I think that the thesis here is true, but the statement "communities that X cease to have X when any old person is allowed in" applies not just for values of X == "intelligent discourse", but also for X == "group-think leftism", "group-think rightism", etc.
The third pattern Bion identified: Religious veneration. The nomination and worship of a religious icon or a set of religious tenets. The religious pattern is, essentially, we have nominated something that's beyond critique. You can see this pattern on the Internet any day you like. Go onto a Tolkein newsgroup or discussion forum, and try saying "You know, The Two Towers is a little dull. I mean loooong. We didn't need that much description about the forest, because it's pretty much the same forest all the way."
Try having that discussion. On the door of the group it will say: "This is for discussing the works of Tolkein." Go in and try and have that discussion.
Now, in some places people say "Yes, but it needed to, because it had to convey the sense of lassitude," or whatever. But in most places you'll simply be flamed to high heaven, because you're interfering with the religious text.
Sometime the religious texts are opinions, sometimes they're people, sometime they're both.
I was a semi-frequent commentor on a popular blog. I'd spoken to one or two of the founders of the blog on the phone a few times, had done some business with them, and all-in-all had a cordial relationship, even though we differed on major-party-politics.
Then the popular blog hired a well known blogger to do their moderation. This well known blogger had a VERY strong political stance ... and brought with her to the group blog a bunch of her alcolytes.
A few times someone would post "politician X did Y and is the worst person ever". And I responded calmly "ummm...didn't politician Z do the exact same thing? Are they both the worst person ever, or might the situation be a bit more nuanced?".
...and for that, the moderator censored my comments.
I appealed to the founders of the blog, they agreed that I had said nothing untoward, the moderator was talked to ... and then the same thing happened two more times.
At that point I gave up on the group blog.
If they were willing to tolerate a bit of intelligent dissent from the orthodoxy, I was happy to be there ... but if the purpose of the group blog was veneration of the religious texts ... well, I've got better things to do with my time.
So... it is true that moderating can increase the IQ of a conversation. ...but it can also increase all sorts of other things: insularity, group-think, distrust of dissenting voices, etc.
What the article argues is sometimes true, but sometimes it happens that a community dies because of insane moderators, as the above commenter observes.
It happened on the MaxPC forums a few years ago, where I and a few other long-time posters were banned for reasons that were trivial, because one of the mods -- a very hotheaded and patriotic Canadian -- was threatened by the respect others accorded us.
BoingBoing is doing the same thing, from what I can tell, with its idiotic disemvowelling.
I would love to make a subreddit that auto-posted bb links and allowed unmoderated discussion of them. bb links are pretty good, but I agree that their human moderation is dumb and heavy-handed. I've always gotten stuck on how to programatically submit reddit posts.
Shirky nailed it here:
http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
The third pattern Bion identified: Religious veneration. The nomination and worship of a religious icon or a set of religious tenets. The religious pattern is, essentially, we have nominated something that's beyond critique. You can see this pattern on the Internet any day you like. Go onto a Tolkein newsgroup or discussion forum, and try saying "You know, The Two Towers is a little dull. I mean loooong. We didn't need that much description about the forest, because it's pretty much the same forest all the way."
Try having that discussion. On the door of the group it will say: "This is for discussing the works of Tolkein." Go in and try and have that discussion.
Now, in some places people say "Yes, but it needed to, because it had to convey the sense of lassitude," or whatever. But in most places you'll simply be flamed to high heaven, because you're interfering with the religious text.
Sometime the religious texts are opinions, sometimes they're people, sometime they're both.
I was a semi-frequent commentor on a popular blog. I'd spoken to one or two of the founders of the blog on the phone a few times, had done some business with them, and all-in-all had a cordial relationship, even though we differed on major-party-politics.
Then the popular blog hired a well known blogger to do their moderation. This well known blogger had a VERY strong political stance ... and brought with her to the group blog a bunch of her alcolytes.
A few times someone would post "politician X did Y and is the worst person ever". And I responded calmly "ummm...didn't politician Z do the exact same thing? Are they both the worst person ever, or might the situation be a bit more nuanced?".
...and for that, the moderator censored my comments.
I appealed to the founders of the blog, they agreed that I had said nothing untoward, the moderator was talked to ... and then the same thing happened two more times.
At that point I gave up on the group blog.
If they were willing to tolerate a bit of intelligent dissent from the orthodoxy, I was happy to be there ... but if the purpose of the group blog was veneration of the religious texts ... well, I've got better things to do with my time.
So... it is true that moderating can increase the IQ of a conversation. ...but it can also increase all sorts of other things: insularity, group-think, distrust of dissenting voices, etc.