Slap dat.

I was mooching around the internet in yet more job avoiding activity and came across 'Ravelry' and like many things, once you know its there it suddenly starts appearing everywhere. I wondered whether it could be good to join, get free patterns to knit, that sort of stuff, but then the job avoiding indicated this may not be helpful.

Anyways I wandered past again and noticed the delay to get your 'invitation' had come down to 1 day, from 4. Hmmm. Then I found that all sorts of upset and internet shoutiness had broken out over some people being BANNED. I bumped into several passionate outpourings about the evils of how they had been banned and the underlying socio-political implications of what had gone on. After skim reading a couple it seemed to me that the very fabric of democracy and basic human freedoms were in peril, never mind economic crisis....Ravelry had banned people.

I was transported to a time when I was a moderator on an internet community, I had the power to influence bannings and such. Oh the power, oh the enormous impact such things could have..... on a group of about 12 people ...when they thought about it. In fact I think I was made a moderator just so I could help support an admin who had realised she might have to ban someone. Really the agonising that went on before, during and after, particularly after. It was a thing to behold. I think the banned member would have been very very pleased had they realised the depths of agony plumbed by some staffers after they had done the deed.

Now I should probably come clean here and admit that the forum I moderated on was a very small affair, with only about 800 members on the books, and talk about niche interest, really very minor affair, hilariously described by colleagues as 'guinea pig porn', yup. But I couldn't quite put it all together. How people believed that joining a forum gave them some kind of right. That their membership and the efforts they put in had some kind of global, no universal significance. It was a great education and when I got fed up of being there I had the ability to delete everything I'd ever put up there and leave in my own time. Probably that's where the angst comes from, unfinished business, echoes of unsatisfactory endings, rejection. Injustice.

All because some guinea pig freaks, or knitting enthusiasts got fed up of you. It seemed ineffable that this forum was actually a complete autocracy, and the whims of the person who started it could prevail, no matter how injust or unreasonable they may seem they could decide. Written all over the aftermath was the childish/ childlike whine " It's not fair". It was very easy to say from the inside no, no one ever said it would be, but that's exactly what was playing out. Except here at ravelry there does actually seem to be some discussion about the political and legal implications of banning people from a knitting forum. Blimey.