I've been thinking about this a bit while browsing Fauna the last few days too... This may end up being a bit long and it might wander a bit without coming to a concrete point but it'll be aimed at the topic, or at least ricochet into it again.
I've gone into the chat a few times recently. I wouldn't call it a major draw to the site for me, but I was online and saw the icon indicating it had people in it and... well, I had time to kill so I wandered in. Ended up having a few decent conversations including one with a very long time Fauna member who I've had a lot of respect for since encountering his posts here years ago- the initial topic included a few people and centered around some of the more recent changes and what the chatters thought of them, but he and I got to... it was very close to talking about "the good old days"
When I registered here there were some things that were very much the same and some that weren't. The discussion forum other than the BOI that was used the most was the General Business Discussion and the bulk of the members were people who were involved, to varying degrees, in the reptile industry as something other than an end consumer. That ranged from people who had made their living breeding or importing or field collecting for the last thirty years to dabblers (who have occassionaly made money but never made it a real career, or use it for a secondary income) to hardcore hobbiests that represented invested end consumers. There were very very few people who were new to any of it though. The discussions about animal care tended to be on an intermediate level or better, everything happened with a certain assumption that there was common language, common knowledge that didn't need to be stated directly since it was just assumed.
The discussion was never "Help, my ball python won't eat!" but it might be people trading thoughts and accumulated observations about specific instinctive feeding triggers or extrapolating possible captive success through analysis of the natural history. Discussions in GBD tended to revolve around points of practical ethics or moral imperatives and then follow the logical steps into practical application. There were definitely debates and there were definitely arguments and some people
:coughcough:: Me for instance ::coughcough:
would sometimes get a bit offensive, esecially on the BOI, but there was only one famous feud for a very long time, only two posters where any contributions to the same thread would be guaranteed to result in a three hundred page off topic ranting knock down fight. The site basically offered a bit of an internet refuge where people could participate in discussions where every other thread wasn't asking the same question- a question that could easily be answered by anyone with a library card and some initiative. Discussions were often debates because only things where there was a possible difference of opinion got much attention, the few questions that required flat simple answers resulted in threads that were two posts long and that was that.
The downside to that is the inevitable stagnation of discussion forums if new people and new topics aren't brought in. There were definitely lulls in them on Fauna until the site got big enough to start showing up high on the list in major search engines and the "wut do my ____ eet?!?!/?!?!11?!one!!1?!!eleven!?" crowd moved in. They kicked a bit of life back into it, but frankly they all make me want to beat them to death with a shovel... and while other long time members may not share my level of anger and intolerance, I think many of them do share my impatience and frustration with seeing the same... stupid... basic... garbage posted over and over and over. So a lot of the members who have more knowledge to contribute will only stop to do so on threads that have that interesting spark of challenge or debate that a lot of the threads used to.
The BOI... has gone through a few incarnations and I think that some of the better and more useful ones have also passed by into disuse. The site did function at what I would call it's peak when Rich and the mod team were exceptionally active and involved. That was also right about the time immediately prior to the whole KS issue... and probably right about when Rich started to develop ulcers the size of softballs. It worked the best... but it only when making it work was treated as a signifigant obligation by thw owner and staff. So in essence, it worked for everyone *except* them, since they were getting killed by it. I'd love to see that level of dedication and those approaches to the site return... but it's been hashed out many, many times over as to why it
didn't work for the guys getting the death threats and four hours of sleep some nights because they had to babysit an exploding thread.
There are more fueds now... and that isn't helping anything. It turns a lot of things ugly when they don't have to and piles on more garbage for the mods than there ever was at any point in the site's history. The anonymous posters that have cropped up actually got me thinking a bit about that part... Strictly as a hypothetical, if everyone posted anonymously for about forty eight hours and then the names were retroactively applied, I think some people might be very, VERY surprised to see who they'd been agreeing with. 'course some of the feuds and immediate jump from zero to brawling are just responses that have been built up through the addition of valid complaints... and I'd guess that from the inside, all of them probably look like that. Seperating the legitimate ones (To give an example, Matt Leher makes a post about Tim Bowels every few months... because Tim's stalker ass won't leave Matt alone- that's a legitimate sort of long term complaint.) from the illegitimate ones (Lucille and I went a few rounds on TRR over a year ago and sometimes I find myself having to delete posts because I'll type something out that just rips into her hard over something nonsensical; if I didn't stifle myself it would be an illegitimate fued where there's no basis other than a personal animosity born of conflicting personalities) and then somehow stopping the ones that don't have some worthwhile basis would... well, it'd go a long way to making the site fit what I see as an ideal but it goes right back to demands being placed on the mods.
So... what am I looking for? The community that used to exist. The drama of having a half dozen people expressing different opinions about something like... a proposed taxonomic change or the ethics of hybridization. Informational posts or posts looking for information where the answers aren't readily avaliable from hundreds of sources. At one point, a few years ago shortly after the warning point system was implimented, I was pretty close to being the first member to be banned or suspended incrementally but despite my own difficulties functioning in that kind of system... I'd really like to see a return to the moderation attitude that was present then. Enough rope to let someone hang themselves... or climb to a decent height. Lines drawn and enforced but warning shots fired first ("This is getting out of hand, the personal attacks will stop or the thread will be locked."). Unfortunately I probably can't have any of that back the way it was. The member base has filled in with people looking for leopard gecko care sheets that are too stupid or too lazy to just find answers on their own, so the discussions aren't going to be the same quality that I used to enjoy as often as I used to enjoy them. The personal fueds are completely out of control and often no longer centered around a tangible catalyst. The mods were finally beaten to a pulp... it took five years of crap being heaped upon more crap but I think the fight has gone out of them for good.
I'm not going to throw out the standard line of "the site's dying" because... it's not. It is changing though and has changed and that might mean that it's dying for certain individuals who are here looking for specific things. I hang around because... well... every so often there's one of those old threads that I used to like, although these days most the effort and attention seems to go into politicing and debate about the site itself. I'm here because every so often it'll be four in the morning and someone will be sitting in the chat and a discussion will start with "Remember when..." And hey... maybe tomorrow it'll all spontaneously twist itself into my idealistic, probably heavily biased and inaccurate, memory of what used to be. You never know.
There are FAR too many backseat drivers here, all pointing in different directions and ALL adamant that THEIR direction is the ONLY correct one. Which, of course, is not very likely.