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BackSet

BackSet

Fear the Eagle From Camelot
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  • BackSet
    • The Time Sink Theorem: A forum with an associated chatroom, IRC channel or similar will be less active than it would have been if it had no chatroom.
      • The Twin-World Hypothesis: Over time, the forum and the chatroom will develop into separate communities, as the members of the chatroom eschew the forum and the members who join the forum remain unaware of the chatroom's existence, as the people who could have introduced them to this chatroom have left the forums for that very chatroom. Any joining forum member who joins the chatroom will inevitably leave shortly therweafter due to the Lock-The-Gates phenomenon mentioned below.
    BackSet
    • The Loser's Fallacy (The First Law of the Special Olympics): 95% of all disputes on the internet are settled by maneuvering the losing party into a position where further dissent of any nature, correct or incorrect, demonstrates that they have no life.
    BackSet
    • The Private Clubhouse Effect: If a small, tight-knit community gathers around a forum, as time passes more and more postings will have little to do with whatever is the forum's subject and instead will be just the regulars chit-chatting and hanging out with each other. This also applies to individual threads, which will go on pages-long tangents.
    BackSet
    Party on the Totem Pole Law: If a forum is made of a small group of tightly-knit friends, over 60% of the active users on the board will have moderator powers.
    • The CoSC Corollary of Stubbornness - If the forum in question is a Role-Playing Forum, then this group of staff is often the only thing that keeps a site alive in periods of slow activity. Which may or may not be all the time.
    • An Armed Society Is A Polite Society Theory - As the number of moderators as percentage of the forum population grows, the less their mod powers will see actual use.
    BackSet
    BackSet
    • Corollary: As the population size of a forum increases, the less likely the group is to be tightly-knit, and the proportion of the members who have moderator powers decrease. This in turn causes each moderator to spend more of their posts keeping other members in line, and the proportion of mod posts written for that express purpose will approach one.
    • Corollary to the Corollary: Under no circumstances should you search for all posts by a mod on a large forum and browse through the list. The sheer amount of stupidity and Epic Fail the mod has to squash will make you facepalm hard enough to bruise yourself.
    • IRC Topic Corollary: If such a community has an IRC channel, every regular will be given some level of op powers in it, if only for the express purpose of letting them goof around with the channel topic without also opening it up to abuse from spambots or trolls.
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    Kaerri
    Kaerri
    Corollary to the corollary -- You have no idea. ^;3^
    BackSet
    • Gideon's Rule (The Red Flag of Masochism): If a user openly invites opposition to themselves — be it competition in a video game, criticisms of their works, or counterpoints to their arguments in a debate — and qualify it with something along the lines of "I always welcome being beaten/proven wrong/criticized, I enjoy it, it's how I learn"... it's your cue to run far, far away. This is because, 85% of the time, what the user really means is "I dare you to try, because I don't think it's possible". Either they're right, and they will pummel you into submission with their expertise, or they're wrong, and they will throw a tantrum when they are beaten. Either way, it's not someone you want to be caught disagreeing with.
      • Note: If the user is part of the forum staff, this is probably an illustration of GreenCobra's Law.
      • Corollary: If the user is part of the small percentage that is genuinely seeking healthy competition or honest feedback, someone else will still wander into the conversation and start the war instead.
    BackSet
    • GreenCobra's Law: "Arguing with the mods is allowed. Winning an argument against the mods will get you banned." When the staff of a forum is strict, mods and admins will allow people to argue against their points in order to shoot down the counterarguments and strengthen their own opinions. When this fails and a user's rebuttals become increasingly difficult to counter, expect the staff to start pulling out topic locks, demerits, and banhammers.
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    BackSet
    BackSet
    Once again, apologies to the mods and admins.
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    • McHabe's Rule: The mods are generally decent folks just trying to do their jobs. The forum creator is all but absent. However, the administrators' level is home to all the petty tyrants on the board - in the rare instances that they can resist the allure of the banhammer, they'll still have no mercy in jeering you out of your insolent deviance.
    BackSet
    • The Killing Joke:
      • When more than two admins or big-name mods start to adopt "for the lulz" as their core guiding principle, the forum is on the verge of dying an agonizing death in a raging flame inferno.
      • The Backfire Safeguard: If said admins and big-name mods are capable of admitting a mistake, this trend may be nipped in the bud by the initial flare-ups.
