The real problem here is, we still aren't, and probably never will be wired for 'online'. To that I mean, take a standard community. A community that has existed for, quite literally, through our ancestors for countless generations.

In such a community, sure... people could say anything they wanted. People can do so now! That is, you go for a walk, and people can approach you, say whatever, there is a wide range of what you can say in public.

But... if you act too aggressively, you get a punch in the head. If you yell and scream obscenities, people ignore you, if you do it too much, you again get a punch in the head. If you say 'crazy things' but are polite, people make excuses "Sorry, have to go look at this bush over here... talk to you later, have a nice day!". If you stand in the middle of a park and start screaming, again ... if you don't stop ... punch to the head.

(In more modern times, 'punch to the head' may be replaced by 'officials that come and make you stop via force if necessary', but the result is the same)

And to this, if you have people sitting in a park at a picnic table, enjoying a conversation, there is a limit to what people will tolerate.. if you just amble on over, start talking, and at the same time don't "fit". If you join a church, same thing. If you join a club, same thing.

Imagine if people got together, a group of 5 friends a picnic table at a park weekly, to talk about hockey, and some guy came over every day and started talking about how hockey is really fascist, and you're all asshoes, and blah blah.

Would that go over well? HELL NO!

In short, there is no moderation in traditional society, but there is also no tolerance for people shoving their face in your business. People that do not fit are not tolerated.

People confuse "how people interact in real life" with "people can say anything they want in real life".

Taking a step back, people have never had limitless ability to force others to hear their crap. You could take out ads in a periodical / newspaper... IF the newspaper thought it was not going to get many people mad at them! You could print your own "stuff", and pay to have it delivered, or hand deliver it to people on the street. You could print stuff and try to get people to buy it. There are loads of delivery methods, but even this is all new, 200 years ago no average person could do this.

So some online forum where you're talking about turtle eggs, and endless people liken it to "MY GUY!" or "POLITICAL THING" or "BUY MY APPLES" is absolutely non-real in terms of how humans have ever acted before!

Something like /., with its moderation system, and its meta-moderation system was a good start. "No! Go away from my picnic table!" with the comment still there but gone, is much like real life. But even that is not completely real, for eventually people "punch you in the head" if you persist.

As this thread discusses, most moderation systems seem unable to handle this. The truly sad thing is, I think that:

* until sock puppeting is impossible

* until identity is linked to your actions immutably

We won't ever get past this.

And this means that anonymity needs to end, and a person's actions need to count, because in the real world everyone can see "Oh crap, Bob's coming over here again", and "eventually you go to jail" is how we deal with human interaction in real life.

NOTE: none of this detracts from people wanting to, in real life, have a club of "completely open ideas". Yet that is quite rare!