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To the newcomer, a message board - say, for example, a comics message board - may seem somewhat incomprehensible or inaccessible. Consider the hypothetical example below, a doctored specimen (this represents no actual postings or posters).
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Hopefully the message boards you visit seldom get so incoherent and out of control; good moderation does much to keep private message boards from descending into the disorganized mayhem of the Abusenet. To some extent, though, every board remains susceptible to threads like this that bear little suggestion of the official topic of the board. When folks post things, what, we might ask, do they intend?
Postings on message board serve more than a single function. They frequently represent one of the activities listed below, but human creativity essentially renders a comprehensive listing impossible (even as I type, someone may invent a new purpose for posting).
By design, message boards generally deal with some topic. That topic definition tends to attract posters and readers to examine the postings. These boards, however, can contain just about anything in the same way a lingerie drawer can contain almost anything. The diversity of content may disincline some people from participating, either through a restrictive sense of order and propriety, or from the difficulties presented by the occasion of noise overwhelming signal. To some, an ideal message board would contain exactly what its topic suggests and nothing else.
Human beings, however, enjoy the traits of creativity and playfulness. Give a man a water hose to water the garden and he will soon discover that he can squirt the neighbors with it, and he will also eventually discover that spraying members of the opposite sex with it causes some items of clothing to lose their ability to conceal what lies within. Even without water, he will discover that he can tie things up with the hose; that he can thump his younger brother with the brass fitting on the end of it in order to start the obligatory fight du jour; that he can use the hose as a very poor substitute for a jump rope; and that he can even improvise a low-budget Alpine horn by blowing into the end of it.
Human inventiveness defines us as a species; we might consider it one of the central gifts particular to homo sapiens, even if sometimes it tramples upon order. Human nature, then, implies that the occasional clever soul, whether acting in good judgment or not, will invent new purposes to which apply such a forum. As with all inventions, nothing guarantees that such innovations will prove better uses than the original intent.
However, the official focus of the message board - the posting of material deemed "on-topic" - remains its official purpose, and boards seem best to thrive when a sufficient fraction of its content does remain within such boundaries. Viewed as a guideline rather than as a dogma, this principle helps participants get more out of a board than would a completely directionless theory of posting. After all, a board dedicated to nothing in particular seems most likely to attract those interested by nothing in particular, and such an interest doesn't seem to incline too many people to activity, whether such activity includes participating in message boards or writing novels.
People sometimes tease each other on message boards. Sometimes something like Destiny, understood with the full pretensions inherent in the capital letter, moves one to tease his fellow man. Sometimes you just have to do it.
Certain traits make teasing inevitable in the long run. Human playfulness, and a wicked but not completely destructive desire to entertain oneself by annoying another, incline human beings to pester. The best of us, and hopefully a good portion of the rest of us, understand certain boundaries that pertain to teasing. As the nuisance potential increases, the propriety tends to decrease. We acknowledge this principle when we agree that making fun of someone's bizarre middle name fits the category of teasing better than blowing a hole in his chest with a shotgun does.
In spite of the dicta of courtesy and self-control, certain postings and certain posters present targets of opportunity and attract teasing like a dead fish attracts flies. A misspelled post may suggest some kind of atrocious pun or double entendre. Certain acts of self-important posturing - particularly dishonest claims of achievement or abilities - cry out to the world for someone to appear to deflate the posturer. Some folks deserve it, some folks need it, and occasionally someone likes it. Not all teasing, however, stays within the boundaries of courtesy.
Teasing becomes troublesome or even hurtful when practiced without limits. With only a step outside certain limits, it enters the territory of flaming, heckling, and incitement, and abuse in general.
For some small subsection of Netizens, the Internet provides a rich market for insulting, browbeating, annoying, slandering, and generally harassing their fellow man. The ability to disguise oneself as text attached to an obfuscating handle tempts a such people, whom convention names trolls, to find their own pleasure by creating displeasure in others.
Another variety of troll doesn't necessarily seek the displeasure of others so much as attention in whatever variety they can elicit it. As some children seek what counsellors call "bad attention," so too do some posters who probably passed the age of seeking bad attention many years before.
Since either form of trolling has some reward the troll seeks, strategy suggests that one can discourage trolls by denying him his treat. Whether the treat includes angry and contentious responses or simple attention, the principle fire follows fuel (or, less politely, effluvia attract flies) suggests starving the troll should serve somewhat to discourage his unwanted behavior.
When one mentions an unpleasant subject like "spam," some disagreement will generally follow about what qualifies. Most folks agree that unrequested advertising and chain letters constitute spam. On a comics message board, some board denizens may consider fan fiction spam (Abusenet regulars certainly treat it as such). Off-topic postings may receive the spam treatment, which can create some awkwardness when definitions of "on-topic" and "off-topic" collide; for instance, do posts about Superhero games qualify as on-topic if they involve superheroes otherwise considered on-topic on the board?
At the far end of the nit-picking continuum, we may occasionally find some folks considering material spam if it runs afoul of closely-held opinions or if it deals with on-topic themes that do not interest them. Such definitions seem arbitrary and restrictive.