    BackSet
    • Visual Zombification Postulate: The more images are used as discourse in any given thread, the less said thread will tolerate independent thought. Imageboards, being at the very extreme of images-as-discourse, are hive minds that instantly detect a nonassimilated psyche.
    BackSet
    • "This is Not 4chan" Rule:
      • As the length of any "random/humorous image thread" grows longer, the probability of somebody getting the thread locked by posting an image that flagrantly violates forum rules approaches 1. They will then be angry about it after the fact.
      • If the forum has no rules regarding images, the thread will eventually degrade into porn.
    BackSet
    Have you ever wondered who Nala's dad is? The only male lions we see are Scar, Mufasa, and Simba.
    Idea
    Idea
    Yep, known about that one for a while now.

    Sweet home Alabama
    BackSet
    • Paula Bean's Law: If a project goes for an unusually long time without being updated, and the project creator continually posts progress reports that are vague in nature ("It's going great!") or tiny inconsequential scraps of material without any specific references to the project or any solid evidence that they've made progress, they have almost certainly done absolutely nothing. If this happens from the start, the project itself might not even exist. This is especially true if the person is known to frequently post works-in-progress without actually finishing anything, showing that they are desperate for attention in any way they can obtain it. If they have something to show, they would have shown it by now.
    BackSet
    • Back of the Mind Theorem: If a project or web site goes for an unusually long time without being updated, and the creator has not explicitly announced their resignation (or invoked the Nail in the Coffin Law), they are almost certainly still intending to post again at some undetermined time in the future — no matter how long it's been.
    BackSet
    • Nail in the Coffin Law: If a project or web site goes for an unusually long time without being updated, and the creator returns after the extended length of time to assure everyone the project is not dead, and they have not returned with one or more updates, the project is now officially dead. Exception: if the post contains absolutely no exclamation points, there is still a small glimmer of hope for the project to continue.
    BackSet
    • Default Career Path: Everyone on the internet wants to be a game developer.
      • Corollary: Those who don't, instead want to be a graphic designer.
      • Corollary: Their credentials are usually limited to "I played a lot of games and I have feedback for the developers" or at best "I enrolled in a game design course".
      • Corollary: Everyone who manages to point out a single mistake made by a professional game developer, or notices that the game developer can't actually play the game as well as they can, will feel entitled to the position of game developer.
      • Corollary: As in any career field where supply vastly outnumbers demand, most game developers work very long hours for very little pay doing mind numbing grunt work.
    BackSet
    • The Great Law of Amateur Game Development:
      • If a person creates a thread about a game project in order to recruit help or otherwise advertise it, and they haven't started it yet, it will never be finished.
      • If a team project/community project is started by a group of forum members, the chance of said project ever actually being completed falls to the same likelihood of Half-Life 3 being released. The sheer level of expectations of said idea, and the sheer production values level will also rise dramatically before it inevitably dies out. Therefore, the probability of the project being completed rapidly rises to 1 after fourteen years.
      • Corollary: As soon as one member of the project quits, the project will fall apart even if finding a replacement would be trivial.
      • The DeskStar Corollary: A suspiciously large number of amateur game developers suffer a fatal disk crash shortly after promising the moon and stars.
    BackSet
    • The Inverse Confidence Law: The more confident someone is in their belief, the more likely they are misinformed or just flat-out wrong. Conversely, the more doubt one expresses in their belief, the more likely they are right. See also Million-to-One Chance.
      • This is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect in academic circles. See also Know-Nothing Know-It-All.
      • The Loudness Corollary: The louder someone expresses a belief, the less likely they are right.
        • dril's Corollary: The more people disagree with someone, the louder they become.
      • The Condescension Corollary: The more condescending someone acts while expressing a belief, the less likely they are right.
    BackSet
    The Law of Image Overcompensation: The amount of effort a person, group, or organization puts into projecting any image for themselves is inversely proportional to how accurate that image is. This is especially true of politicians and advertising campaigns. For example, it's always the biggest homophobes who turn out to be Armoured Closet Gay. Likewise, the "pro-family" politicians are always the ones who have been cheating on their spouses, and "this is not your grandfather's car" means it most definitely isyour grandfather's car.
    • The Nickname Corollary: If a person's chosen screen name contains positive self-descriptive adjectives, it is safe to assume that the exact opposite is true of them.
      • The Left Hand Corollary: 39.6% of all kids between the age of 10 and 15 will have a username containing a reference to demons or death.
      • The Marvin Corollary: A similar proportion of young adults between the age of 16 and 20 will have a username containing a reference to mental disorder or prescription medication for same.
