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@Velocio
WTF have I started. Face palm time.
Really, the problem I see is one of scale and civility.
It used to be that the site was small, and everyone knew each other (or was only separated by 2 degrees). And so civility was built in, no one wants to be a dick to their friends. This created a great atmosphere in which a lot of really cool things got done, and that in turn creates this energetic edginess and passion that pervades the place.
And now we're big, and the degrees of separation has crept up to 6 (the maximum), and suddenly that energy feels like it's gone, and that we're blocked by the cynicism and collective apathy. The good people are still here, but the ass-hatery is also here that acts as a blocker to doing stuff. It's far more common to read a thread and see a sarcastic and rude retort than anything helpful or constructive... it's far more common to see a hundred pics of popcorn and pie than it is to find these great threads of people helping each other and then detecting a larger problem stepping up to work out what to do about stuff.
So the size makes it feel like the energy to work together achieve stuff is much reduced (or massively diluted), but the energy to slag each other of seems to have increased.
At a really basic level the site was always (to me) a sanctuary away from bullshit. And the site as a sanctuary was an escape from work politics, that really negative shit that's everywhere... because here we are as fellow cyclists, and we ride. And that lifts us up and sets us free, it's a liberation from the tube, the commute, and the over-populated stops near stations... we got to experience London different and that came through in this great place.
Now, I'm not down about this place. It's awesome, it's still phenomenally large and 2 days ago was the busiest ever day on the forum (23,000 unique visitors in one day). So it's not in decline at all, my question is really, what can we do to help the site maintain what made it so great as we continue to get larger.
The inspiration for this came through a speech I heard in which a company owner had a 'no asshole' hiring policy. His view was that his company creates this alumni of cool people who have worked for him, and that because the ratio of assholes was so low due to this rule, that only a few existed in the alumni, so the alumni effectively were this really great pool of people that were still connected to the company and did all this great stuff.
I was wondering aloud with this thread, would it be possible to have a better tone setting start such that we could discourage or exclude the assholes early on, so that the tone would change into this really good one and that the wider ratio of assholes on LFGSS was kept really low. I want to stop what I see as a vicious cycle of this tone encouraging other people to take that tone.
At no point was I contemplating going on some ban crusade and banning people I arbitrarily and retrospectively define as an asshole. That would undoubtedly make me the greater asshole.
So it's about changing the tone, an idea for how to start doing that. An underlying feeling that the vast majority are of the opinion that this may no longer be the site we want, and for me to do something that tells everyone that they're free, and encouraged, to create the site that they do want.
Ultimately this means that it's up to us to make the site good, to make it this cool place we want to be part of. And really the heart of that is a post really early in this thread, "Can't we all be friends?"... yeah, friends are not assholes to each other. And a friendship group wouldn't let someone enter who is an asshole.