In a day and age where things come to us quicker than ever, a certain breed of lazy has evolved beyond past generation's simple "get out of the house and get a job". Before the dawn of the information age, in order to communicate our opinion to someone over a long distance it involved effort, cash, and a specific destination. If you had an opinion and you wanted it to be heard, you had best really really want it heard. There was no half-assing. It wasn't a competition of who could yell their opinion the loudest, because in order to shout back then, you first had to work hard to even gain a voice. The internet has stripped us of ambition, work ethic, and specific purpose.

However, despite all of the horrors that this ease of use has beckoned, it also blessed us with advantages. Nowadays it can be very easy to find a great intellectual discussion with your peers online. The problem is that its so easy to find. Now to some of you that might seem contradictory, but to me it makes sense. Please let me explain. If its easy for you to find a good forum for discussion, it also means that it is easy for someone to find a good intellectual discussion online to RUIN. So the question is, how do we stop the annoying from coming in the door, yet still hold it open for the friendly? While there are probably many ways to do this, in this jumble of letters i will discuss the way we do this in real life and how it may work in the virtual world. So what prevents an unfriendly person from trespassing on your property? A fence.

A fence is a boundry that clearly marks ownership of land and property to anyone who may think about entering. People must first pass a fence in order to have a hope of making human contact. In the online world there usually is no such fence, and if there is, it is usually no more than the equivalent of a sign in sheet at a wedding or hotel, no one checks the sheet until the event is over. There are certain fences that should be built to make sure that people are there for the wedding rather than the free food. The first of these fences is spelling and grammar.

If you search through forums online and other places for discussion, you may find that the poeple who arent really there for intelligent discussion neglect basic grammatical rules and simple spelling. Sometimes however they manage to get away with it with the aid of a built in spellcheck program, but more often than not, the truly lazy wll even ignore this. In contrast, you will find that the people who join in on the discussion for the purpose of advancing the dialogue with insightful input will use thoughtful phrasing, decent grammar, and passable spelling. I then propose that all submissions into online discussion be spell and grammar checked in order to pass. The theory behind this and almost all other fences is to intimidate possible trespassers with the thought of having to put out more effort into getting over it than they believe its worth. This way only those that truly want to join a thought provoking discussion will put in the effort required to participate. This may be surprising but some attention seeking eggers-of-on actually have impeccable grammar and spelling, so more fences will be needed. The second fence i propose is a system of closed discussions.

In real life, along with fences, there are other ques that warn you that you are not welcome somewhere. Signs that say "Staff Only", "Private Property", and more are used to tell people that there presence is unwanted or even unlawful. Some places such as places of work or entertainment venues even go so far as to have security at entrances in order to verify that patrons are allowed in. In the online world i have noticed a distinct lack of this in gamer communities. In most forums and other places of discussion, all posters are welcomed equally. While this system may be suitable for real world open forums (or maybe not, judging by recent town hall activity) where there is no anonymity, the internet allows people a shield that protects them from real threats to their psyche such as other people's opinions. With the implementation of a party and and screening system that allows people to create a closed discussion that is viewable by all but only people who are approved by the discussion starter and subsequently anyone who joins the discussion can reply to a post. This allows the people within the discussion a greater amount of control over who exactly will be populating a forum. The system i described however wuld most likely not be as compatible with a bulletin board type forum as i would be with an irc type chat room however.

Well this was my first ever blogpost and entry into a Monthly Musings. Comments on the article itself and how i set i up would be greatly appreciated and are entirely encouraged.

-Bishna