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The only reason I would blame a whole board is if 1) the problem I have is typical of the general mentality and 2) if "Mother Bear Syndrome" sets in. Once MBS sets in, the doors are off the hinges. If you're not involved in a situation, then stay out of it, unless you WANT the entire board to be blamed.

I had some problems with individual users at the Game Pond, but I wouldn't have blamed everyone there for it. Most people were not in agreement with them.

This is a problem with modern message boards not being personalized. TABB, for example - I have no idea who the owner is, who the admins are, what the rules are, etc. Back in the early days, you ALWAYS knew if it was Bugforest's board, or Kiera's board, or |tsr's board, etc., and it's thus easier to blow off a faceless entity than someone you might be friends with.

Crawl was telling me last night that some people have accused Port Saiid of being hiveminded.

One group of people I know who said that were way more, WAY more hiveminded than us. In fact, their use of that description was little more than the Delayed Copycat Response. I don't think the evidence of that could've been more clear than when they ganged up on Morgannon just for pointing out a TOS. (And this has all been pretty much thoroughly discussed to death on this forum before. There's really no reason to take anything that group said seriously because it was obvious they didn't like us, and it didn't matter what we said or did because they'd find some way to hate us for it, and sometimes they'd hate us for things we never said or did. If they weren't hiveminded, you'd think occasionally one of them would step up and say, "You know I don't quite understand what we're angry about", but even if someone felt that way, you know they never would because they'd be instantly outcasted.)

Port Saiid is also less likely to use internet memes, slobber all over things that get unanimous praise everywhere else (Batman Begins, Shadow of the Colossus, etc.), and at least three outside sources have said positive things about us (Qwipster, Ragey, ArkFullofSorrow), so we must be doing something right.

As for other people who have said Port Saiid is hiveminded - I can think of a very simple reason why. Let's take the conversation between me and Sethra about ReBoot. I said I didn't like the show and didn't regret not having seen more of it. Sethra, apparently, liked the show more than I did and defended it to some extent. If a typical internet person sees that conversation, they won't understand why Sethra didn't just flame me for saying I didn't like the show instead of using valid reasons to back up her own opinion of it (it's surreal, the Power Rangers thing wasn't typical, Hack & Slash are funny, etc.), and therefore they'll rationalize it as, "It's because they all think and act alike."

I know that this is at least partially true from my experiences with VividImagination. When people at the Game Pond (including myself) kept getting annoyed at being flamed by VI people, VI's excuse was that it's the way people are supposed to act towards disagreements and that we were all just worshipping Kiera or FO.

I don't think anyone was worshipping Kiera or me, so much as our ideal that we could and should have a place for intelligent discussions where mentality like that is frowned on.