The Politics of Founding

I used to be on reddit until about three or four years ago when something happened that drove me away. But I recall, and have recently been reminded by discussions elsewhere on Digg, of the reddit issue of sub-reddit ownership and moderation. A founder on reddit has oligarchical power over their sub. I did not establish this community space with any such thought or recollection -- and I have a strong impression that the Digg folks do not want to recreate reddit here and will be empowering changes-of-ownership and other ways of avoiding such autocracy -- but I guess at some point any community has to deal with matters of tone and direction. You'd think we would all have pretty common perspectives on something like permaculture, but of course that is untrue and there will be conflicting views.

For now, I will just say that I look forward to the differences of opinion, reasoned argument is a powerful way of gaining knowledge and in-depth understanding. But I am a US "southern boy" and I think when your argument comes to an unsatisfactory end, you can tell someone to just fuck off, but SWEETLY. So that will be my standard: if a user's tone is curtly disrespectful, they are not welcome. Anyone can have a bad day, or even fail to grasp my admittedly personal-and-possibly-unique standards for curtness and disrespect - about once or maybe twice. I don't actually know if banning is even a thing here yet, but I'm relatively sure we'll find out before too long! I'm glad to discuss this further, of course!