Well, I've recounted the many forums that I've seen go dark: Nsider, Paranoia Live, TrsRockin, Neopets, and the forums I left behind: Seribii, Wrong Planet, just to name a few. While none of them became as godless as this one, many of them no longer exist as they once did.

If this is about "the bear-sex discussion", I beg to differ. Norms on these matters have definitely varied throughout time and the change in societies. You and I may not agree with them or be comfortable with them, but such things nevertheless exist outside of such subjective views.

For example, in ancient Greece, although Christianity liked to "whitewash" many of the more colorful particularities of those times and idealize it, the sexual behavior of individuals was... somewhat abhorrent (or libertine, depending on your point of view) even by today's standards.

Some examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_human_sexuality#Ancient_Greece

So perhaps we are seeing a slow return to the, ehmn... "golden" classical age, eh?

No no, nothing about the bear sex, furries gonna fur, I let that freak flag fly in the wind. It's about the apparent lack of moderation as of...the season's start.

It's not the first time they vanished. Although I don't think they've been gone this long, either.

Back when they were first instated I got PMs about how they were gonna clean up this town, but I think it's uncleanable frankly. GOG has little interest anyway.

Oh, well my take on this particular bit of corporate dystopia is that most likely all the mods are on vacation and there's simply nobody around any more... so it's a "Lord of the Flies" forum for now :P.

I believe this novel is an attempted demonstration of why government, instead of anarchy, is necessary.

Unfortunately yes. Every few years I remember some community, or game, or whatever and think to myself ''whatever happened to it...'' most of the time there are no traces left. But sometimes - the forums are still up.

They have a somber ''liminal space'' feeling to them :<


[EDIT] - topic was ''left by mods'' not ''left by users'' ... no matter; I'll leave the post standing.

In cases where spam posts are left standing -- it's a matter of time before the community dissolves anyway.

The best this forum ever was was long before it had any mods. But of course that was a very different time and a very different community.

I got a message from one of the mods. Looks like they're back.

Hopefully they start their shift by culling that list of spam and nuking some bots butts...

If you want to substitute a government you need reasonable, self-conscious and somewhat empathic individuals (ergo decentralization at the level of an individual should be possible). Most people are not like that at all. Anarchy would only work in a utopia, ironically.

Indeed. Children are also prone to testing their own social limits if left to their own devices, whereas adults may just keep on going with what they're used to (as much as possible) even if "the government" breaks down. I guess some people never grow up anyway, so it's a good allegory.

They apparently did. All recently reported spam posts are gone. Lots of spam accounts deleted, too.
Miracles happen.

Ah!, so they have, which is nice to see. Just a pity that it will all just start all over again, sadly...