All online forums (by which I also mean Usenet newsgroups, chat rooms and IRC channels) follow these rules:

The First Law: Every forum is always in a state of constant decline.

All forums start off good, enjoy a “honeymoon period” in which they continue to be good, and then steadily decline… from the point of view of each individual observer.

You get involved in a forum because it appeals to you. If it didn’t appeal to you, you wouldn’t have joined in the first place. Eventually, however, one of two things will happen: the nature of the forum will change so it’s no longer the way it was when it first appealed to you, or it will stay the same and you’ll just get bored of it.

It may be possible for a forum to change for the better after you’ve become involved in it, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen it happen.

The First Corollary: The Four Ages of Forums

Every forum enjoys four ages:

1. The Golden Age
2. The Silver Age
3. Limbo
4. Utter Crap

When you join a forum, unless you’re a charter member, you’ll be regaled with tales from the regulars about how the place used to be so much better. As such, the Golden Age is defined as some time prior to your joining the forum. You, of course, enter the forum in the Silver Age. It’s not as good as the legends tell you it used to be, but it’s still as much fun as you’ll ever experience it.

Eventually the forum changes, or you get bored, as described in The First Law. You hang around, however, because you remember how good it used to be, and there are still enough remnants of that to keep you coming back. This is Limbo.

You’ll spend a lot of Limbo telling people how much better the place used to be, oblivious to the fact that now is, to them, the Silver Age.

In some cases, Limbo can last years, extended by occasional cycles that cause the forum to become interesting again, or shift closer to the way it was. But it will never be as good as it was in the Silver Age, and all these cycles do is prolong the time it takes for the forum to descend into the realms of Utter Crap.

The exceptions to this corollary are charter members, who can’t look to any predecessors for a Golden Age. To them the first age is Golden, and from there it’s a fall straight into Limbo.

Corollary Two: Stating the Bleeding Obvious

Since the boundaries of each age are defined by the participants, you will never truly convince someone else that your timeline for a forum’s decline is right, and theirs is wrong. To them, you’ll either be a jaded old fogey who can’t see what fun everyone else is having, or you’ll be a clueless newbie who has ruined the place, damnit.


http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2005/11/20/charles_ru​les_of_online_forums

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This song is almost 40 years old - and it is still valid
How sad



Now when you climb into your bed tonight
And when you lock and bolt the door
Just think about those out in the cold and dark
cause theres not enough love to go round
No theres not enough love to go round

And sympathy is what we need my friends
And sympathy is what we need
And sympathy is what we need my friends
cause theres not enough love to go round
No theres not enough love to go round

Now half the world hates the other half
And half the world has all the food
And half the world lies down and quietly starves
cause theres not enough love to go round

And sympathy is what we need my friends
And sympathy is what we need
And sympathy is what we need my friends
cause theres not enough love to go round
No theres not enough love
No theres not enough love to go round

Rule 1: Life is not fair…get used to it.

Rule 2: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $40,000/year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a cell-phone, until you earn both. (This one needs some updating. In those days only special people had cell phones.)

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a word for flipping burgers-they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up it’s not your parents fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes, and listening to how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents’ generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life hasn’t. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they‘ll give you as many times as you want to get the answer right. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers and Christmas break off, and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on you own time.

Rule 10. Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to work.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.