@Everybody but primarily Thantor: I'd very much like to reply since I find this topic interesting, but I have been working all night and in a couple of hours I leave for China for 1 month, so I will just make some fragmented, very sleep deprived comments. I assume this topic will be long dead when I return, but if there is anything that calls for a more elaborate reply, please don't hesitate to PM me or bump this thread later on.
In brief though, I do think the "openness" versus "ingroup-outgroup" attitudes is a general human phenomena at internet forums (here and elsewhere) and in real life. Whereas it is impossible to have a perfectly "osmotic" and penetrable line between a group of people who already know each other (such as "old members" at this forum) and newcomers to this group, I certainly think it should be strived for if it is an open forum we want. That's why I oppose strivings for a community - it is contradictory goals IMO, as long as we define a community as a group who share the same values and work for the same goals. Such a community can only recruit new members who share the groups goals and values, or are willing to conform to them.
Regarding the "needy and adolescent" interpretation, the characteristics I described, "people [who] want a guarantee for getting a friendly and supportive environment where everybody agrees with your opinions and you get emotional, personal confirmation and soothing" is not to me a question of maturity. I view it as a set of personality traits, different people will be at different points at continuum ranging from totally asocial and detached to having a great need for social confirmation. People's tolerance for conflict, aggression, critisism etc also vary a lot, between individuals as well as differ due to life events and circumstances. In short, what I mean is that I think there is a lot of room for variation at many variables without having to characterise a person as immature.
Regarding my comment that
"Forum rules in turn, should (as they are) be based on general criteria, ie the same type of criteria as real life groups or societies" I was obviously unclear here. What I meant was not the same specific criteria as in any specific culture, what I meant was the "type" as in
category. The category I was referring to here was
general criteria that is connected to values, not to specific individual needs. A general criterium such as the not posting discriminating statements has a much higher chance of leading to equal treatment for all members, old or new, than regulations that are based on the value's of a specific person or a specific culture. If we shall abstain from expressing opinions about a certain politic ideology because an individual members gets upset by this, then we must abstain from expressing any politic opinions that any member, or any individual at all could get upset by. It is of course up to the person who administrates the forum at hand to decide what rules s/he wants to have, but my opinion is that the most open climate and the most newcomer-friendly (and thereby most dynamic) rules are those based on general critera. Again, if a person needs to be protected from other people's opinions about politics, religion, science, art or other broad topics (as opposed to personal attacks), then that person would fare better not discussing topics that are sensitive to you at a public internet forum.
Finally, @Thantor, thank's for the English lession, I had no idea the article "the" could be used as referring to something you are just about to say...and I have never heard the expression "spare me the happy horse****". Idiomatic expression, metaphores and other nuances where a more abstrace level than the "lexiographic" meaning of a word is implicated, is usually something you will never grasp fully when a language is not your mother toungue. One of my British colleagues who works with epilepsy, once described a certain type of language deficit to me as "they (the patients) speak like English were their second language", ie they have an intact vocabulary, but they loose tonality in the spoken language, and they loose ability to pick up irony, jokes and metaphores unless very obvious.
Now I must pack - the bad thing with combining a hiking holiday with a congress, is that I need two sets of clothes...I am generally an impolite person, but not so impolite so I'm going to a congress where I'm an invited speaker in my muddy hiking boots and smelly fleece shirt