Some people love to talk about themselves, and others may love to read about them. Some others may have more specific, personal interests in the details of the lives of other posters. Yet others may need sympathy, compassion, or other amelioratives to the ever-present risk of isolation and loneliness. The same anonymity that the Internet provides to the troll also cushions the difficulty some people may have making basic human contact.
Occasionally one may encounter the fraud or the role-player, two types that generally annoy more than they harm (although some have developed considerable skill in the art and learn, in the process, to entertain by means of their synthetic personae).
Trolls and junk mail do not represent the absolute worst that access to the Internet can provide, in terms of (allegedly) human contact. Because a type of human predator uses tools like chat rooms to locate targets, some small risk attaches to communicating personal information like addresses or phone numbers where cyberstalkers can find it. Statistically the risk remains slight, but enough cyber-crime tied to message boards and chat rooms exists to warrant efforts by local and federal law enforcement (and their international peers outside of America) to attempt to find perpetrators via online contact.
In general, the average message board regular might not need to worry much about the dangers inherent in providing strangers with too much information. However, the stakes can go extremely high. The investment of a small amount of caution could pay excellent dividends in the long run.
Human nature inclines people to make fun of things, but some things enjoy traits that make them excellent targets. This differs from things like teasing, generally, since it targets inanimate objects, conventions, or ideas rather than persons.
With most comics, furthermore, you have the silliness built into the bedrock concept. Consider, for instance, the very idea of men in leotards, wearing jockey shorts on the outside, attempting to contend against each other through melodramatic soliloquy and fisticuffs. Imagine presenting such deviancy as the essence of abstract concepts like heroism and manhood (with a healthy portion of womanhood where women play the game). Would the world, viewed as a collective, see these buffoons as great moral leaders, or would it become paralytic in disbelief and laugh itself into anoxia at the cognitive dissonance evoked by the disparity between the pretense and its execution?
Generalized philosophy-of-comics and purely detached concepts need not provide the only grist for the mill of derision. Particular events, styles, and pieces of work also serve as targets for a good solid razzing, including things like: Rob Liefeld's infamous picture of Captain America with breasts (look up the word gynecomastia and its causes and the joke becomes crueler); Jim Balent's sense of anatomy; Top Cow's house style, also as it regards the female form; the much-maligned "Fast Lane" insert that infested Marvel's comics line in 1999 and 2000; the silliness of Mort Weisinger Superman stories; the silliness of Stan Lee dialog; the proliferation of mutants in the X-books; the silliness of the Giffen / DeMatteis Justice League books; how ugly the Incredible Hulk's purple pants still seem many years later; how lame the idiosyncratic grammar of Thor, Hulk, or Superbaby comes off, even within a context of juvenile literature; and such like.
Note, however, that any one of these things, and many others not listed, also provide someone with the reward that attracts him to read or even purchase comics in the first place. Therefore a thorough raking over the coals need not suggest malice, even when it rises in eloquence to the point that it may become unendurable for the perpetrator of the subject.
People who use the Internet may contribute to it by means of self-authored web pages on a startling variety of subjects. That someone participates in a message board means that both posters and readers have a greater-than-average chance of owning web sites.
Thus, sometimes, one may feel the need to ask about web pages or to suggest web pages on a message board. The message board can offer some self-publishers the opportunity to reach more potential readers than the noise-heavy results of search engines allow to filter to the target.
To find a page through a message board offers some benefits not available to searches with engines such as AltaVista, Excite, Yahoo, HotBot, Infoseek, and the like. Principally, a recommended link has gone through at least one human filter who can make judgments like about the quality, amount, or themes of the content. Differing tastes may make such vicarious discretion more or less valuable; search engines, however, have yet to demonstrate a keen ability to discern on grounds of taste.
Note, however, that some attempts to self-promote receive the same treatment reserved for spam, particularly if the content of the promoted site does not appeal to the board regulars. Some message board visitors might object to links promoting game-related web sites, which do represent a source of fan-produced material. Moderator discretion and board policy will generally determine if links to MUD and MUSH games represent off-topic postings.
Questions about board policies and discussions of board policies belong in the category of "exchange of information." For some, however, the policy or the discussion itself becomes something too obnoxious to let it lie, and the debate becomes an argument.
Sometimes the arguments have a point and sometimes they resemble drawn-out exercises in masochism that spill out from the tiny center of some forgettable detail of policy.
To fully appreciate such a debate, consider the following simulated thread:
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You can see the direction of such a discussion: straight to nowhere in a way that takes up valuable screen space. The would-be policy reformer might do better to attempt a coup that allows him to replace a moderator and/or reform a board policy, but the work that involves might prove prohibitive to that gentle soul who feels he must say "f***" NOW.
The same principle applies to a grocery store as to a message board: If I can find what I want to eat tonight, I don't care how many aisles contain boxes of unsold Motley Crue valentines. Therefore, in spite of any barbs the previous examination may contain about the various methods of drifting away from a message board topic, I don't see such deviation as a great threat or huge nuisance.
The variety of a message board serves to attract a variety of people, which seems the most likely reason most persons decide to visit a message board.
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