Friday, January 9, 2009

Lost Theories Site Closed

It is a sad day for the Lost community, the Lost-Theories site has now shut its doors and has closed 4 good.

THe site was originally established by Jeffrey Croft, it was a pioneering effort that aimed to create a web site that was self moderated. Every member on the site had the ability to be a moderator by the use of flagging theories. So if a theory was flagged as "offensive" then it would be moved to that area if it was also flagged as such by several other different members.

It was a grand idea and if it had have worked it would have meant a real revolution in running internet forums.

What happened was internet trolls. Trolls who would create multiple usernames and would use the flagging system to anatgaonise others, eg by logging and flagging theories that were not offensive by using their various usernames.

So the self moderating site failed and the site was closed down.

Then a new owner JJ brought the site back and made some changes, one was to introduce moderators to the site. The moderators seemed to adopt a low key approach, stepping in when rules were broken. Most of the members seemed to respect what the moderators would say.

However, one member after being warned many times about his on-line attitude and behaviour kept pushing the limits. This person was banned and so instead of just moving on, he began that typical trollish behaviour of creating masses of fake usernames.

This person started an on-line war with the site's owner. The site's owner had enough and has decided to shut down the site permanently.

It is gone but JJ deserves thanks for giving the Lost-Theories site a 7 month reprise, that it would not have had if it were not for him.

4 comments:

Ruby Zee said...

stitch, thanks so much for clearing up what happened, I assumed that was it...I'm just, well, sad and angry, will check back here to see if anything else starts up...again, thanks for letting us all know....bellaisola

StitchExp626 said...

Thanks Amy, I guess there are lots of people out there who will be left with both happy and sad memories on the site that was.

lostlove said...

Thank you for the update. I figured it was going to happen. I will keep checking as well...lostlove

Unknown said...

Does anyone have any contact information for JJ? If he doesn't want to deal with trolls, I would be interested in buying the site and re-launching it myself.

Send info to JedDavisDesign (at) gmail (dot) com