Simple Human Decency in a Structured Gaming Forum

At the end of my sophomore year me and my friends purchased a new video game. After playing through the entire game and exhausting all possibilities of having fun in the game itself we decided to begin to play it online against other people. We began to go to gaming websites to try to find other people to play against and my friend found a new web forum dedicated to the game itself. We decided to join the forum and play against the other members. Originally, the forum was virtually un-moderated with the online authority figure being the creator of the forum itself. However, as the forum gained new members the Leviathan began to grow. Eventually the Leviathan of the forum took on this structure (ranked in order of power):

1.Head Admin
2.Admins
3.Global Moderators
4.Moderators
5.Members (broken down into Devoted members, members, and new members)

With this structure, in conjunction with member input, the admins created a series of rules for the forum, most of which pertained to simple decency and relevancy in posting. Some of the rules that were set up were: no flaming or cursing, no racist of stereotypical remarks, no bias remarks, no double posting, and no posting irrelevant information. Virtually all of the rules created by the admins were very simple, clear, and un-arguably necessary. In addition to posting a complete list of the forum rules, the admins also posted a list of the punishments for violating the rules. The punishments were designed to fit the crime and ranged from warnings, to removal of privileges, and to bans (temporary and permanent). After the rules had been established, the admins and moderated closely monitored the forum's threads in order to make sure that they were obeyed. The threads were monitored so closely that even i got warned for making a bias remark about the PS3 even though i had no intention of offending anyone with my statements. A few months after getting my warning, i witnessed a much more substantial event in which one of the members, who i believe was a moderator at the time, became fed up with how the forum was being managed and began flaming and attacking the administrators, other moderators, and even members such as myself. Shortly after the initial incident, that member was permanently banned and all of his posts, except some of the very important ones pertaining to his time as a moderator, were deleted.

Many of the factors that Wallace discusses influenced the creation, expansion, and survival of the forum. It was created with the intent to unite people who had a common interest: playing a game online. Then, after its creation, the members of the forum conformed to a set of rules that were put in place to protect them from harassment and make their time spent of the forum as enjoyable as possible. Not only did the forum provide an initial warning to new members by telling them to visit the site's Rules section, but it also constantly reminded individuals of the rule by "pinning" the Rules section so that you could link to it from any thread on the site. Also, the members of the forum developed a common language and way of speaking that revolved around the game itself and the many other smaller threads that were part of the site. In addition to being united by a common interest, the members of the group became so tight knit that intruders from other sites and heretics from the site itself were united against and banned from ever coming to the site again. The members are now so close, with some of them being around since the beginning of the site itself, that many of them are on a first name or login name basis with each other and are very happy to see people return to the site after a long absence. For example, when i returned to the site after months of inactivity i was promptly greeted by many of the older members who had known me when the site was first created.

Link to the forum rules section:
http://opl.ipbfree.com/index.php?s=&act=idx