I do hang out on another forum completely unrelated to B77 or TORC. SO unrelated I even use a different nick. This other board has more registered members, but fewer active members and the major drama ala TORC and B77 doesn't really happen. There's a TOS somewhere, and it is indeed owned by a single person and his gf, who are also the mods. However, for the most part, it's a self-moderating board. S, the owner/main moderator, is very hands off with regards to posters. I've been on that board since 2001 and he's deleted/locked maybe five threads and banned a whopping six people, all of whom were textbook trolls. I've never seen him edit any posts other than a few one particularily nasty troll made (lots of swearing and threats directed at a member of the board). Everything else is handled by the membership. This system has its drawbacks. We've seen our share of drama and flame wars, but it doesn't seem to happen as often as it does on TORC or B77. I think the main reason it works is becuase on this board it's a small active membership.
Here's my guess as to why, broken down between the two boards.
TORC: strictly monitored and policed within the bounds of a TOS. HUGE board, lots of people from all sorts of backgrounds with all sorts of interests, it even has cliques and neighborhoods. Cliquishness develops. SO does discontent among those who aren't too keen on rules or have seen their friends disciplined. Also, there's more dramatic types just because there's more people. And when dramatic people get mad, they get MAD and they make sure everyone else knows it. Eventually those that were discontent to the point they wanted to do something made their move and to facillitate their move they created B77.
Push comes to shove...
The axe falls...
Jon and Ted make what I believe to be a huge mistake. I've seen what banning does to a community IRL. I do not say this lightly. They made a mistake. TORC will recover if it hasn't already, but they made a mistake.
B77 becomes something more than a meeting place for the people who want to change TORC. It becomes a community of it's own.
B77: founded by TORC's discontents, refuge for TORC's banned, this board is populated by the rule-benders and the dramatic types. For a period we were invite only, which only enhanced the cliquishness that haunted TORC and haunts us too, to some degree. We're smaller, but for the most part we're all from TORC and we carry with us the dust of the place. A fair number of us either got banned, got pissed off and left, or just sounded off a lot on TORC. A bunch of us (like me) got invited in by members of the former. I accepted the invite beecause people I liked to post with were here, but I had some trepidations simply because I'm not a big fan of cliquishness, and face it, invite-only is cliquish. I never said anything because we were headed towards going public when I arrived, and we've gone public, so that's a moot point. Made even more moot because, due to our small size, paths that would never cross on TORC intersect all over the place here on B77 and the old walls are breaking down and new ones don't seem to be coming up. However, the founders and the invitees are a self-selecting group. The dramatic types, the rebels, and their friends. We choose our friends based on compatibility. We're enriched for drama. And that's why drama happens.
SO what to do? I don't know. Curb the impulse? Take a deep breath? One thing I like to do if I'm really angry is write one flamer of a post and then instead of hitting "submit" I close the browser and walk away. Such is the liberty of written communication. Words are hard to take back. Here on a message board it's easy to just not let them out in the open at all. You can walk away and breath without offending. No one can see your face. No one can see your back. So just walk away and come back later when you've blown off steam.
Or start a food fight somewhere. We've got plenty of places for that.