C2 was an incredible place at its peak - I was lucky to have started my career while the community was still (only just) functional. Looking back, it's hard to over-state how formative my time on C2 was - not only did I learn a lot about pattern languages, and coding, but the Wiki idea and the way the community operated is something I still think about today.
C2 was a utopian vision of well-informed, kind, co-operative people working together in a radically open and egalitarian way. And it really did work, for a while. Unfortunately, the reasons why C2 ultimately died have been obscured by a well-meaning process of pruning that I think is meant to remove the "bad stuff" and leave only the "good stuff" for posterity. This is a shame, because the truth really is instructive - a few very prolific, toxic, borderline delusional people started dominating the wiki to the extent that more reasonable contributors just moved on. The C2 community started with an assumption that everyone could be reasoned with, and tried to handle the situation kindly and rationally. It was amazing to see the damage a very small number of people - basically just two - could do to a whole community of hundreds of well-meaning but naive people. It got to the point where there were pages dedicated to trying to think about the problems these people posed, with endless discussions about the paradox of tolerance and handling things through openness and kindness, and small factions arguing for permanent bans. Ultimately I think both badd actors _were_ banned, but by then it was too late - all the air was sucked out of the community. Watching the death of C2 unfold really darkened my view about the prospects of truly open societies, and deeply informed work that I've done on building communities since.
Today, nearly all signs of the way this devastation played out have been erased from history. If you search for the names of the malignant characters there are a few mentions here and there, but there's no way to piece together the true sequence of events. I think an important part of C2's story, and one that is more relevant today than ever, has been lost as a consequence. I'm sure Ward has the full edit history of the wiki around, and I think he should publish it, complete and unvarnished, so we can study it and learn from it.
C2 was a utopian vision of well-informed, kind, co-operative people working together in a radically open and egalitarian way. And it really did work, for a while. Unfortunately, the reasons why C2 ultimately died have been obscured by a well-meaning process of pruning that I think is meant to remove the "bad stuff" and leave only the "good stuff" for posterity. This is a shame, because the truth really is instructive - a few very prolific, toxic, borderline delusional people started dominating the wiki to the extent that more reasonable contributors just moved on. The C2 community started with an assumption that everyone could be reasoned with, and tried to handle the situation kindly and rationally. It was amazing to see the damage a very small number of people - basically just two - could do to a whole community of hundreds of well-meaning but naive people. It got to the point where there were pages dedicated to trying to think about the problems these people posed, with endless discussions about the paradox of tolerance and handling things through openness and kindness, and small factions arguing for permanent bans. Ultimately I think both badd actors _were_ banned, but by then it was too late - all the air was sucked out of the community. Watching the death of C2 unfold really darkened my view about the prospects of truly open societies, and deeply informed work that I've done on building communities since.
Today, nearly all signs of the way this devastation played out have been erased from history. If you search for the names of the malignant characters there are a few mentions here and there, but there's no way to piece together the true sequence of events. I think an important part of C2's story, and one that is more relevant today than ever, has been lost as a consequence. I'm sure Ward has the full edit history of the wiki around, and I think he should publish it, complete and unvarnished, so we can study it and learn from it.