Forumming the Process

Foruming-The Processes
By
Rico Harkwood

According to the fundamentals of Harkwoodism a forum is able to go through a variety of steps until it gets to its “perfect” form. These are: Anarchy, Toto-Administration, Joint Administration, Feudalist Foruming, Democratic Administrative Moderation, Toto-Harwood, Harkwood and then, the final step, the “Complete Form”. Each step will mark a new age for the forum as it slowly builds and prepares itself for the “Complete Form” which is, in theory, unbreakable and never ending. These systems do not necessarily come in any order, excluding the final stage, but it advised to do so to generate a fair and stable society.

Anarchistic Forum:

Anarchy can form itself within a forum when an Admin fails to do his job properly. There are many possible causes of this situation, for example: the Admin has appointed some neglectful and ignorant moderators, or has been himself ignorant and neglectful, to the forum, and its members, needs. In this scenario the members will demand better standards forcing the people in charge to panic and, or, make even more terrible and drastic decisions that will cost them dearly in the future. Soon after this the scenario can branch out into two different forms of forums, Toto-Administration or Anarchy. If the forums leaders, or leader, refuse to accept the members’ demands they will slowly become more paranoid and confused by the situation that they are in. Eventually people will start to leave the forum and try and start again in a new forum in an attempt to promote justice for what they lacked in the other forum, trying to get what they hadn’t gotten in the previous forum. The administrator, or administrators, will become either over protective or under enthusiastic about the area that they inhabit. In either faction it has a good chance of fluking completely allowing the admin to loose, or ignore, control over the forum making the members dominant and able to SPAM the forum, and do what ever they want to do. Of course there will still be small factions that still believe in the old ways of running the forum, the ways of the admin or admins; some will even take on the roll of the “moderators” of the forum. Even in this situation an administrator can still reclaim control but it would be hard to start up again in a proper orderly fashion.



Toto-Administrator:

In the case that the administrator becomes over protective of the forum, or has been like this from the start, he, or she, will not be able to accept or listen to the demands of the users. He will do this until either the members quit or give up their plight. Or they will ignore the admins operations completely posting without caring about what he does. This kind of situation is called the Toto-Administration (Totalitarian Administration) in which the admin has full control and any other people with equal or similar power are gotten rid of. The admin will try and hide this by closing down the forum or deleting any evidence of the other parties’ existence. This process can go on for a long time with only a few periods of a “closed forum” as the administrator will have to much work to do in such short periods without anyone else to divide it with. Toto-Administration can be viewed as a step backwards as this is how many forums start off, while it can be seen as a permanent position of despotic power where the forum is on the edge of collapse because of the administrators’ paranoia. In this stage of forming there are only a few ways of entering a new stage; one way is for the members to rise up and stand up for themselves, although this may be difficult in the worst of cases as they may be banned for doing so, for the “revolutionists”, as they usually call themselves, to force the admin to panic causing him to either leave the forum and try to forget it or to close down, or even delete, the forum in stress. If the people manage to get through to the administrator there is a high probability that they will work together, with the admin, to form some kind of democracy therefore leaving the Toto-Administration stage and entering the Democratic Forum stage, which can branch out into many different forms. Of course if the people fail to get through to the forum administrator then the Toto-Administration process will continue in the same fashion without much change in management, as the administrator will not want to switch (or combine) power roles with anyone.

Full Moderation

In the situation that the administrator steps down leaving the moderators in control a “full moderated” forum will emerge. In this hypothesis the moderators are in full command of the forum allowing them to delete and change the posts made there. They can also change the rules and even contradict one another, by opposing one another as they may have different rules and ideas, from each, for the developing forum. If the situation turns our bad it can be considered a form of anarchy and eventual decline of proper forum fundamentals and proper administration. Once an admin has left there is no way for the forum to change into something better than what it is already. It can also be the case that mods will try ad “fight” each other for power by deleting the other persons’ posts, or accounts. And even by banning members who agree with the opposing moderator/moderators in question.

The good side of this hypothesis is that the rules can now be put firmly into place, allowing the forum to progress through posting without the hassle of SPAM or swearing (in less of course the forum encourages swearing, and SPAM). And the member will probably try to stick with the rules anyway, as it is mainly orthodox in members.

Four Forms of a Forum Democracy:

If a forum was to reach the stage where it was ready for a “full democracy” rather than a “small one” then it would be placed in the same category as many other forum that believe in this concept. Sadly “Forum Democracy” is a short lived situation as many members are not really interested in voting for an admin, moderator or even a “member representative”. A Forum Democracy will enable people to think and choose for themselves, allowing them such freedoms like voting for a new admin, and moderator. Of course the original admin can change this at any point in time as he still has control over the situation.

A democratic forum can branch out into various groups such as: Moderated Democracy, Administrative Democracy (where an admin is either voted in or controls the elections of those being voted in), Full democracy (where everything is voted upon, mods, admins, decisions etc.). I would like to note that a “Full Democracy” is highly hypothesis as it is almost impossible to carry out without following every single rule in a full orthodox manner.

Harkwood and Toto-Harkwood

A Harkwood forum is where every member (whether admin, mod or a normal poster) has a part to play in making the forum a better place for people to post in. It is a situation in which everyone has an equal part to play within the forum, no matter their opinion. There is a form of democracy within this foundation but it only covers a few factors of many: 1. A new administrator. 2. A new moderator. 3. A new idea to be tried and tested. 4. Opinions on forum society changes (whether to go back to an Administrative Moderated Forum or to stay and attempt to make progress with the Harkwood method). Each of these things are decided, and voted for, by every single member of the forum. Each person’s opinion will be listened too, and each idea will be tried and tested. No one will be left out. Even if a member chooses not to take part in the Harkwood structure they can still have a say, and can still post in certain section of the forum. It should be a place of thought and progress, so that they can develop into the “Perfect Forum” form. But this process can be taken down a different route, where the forum is forever stuck in this method of thought, this “route” is called Toto-Harkwood.

Toto-Harkwoodism is a forum stuck within the process above, where the forum is forever developing. This will soon stop when the members become bored with the programme and decide to leave or stop aiding it.