My grandparents were as well, but not in '93. However, I was on AOL in '93. (I also had a dial-up unix shell account at Pitt.) I added nothing to the diversity.
But yours and mine are both just anecdotes.
The new people didnât bother me, but oh the influx of MAKE MONEY FAST⌠thatâs what killed it more than anything.
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Hey, if you think yelling into the wind with your complaint about the site on a random topic thread will actually get you results instead of making you feel like youâre doing something, go for it. Expect to be mocked though.
Mocked? No, Mr. bill, I expect to be bored.
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Iâve been discovered!
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This is true, but in constructive ways they need to slowly assimilate as they give back. This is often times not possible when they flood in faster than they can adopt any of the original culture.
Mod note: Stay on topic.
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My original comment got horribly rambly, so Iâm going to try to keep this one more focused:
This topic brings to mind the flurry of reddit-related drama some time back, and the various opinions on whether redditâs moreâŚcolorfulâŚcharacters were harmless as long as they stayed in their subreddits; harmless if they stayed in their subreddits but dangerously unlikely to do so; a contaminating pox upon the entire site; or so egregious as to make touching any aspect of reddit unacceptable.
At the time, there was certainly a great deal of disagreement about how contained they needed to be(kept to their subreddits? Driven over to voat?); but my impression was that, with disagreement about what amount of distance meant âlet inâ, people generally agreed that who you let in is going to have a major impact on the community; and that sometimes that is Bad.
How are we drawing the line between online communities that are âinsularâ, âexclusiveâ, âelitistâ, etc. and online communities that wish to maintain a certain way of doing things and donât think that they can do so with some of the new members? (Especially in light of the fact that there was, architecturally, more or less unlimited âspaceâ in the Usenet group structure; especially if AOL wasnât particularly concerned about getting their groups carried by other systems, they could expose whatever groups they felt like to their subscribers, so itâs not as though they needed to be âkicked off usenetâ any more than being eaten by @falcor counts as being kicked off the internet).
Iâd be very curious to know what @codinghorror makes of this. He has posted a fair amount about studying the care and feeding of online communities, and how they work(and donât); but I strongly suspect that he has also been in the position to observe people using pure techie obscurantism just because it intimidates the mundanes.
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