned. Rules are created in a tiered manner, with one set of global rules created by the admin(s), one set of board rules created by the moderator(s) of that board, and one set of thread rules created by the OP of that thread. Consequences for breaking those rules are contained within the tier in which they apply (breaking a thread rule may see your privileges within that thread, but nowhere else, reduced, and so on). Somewhat similarly, post order is preserved only where it is necessary for comprehension and randomized for each viewer otherwise. When one user views the thread list of a board, the thread order that they see is completely different from the thread order that another user would see. Within threads, a post that directly responds to another is guaranteed to come after the one it is responding to in the order but appears in a random, user-unique position otherwise. I don't know how to determine whether a rule is broken/what the consequences should be. I don't see any clever alternatives to the reporting system, so we will assume that, whatever happens, it begins with a report; in this case, though, the report specifies whether the relevant rule is a global, board, or thread-level rule. The traditional next step would be for the report to be sent to a pool of relevant individuals, where one of them would unilaterally decide whether the rule was broken and which consequences to employ. A different system might have every individual or a specific number of individuals from the pool vote, with their decisions on guilt and consequences being tracked separately; some consequences could even be off the table in the case that the percentage of voters who vote "guilty" is small enough. An even more distributed system may do away with admins/moderators making these decisions and instead select community members at random to serve as a jury. Alternatively, a hybrid system could randomly select juries/panels which would do this duty whenever necessary for a specified time frame, e.g., two weeks (temporary moderator privileges). Of course, the tiering concept could be employed here again to ensure that only individuals who are active or have demonstrated interest in a board/thread are selected for matters pertaining to that board/thread, although this may conflict with your ideal of fairness. Of course, users would not be allowed to judge their own posts. Also, the judgments of other panelists would not be visible until after your decision had been recorded. Panelists may be required to state their rationales. Judgments made are public and are thus subject to public review. Judgments are subject to meta-judgments, where the judge in question may lose his/her privilege to be selected for judging, either temporarily or permanently. Now, tear my ideas apart and use whatever holds up to build something better. I doubt I worded all that perfectly, so feel free to ask for clarification on any point.

I am a bit biased, so I have a very specific mind on what is the "ideal" discussion board. I would like the second coming of the free "message board rings" that were popular in the early-to-mid 2000s. These were platforms such as ezboard, and invisionfree that cause a lot of small, searchable communities to pop up. These boards also had crazy customization for the day and could be made public, but due to the community at the time, we were always encouraging community mixing through advertising and "topsites". The problem with this? The internet has moved on. Communities are now about influence, and the people who influence. There's no reason to have a community if it doesn't make someone money. Also people naturally flock to the faster, more active boards, with the most broader audiences. This is why boards like 4/8chan remain massively popular while smaller boards are deserted. Also people are afraid to host their own software on local (home) machines in fear of being ddosed, doxed, ect. This was unheard of in the early days (or at least unheard of by me). All of the friends I made online in the early days were from forums. I don't think I've ever made any friends online that weren't in the forum environment. Now that forums are mostly gone, and I just post on 'chans now. it's not quite the same. Now, I am a rather new lainanon, but how exactly did you start posting here? Think of how you can use that skill to find other like minded communities. The sad part is (imo) there aren't many communities like this anymore.

>>15504 There is no such thing as civilized discussion and debate lainon Its nothing but a power struggle

This is an interesting discussion and I don't think I have much to add at the moment, as there is much to be considered. I'd have to give this some serious thought to do justice to the commentary put forth by the first two posters in this thread. Having said that, one thing that does occur to me, off the top of my head, is that scale is an issue. It is almost as if there is some factor at work like Dunbar's number and that once a community grows to a certain size, there is an entropic principle that begins to break it apart. Take Lainchan for example, many will criticize this chan because they find it to be too slow, yet, if pressed, most will also acknowledge that the quality of posts made here are top notch. Writing this, I am reminded of an old joke... That place is so popular, no one goes there anymore.

this may be something to consider re: the forum issue https://nadiaeghbal.com/shameless >Without getting into tiresome politics, the “shameless” strategy also defined the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. It was shouted down by people in both established political parties, because they were used to playing by the “obvious” rules, but I suspect that in a decade’s time, we’ll look back on that election and realize that it marked the beginning of an entirely new style of politics. >Ditto to, perhaps, the leadership styles of Mark Zuckerberg, who’s followed the “obvious” playbook for years, versus Jack Dorsey, who employs tactics that seem so obviously stupid (tweeting about fasting and meditation!) that we’re quick to write them off. And yet, I’d guess that Zuckerberg’s strategy makes him increasingly unlikeable and untrustworthy, in the same way that any major politician sticking to a pre-2016 playbook today is almost certainly not going to win. we may be entering a new paradigm of community building where people are just attracted to the energy of denial of expectations over any sort of sound logic

The most respectful sort of discussion I've read about where 19th century, american scholar debates. My sources are primarily from the books The Gutenberg Galaxy and Amusing ourselves to Death. Back then the written word was the prime communication medium used for everything. The average american read tons of books a year and was cultured far more than we can imagine. During debates the idea wasn't to give short and good sounding answers but rather to create a complete body that adresses all issues of the opponents arguments. They usually had hours available. The Lincoln vs Douglas Debate is probably the most well known but not the only one. There are many more extreme cases. Some taking up to half a day! Compare this to a talkshow or debate nowadays. In my own country I know of this format, it isn't very original so we're probably not the only ones doing this: A question is asked and immediately after, every canditate has half a minute or a minute to respond. The candidates obviously won't try to give a proper answer (it's impossible!) but a good sounding one. I'd dare to argue that the main cause of "Popularism" is the short attention span modern people are habitated into. I don't wish to suggest the format of a debate in a forum but rather to take it as an inspiration. To ensure good contributions, the user would be required to invest time which is something people are afraid of doing in general. It would also fall apart as soon as a bigger userbase is established. A big userbase means quick replies which means not well argued or flawed replies. Looking at the average post on 4chan, people don't even read the thread they are in! I hope my post isn't entirely out of place.