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    BackSet
    • The Euphemism Corollary: Much like "good neighborhood" is real estate advertisement code for "this property sucks, but there are some good ones adjacent to it", 90% of all uses of the following words or phrases will actually have the following meanings:
      • It is a known fact that...: "I believe..." (credit goes to this page)
      • Many/most believe: "A couple other guys agree with me" (credit to the above link)
      • Experts agree: Same as above.
      • Expert: "Someone who agrees with me"
      • True fans: "People who agree with me"
      • Thought-provoking: "Blatant propaganda for my side"
      • Honest: As in Honest John's Dealership.
      • Hard-working: Either "I/He/She sucks at it, but I/he/she tries hard!" or "very enthusiastically barking up the wrong tree."
      • Clearly: "If you don't agree with me, you're an idiot"
      • X is in denial: "I'm in denial about X being right."
      • Leading X(s): "My favorite X(s)" or "(An) X(s) I cherry-picked"
      • Common sense: "My opinion"
      • Mistakes were made: "I/We screwed up royally but don't want to admit it"
    BackSet
    BackSet
    • The "I Don't Mean to be Racist, But..." Corollary: The amount of effort someone expends trying to preemptively establish what they're about to say or do is not X is directly proportional to how egregiously X the next thing they do or say will be.
    BackSet
    • The Illusions of Grandeur Principle:
      • The more someone calls attention to their talents, the less they will accomplish with them.
      • Corollary: The more someone calls attention to their lack of talent, the more likely it is that they are actually quite talented.
    BackSet
    The Law of Inevitable Statistic Abuse:
    • Any kind of numerical statistic displayed for users and/or submissions (such as post/edit count, average score vote, or "karma" points/"tokens" for users who contribute and/or are active), will inevitably cause some people to go to insane lengths to try and drive up their statistic(s) and/or lower those of others they dislike, usually through attempts to cheat the system, even if the stat is never taken the least bit seriously by the community. This represents a classic example of Goodhart's Law.
    • First Corollary: Any kind of numerical statistic based on users' votes will inevitably cause some people to create ludicrous numbers of sockpuppet accounts for the sole purpose of such abuse on that statistic.
    BackSet
    BackSet
    • Second Corollary: Nobody will care about any numerical statistic. Despite this, people may end up citing such statistics during a protracted flamewar, especially in the absence of another argument or when it has been reduced to arguing semantics.
    • Third Corollary: Any system which rewards members for any such statistic will inevitably prove counterproductive as the people who actually get rewarded the most are those gaming the system, which will irritate those who actually contribute honestly.
    BackSet
    • Rule of Ratings:
      • Any time score voting is presented on a site, most voters will only give out the maximum or minimum possible scores, depending on whether they liked or hated whatever is being voted on. Any scores between the two might as well not exist.
      • Corollary: If a poster cites a composite rating from a site such as MetaCritic or Rotten Tomatoes in support of his/her position, the poster in opposition will call into question the methods used by such sites.
      • Corollary 2: Anyone who does give an intermediate rating may draw hostility from both sides for 'not being able to form an opinion', particularly if they give a rating exactly in the middle of the scale.
      • Corollary 3 (The Front Page Corollary): Anything that gets featured on the front page will immediately get a ratings boost regardless of its actual quality, due to a flood of people who give the maximum rating to anything that doesn't suck out loud (and some things that do).
    BackSet
    The Average Rating Sine-Curve:
    • On a site with score voting, a user or work of high caliber will gradually rise in its average rating score until it rises high enough on the charts to draw attention to itself, at which point fans of other works or friends of other users will vote it back down so their preferred entity has the better score. Once it gets knocked back down, said fans will forget about it, allowing its rating to gradually climb back up until the cycle repeats.
    • Corollary: Due to this effect, nothing can stay on an all-time top-rated chart permanently, as being on the chart will attract people who will vote it down to make room for their own preferred entities.
    BackSet
    BackSet
    • The Up And Away Corollary: If there is only an upvote button and not a downvote button, works will attract more upvotes by simply being on the top-rated chart until they gain an unsurmountable lead, even when it is blatantly obvious to an unbiased observer that the work is outdated.
    • The DeviantArt Corollary: When a work is promoted to a spotlight position, the comments section will fill up with complaints about why this work was chosen instead of a certain other work of higher quality. If there is even a grain of truth in this statement, the conversation is likely to degrade into vicious attacks on the work until the creator deletes it or quits the site.
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