Leap: An Online Community for Women

I've posted on lots of non-anonymous internet forums/communities since the mid 90s, when I first started reading and posting on usenet while still in grade school. Something Awful in particular stands out, because moderation there (bans and suspensions) were primarily handled by women in the mid-2000s (Ozma, Icequeen, Fistgrrl), and they were just as abusive and toxic as the male admins and mods that came before them, if not more so.

I think internet communities in general just attract certain kinds of people who seek out drama and conflict, and you'll never be able to avoid them completely despite exclusive membership. Even if you turn the majority of them away at the gate, or ban most of the ones that manage to slip by, some will be able to blend in and inevitably end up rising to positions of power, because seeking out and then abusing that power is simply their nature.

Even more so for exclusive communities, which, in my opinion, always end up with its members developing a feeling of superiority to those who are not a part of the group. The community itself will splinter into its own subgroups as well.

I think it's a mistake to assume that the current quality of discourse on Leap (and its utility as an app/service) is primarily due to the fact that men are not allowed to read or post. I would theorize that Leap's current success as a platform primarily comes from the fact that most (all?) of it's current users are closely networked to each other, since it's grown through direct invites and word-of-mouth between people who have direct relationships with each other. They are mentally and emotionally healthy working professionals who have vetted each other through their relationships, whether professional or otherwise. I have no doubt that the quality of content and contributions would not be negatively impacted if the same level of selectiveness and scrutiny was applied to vetting male members.

Now that invites are being opened, people who aren't part of this pre-existing network will be allowed in, and potentially outnumber the current/original community members. There will be conflict, not just for things like moderation power and the ability to control and influence discussions, but also because some people just like conflict for its own sake.

Based on what I've seen in private Facebook groups and on Twitter, I don't think that tying a personal identity to a forums account is adequate once you have lots of people who don't actually know each other.

The most successful community I've been a part of has extremely lax moderation on its main forums, an anonymous forum that is completely unmoderated (with the exceptions of guessing the identities of others and posting illegal stuff) where users can go blow off steam so they don't shit up the main boards, and then a "Serious" forum where trolling and shitposting are absolutely not allowed, and moderation is very strict.

If I were going to make an internet community, I would follow a similar approach, because when you need to enforce strict moderation at all times, you will eventually reach a point where you need to delegate that responsibility to people who enjoy moderating a community for the sake of power (if you don't want to pay them).

If you enjoy moderation to the point of pleasure and don't think that you'll ever get sick of it, then you can actively shape policy and staff throughout the community's lifecycle, but if not, you'll ultimately just want to throw your hands up in the air and walk away in disgust, and that's the point where you potentially lose control over your community and its direction.