Online Communities
Ever since I got on the Internet in the late 80s, I’ve been involved in various online communities at one point or another. In the early days, these were newsgroups. Now, they are online forums. While I’m signed up in quite a few, I am actively involved in just three - AlphaSmart Community Centre, Janis Ian Message Board, and KVPUG.
The AlphaSmart Community Centre is an online forum for users of AlphaSmart products, the Janis Ian Message Board is for fans of Janis Ian, and KVPUG stands for Klang Valley Palm Users’ Group.
What do I get out of these communities? A place to discuss shared interests.
Of the three, the first is a forum run by volunteers to help new and potential AlphaSmart users. The second is owned by Janis Ian herself (in which she is also an active participant). The third is owned by an individual, NTech, who funds everything entirely out of his own pockets.
The tone of each forum is set by the person leading it.
The AlphaSmart Community Centre is led by a gentleman by the name of Richard Wanderman who has shown his team of volunteer moderators by example how to be helpful and respectful of others. We hardly have any online squabbles; any potential flame war is quickly headed off by tactful private messages and emails.
The Janis Ian Message Board has no moderators, but is more or less well-behaved (taking its cue from Janis herself), and often goes off-topic, generally in the direction of food. Once in a while, discussions heat up and when they get near boiling point, Janis steps in and everyone calms down.
As for KVPUG, when I first joined, there were no moderators. But discussion in those days was pretty much about handheld gadgets. As the forum grew, so did its list of discussion topics, and the variety of its members, too. There came a time and need for moderation, so a group of volunteers were found to do the job. Discussion more or less remained polite, off-topic stuff often tolerated. Due to the variety of members, some hostility were seen in some of the discussions; these were duly taken care of, especially after members reported the offenders, moderators checked on the complaints, and if found valid, deleted the posts, and notified the offenders.
KVPUG went through some changes recently - in location of hosting server, and in list of moderators. Things got a bit too strict in the moderating department, posts deleted without any explanation or even complaint from other members.
Things came to a head recently when a long-standing member posted a farewell note to say he was leaving, and to explain why he was leaving. Suddenly, it was a free-for-all, with other members posting their grievances, valid or otherwise. From that one farewell post, the discussion went into 15 pages. Two mods resigned, and have not posted since. And throughout, not a word from NTech. That has always been his style. But as the Chinese saying goes, “even Buddha has a temper” , and so it came to the point when it got to him and he posted. It was a farewell post of sorts from him, too, altho not a personal farewell but an announcement that he is shutting down KVPUG.
Next thing you know, one of the fellows who’d been mouthing off has posted a new thread asking who wants the forum back. This same fellow is also blessed with a short term memory in which he does not remember any of the things he posted about (or maybe doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with what he said in those posts).
Anyway, KVPUG is still up, altho I don’t know for how long. One of the two remaining mods has turned the “who wants the forum back” thread into a poll; so far, 43 have responded, with 41 wanting the forum to stay (not back, since it hasn’t gone away yet), and 2 not wanting it to stay.
I personally think KVPUG is going through a trial of some sort, and if it survives, will be for the better.
As long as it’s still up and members are posting, there’s hope yet.
Just after midnight this morning, three of us were online and experienced what we thought were the last moments of KVPUG. One minute we could access the forum, the next, we couldn’t. And then, just as we thought it was gone, it came back online. This happened at least twice. And apparently happened again around noon just now. What does it mean? Probably nothing more than the quirkiness of our online service provider, altho we do like to think there was something more to it. Just being dramatic …
Ever since the forum changed hosting server and things got a bit too strict, I’d been less active at KVPUG. Apparently, the same with quite a few of the “older” members. Yet, when the poll was posted, all the old-timers came back in strong support of KVPUG staying. Hopefully, NTech will see past the recent free-for-all, and for old times’ sake, not shut the forum down. If he does shut it down, I will have one less place to hang out online. 
