Message Board Chaos

Message boards...love them or hate them. Many people enjoy going onto a messageboard and being part of an online community. You can give your visions, your insight, your opinions, and fact that you learn that others may not know...basically you give your 2 cents. On the other hand there are people who just like to stir the pot of a messageboard, or chatroom. These people do whatever they can to slam, put down, and embarasss a certain subject. Of course there are the people that just make up things to try and get some attention. These people are often ignored because they talk out of context, and provide no proof or links to their "stories." I love going on the Steelers messageboards for inside info, and often times it will either give me what I want to know, or lead me to where I can find it. However, there are those times when people go too far and give a little too much of how they feel. The funny thing about the moderators in the Steelers MB is that the fans moderate more than anybody, if you do something wrong, the posters will point you out long before a moderator even has a chance to. Self-modding is something that has been occurring more and more along online communities, which is definitely a good thing, perhaps online moderators will start a union just like what seems to be every TV station known to man.

I see online communities as a way to relieve all the pent up stress you have without people having to put a face to a name. It's very much an example of anonymity and how you can have your suggestion/opinion/fact heard without a true identity (with the exception of some of course.) They can be used for both good, and bad causes, and taking note of what the majority of posters do on boards, the majority of the time it's used for opinions or breaking news. Lord knows if you ask Mr. Weaver, the blogs will soon take over the internet and cause mass chaos. The bottom line for me is that as long as people continue to respect the online community, and respect those in an online comm. there really won't be much of a problem. It's when a board gets bombarded by trolls that they'll start to be a nuisance and turn the online community into an online catastrophy...(i.e. sportspickle.com)