The Diary of A Simple Man

The person should sit in shame in a darkened room, apologizing to everyone for being born on this holy day. Then the guests should pelt him or her with stones, chanting "9/11!" "9/11!" "9/11!" until their voices give out.

Then everyone can sit down and have a good cry.

Damn. When did Americans become such wimps? How did one day manage to turn America from the beacon of freedom for the world into a torturing, privacy-violating, Constitution-shredding bunch of idiots who will apparently do anything as long as the magic words "9/11" are invoked?

9/11 was bad, yes. But it wasn't as if New York City was nuked, or something. Thousands died, not tens or hundreds of thousands. Does that mean it wasn't bad? Hell no! But other nations have suffered far worse calamities without making such a damned fetish out of it.

It's a birthday party. Have a piece of cake, sing, give some presents. Lighten up!

I know! Why not turn it into a theme for the party? You could even make it a party game! Have the birthday cake baked in the shape of the World Trade Center. Then have one of the guests crash a toy airplane into the cake, ruining it. The rest of the guests then pick out some other guest (but never the one who was actually responsible for the crash), and blame him or her for the whole thing.

That person puts on an Arab-style sheet, and then everyone at the party beats the living crap out of him or her...and his or her entire family, as well. Take all their money while you're at it. It's perfectly okay to beat up casual bystanders in the general melee, as long as you never hurt the person who actually destroyed the cake. Anyone who fails to show enough enthusiasm for beating up the designated villian should also be beaten.

Then everyone left standing can call themselves "heroes" and feel really good about themselves. Hurray!

Personally, I have to say that the thought of the Askville Team barging in here and shutting down the discussion is pretty offensive - not to mention high-handed. Yes, the DB has pretty much gone bad. That seems to be how most DBs here end up, sooner rather than later, when an even slightly controversial topic comes up. It's more a matter of personalities than anything else.

But who is to blame for the increasingly toxic environment here at Askville? In my book, it's largely the Askville team itself. They've played absentee landlords for years now, and the poisoned state of the Askville community is the natural result. They may have been working like dogs on background coding issues, but they've badly neglected the people who make up the Askville membership - the people who create the value that the site has for Amazon.com.

They rarely speak to us. When they do, the communications are minimal. Mostly they issue decrees on their blog, which doesn't allow feedback. When they've been finally forced to take action because the community is falling apart, they've made stupid, draconian decisions.

There are really only two ways to run a social site (which is the core of what Askville is). One way is to run it impersonally, with clear but minimal rules that are enforced regularly and impartially.

Alternatively, you get yourself down on the level of your users and get to know them. You develop a relationship with them, or if it's a large site, with the most active and influential members. In other words, you make friends with your user base.

Distant but fair landlords, or friends to your users. The Askville team seems to have straddled the categories, and picked the worst of both types. They've been distant but unfair, with rules that are unclear and aren't enforced with any regularity. They've punished with little or no warning, and even when they try to interact with members, it's always very clear that they neither trust us nor are comfortable dealing with us.

It seems likely that Askville's days are numbered. That's a pity, because it was a good idea and could have been a smashing success. But when it fails, I hope that Amazon.com management will lay the blame where it belongs: on the Askville management, and on themselves. Because Amazon.com should have noticed long ago just how poorly Askville is being run.

"Why would the Democrats want to push this when Bush is a severe lame duck and they know, from the GOP experience, that impeachment has a good chance of backfiring politically?"