whydirt wrote:

It seem to me that he knows that this is the same debate we've always had - it's just that a bunch of technophiles came along and declared, "COMPUTERS WILL SAVE US FROM OURSELVES!" and got all self-righteous about it. I thought his point was to figure out how to use software to manage groups considering the differences from normal human group interaction of pseudo-anonymity and the many-to-many means of communication.

The article seemed pretty grounded and to have realistic goals.

Hokie Mokie:

The people using your software, even if you own it and pay for it, have rights and will behave as if they have rights. And if you abrogate those rights, you'll hear about it very quickly.

Hokie Mokie:

So the core group needs ways to defend itself -- both in getting started and because of the effects I talked about earlier -- the core group needs to defend itself so that it can stay on its sophisticated goals and away from its basic instincts.