Adios...

No, it's not the end of this blog (although time constraints lately... oh forget it!). I have, however, effectively said goodbye to a website that has used up a lot of my time over the last almost five years. It was in April 2000 that I originally registered for the bikeforums site that links on the left of this page (although I can't speculate on how much longer it will be there). In that time I've watched the site grow from a few posts a week to thousands of posts a day. Indeed, I was even made a moderator in December 2002 (God, was it that long ago?). However, there have also been other changes on the site that have been less benign.

I've often heard it said that on-line communities tend to follow the path of real-life communities. I guess you could argue that this has rung true here as well. The issue here has been the steadily declining civility between members on the forum over the last couple of years, but the last six-nine months in particular. My favourite times on this site came back in 2001, when my last year at university was particularly intense. I used to love letting off steam on the forums, having a few laughs with the other members, most of whom I called my friends, discussing just about any topic relating to cycling we felt like. Even in May 2003, when I had a bike stolen, I still appreciated the sense of community that the place offered. Even people with whom I disagreed on many issues could still offer a shoulder to cry on if you needed it. One guy even offered financial support to help me purchase a replacement!

These days, however, it's more about the arguments that simply an on-line place to hang out. Trolling, the use of multiple user-names to indicate "support", flaming of those who disagree, editing posts for content after "losing" the argument, cliques forming in different sections of the site, it's all happening, and while none of this bothers me overly, the problem is that I'm not about to expend time sifting through thousands of posts/day to read through it. I just have better things to do.

Now of course, some might be saying at this point "why don't you do something about it, you're a moderator?". Well, the fact is, there's only so much administrators or moderators can do on a site like that one. For one thing, nobody can read every post on a forum like that. For another, the sheer number of posts that would need to be removed or edited would almost certainly bring accusations of "censorship" and so on. Ultimately, I think a community needs to be self-moderating to a large extent, and when an on-line community reaches a certain size, this is not going to happen. Consequently, it's time for me to move on.