Is your forum a dictatorship?

[Shawn Gossman]

Do you run your forum like a dictatorship?

Meaning, you make all the decisions solely because you own the forum. You don'y give your members a voice or decision in any sort of decisionmaking.

It's hard to label forums as dictatorships but if you really look at them, most of them have that style of management.

How do you all feel about this observation?

 

[Heatman]

Well, as far as I'm concerned, any forum that's ran like a dictatorship will never see me in it doing anything. If I created an account on it before finding out, I will ask for my account to be deleted ASAP.

 

[Tracy]

Technically almost all are a dictatorship. Now, it can be a benevolent dictatorship, but generally the site owner(s) determine the direction of the site. That is not to say that they do not take feedback from their users, but the final determination is not one that is voted on by the users generally.

I have not come across any "democratically ran" sites in my journeys on the internet, but I also am not constantly looking for new sites to investigate. I am sure that there are a few of them, but having your users vote on everything is a path to angst.

 

[Mike30]

Someone told me once my forum was something like that. lol...

There is a difference between dictatorship and rules to keep things working.
Some people are too susceptible to follow common sense rules and they call it a dictatorship.

I do ask members about things, then I make the last decision. Maybe it's a dictatorship... I don't know...
But my members seem to be happy (at least most of them lol..)

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I think forums are dictatorships for the most part.

However, I just don't think they're evil dictatorships that we're used to hearing about. Agreeing with pretty much what @Tracy replied here.

 

[Heatman]

Well, looking at what real dictatorships is about, I wouldn't say forums are run that way because with real dictators, they don't work with rules or care about how what they do affect those under their rule. If forums are said to be like that in way because the last decision is carried out by the owner, it means our different countries are run by dictators too because they have the final say in everything even though we voted to put them in power.

Forums have rules which are put in place to look out for all members and make sure everything goes smoothly. I can never see that as being a dictatorship.