Funny though, I was discussing the concept of message boards with the Critter the other day. He's member of a forum run by people in the 16-22 age group, and he was upset about the strickt rules and heavy moderation the board had. Stuff like strick rules of how a topic title "should be", all responses to a post had to be relevant and if a moderater thought it wasn't relevant enough it'd be deleted, threads that could be seen as similar as older threads were locked, bumping old threads was frowned upon.. etc etc. He had made a thread politely wanting to discuss the strick moderation and was quickly flamed for having the nerve to do so.
Anywhoo, I told him this was something I had often seen on forums where tenage boys were in charge (especially tech-forums, I see the point in excluding non relevant discussion there, but not in all sections...). Has anyone else experienced this? My theory was that their new-found position of power gave them a power-trip that made them love slamming ridiculous rules over people's heads, not leaving room for debate.
In my experience, most forums with older users/moderators give room for discussion that may evolve to something other than the original topic. Not only can these discussions with a natural flow be interesting, they also allow posters to get to know each other and each others "tone" better.