I agree completely. I tried to shift the focus away from administration-based views toward community-based ones with my previous reply, but I did not do a very good job at that and basically argued from the first and not the second. I did not want to be explicitly critical of administrative concerns, however, and did want to be negligent toward the realities of most off-topic sections and the practical problems of maintaining it from an administrative standpoint. In the process, I did not do very well in challenging this view, and hopefully this reply does just that.
I believe that the only ones who can actually determine the extent to which any forum or subforum (or topic) is productive, engaging, and fulfilling are ourselves. Not the moderators. Not the administration. Only ourselves, for ourselves. It is also our responsibility, as members and as a community, to ensure that the spaces we construct and cultivate serve our interests and embody our values. Failing that, we fail ourselves and no amount of passing the buck or command responsibility can redeem us from that.
With off-topic sections, the burden of its maintenance ultimately falls on us as its participants. Moderation is a poor substitute for that. It is in that sense, too, that they remain experimental throughout their lives, since they are the closest to self-governance that tends to exist on a typical forum. Though it may be the technical decision of the administration to create it, the social decision of how to use it—and use it well—is ours alone.
That means being thoughtful, deliberate, and considerate with our actions and words even when off-topic; such sections may involve the suspension of normal rules, but not the suspension of our responsibilities. If we do not recognize these facts, and respect them in all their consequences, any new off-topic section is destined to become an eventual failure—just as will any other section, or forum, or community. That will ultimately not be due to the section being unfit for this forum, but due to this forum being unfit for the section.
The problem is never really with the topics we discuss, but with how we conduct ourselves when doing so. Restricting what is acceptable in an off-topic section may still be relevant, if only because an administration separate from us has no other purpose, but that will never be the determining factor in its success. We are that factor.
My concerns above, in my previous reply, only apply in contexts where these basic responsibilities are forgotten or deferred and where the rules are not determined by all those who are bound by them. Such concerns are ultimately derived from an authoritarian logic that discounts the community in favor of the systems that control it—exactly the same logic that justifies the need for a system of moderation and administration in the first place. This logic tends to prevail, and such concerns develop from them, because we are conditioned into relying on our “superiors” to manage us for us, which invariably results in the deterioration and eventual death of a community. In those scenarios, administrative control and discipline over an off-topic section may be “due”, in-so-far as any administration ever is; but this is only because the community members have abandoned their roles as members of a community, with all the social consequences that involves. Even then, such actions are only ever palliative; they cannot cure the disease, only manage its symptoms.
The best community is one in which there is no effective moderation or administration because its members successfully govern themselves. I would go further in saying that the only real community is one in which neither moderation nor administration even exist, the rest merely being its disfigured namesakes. Therefore, if we are to be anything resembling a community worthy of the name, we are its only guarantors—and its only practitioners. That is the case in an off-topic section, and it is the case everywhere else, including far beyond these forum walls.
Regards,
John