Frankly, I'm just astounded at some of the bickering and pettiness I see in the forums. There are hundreds of regulars but a few dozen have coalesqed into cliques.
I personally don't get into on-line cliques. But I don't think there's anything inherently bad about them. The Internet should be whatever you make of it. As long as you're not hurting anyone, knock yourself out. Meet friends, talk to them, etc.
I only worry about cliques when they start to resemble gangs. And I see a couple "rival" cliques that seem to be going after one another. I have no idea why and because clique politics holds no interest for me, I have not really paid that much attention. But it's starting to become a moderation issue. Ultimately, for any community to function, its most active participants have to set an example for others. That's why we have the whole access hierarchy, to let people move up towards eventually being a moderator.
But even there, people who are (obviously) not familiar with how we run sites think we pick moderators based on some sort of partisan basis. We don't. We look for people who have all these qualifications: consistently mature, not easily rattled, not prone to trying to inciting angst in others.
It's been a tougher road than we thought because when you're getting into politics, you can get into heated exchanges. I won't, for example, raise someone's access simply because I agree with many of their views. There are very vocal conservatives here as well as very vocal liberals who are citizens and likely to remain that way.
So far, the list of people we've promoted has been pretty small. I think right now there's Bakerstreet, DharmaGirl, Stevenadalous, JillUser, CS Guy, JeremyG, Greywar, Jamie Burnside and a couple others. People from across the political spectrum. That doesn't mean that those who haven't been promoted aren't great guys. Our decisions are purely for selfish reasons - down the line, we want the community to regulate itself. That will probably take a very long time though to happen.
I would agree with those who don't like the access group names. That's my fault for not being more involved with that. We do need better names for them (feel free to suggest them)
I was thinking Citizen, Counselor, Advocate, Senator, Moderator or something like that. Better than words like "elite" (I REALLY hate elitism and the access title "elite" gives the wrong impression).
I think the whole point paranoia is due to the fact that many users think the system is easily manipulated. My other blog, Skinning the Frog, jumped all the way to #2 with ONE article. THAT is how the point system works. If you can get enough readers, and you get them the old fashioned way, earning them by writing good stuff people are interested in and hence link to them and tell others about, you'll get the real points. The only reason comments and insightfuls by regulars make a difference is because right now most of the blogs are still so new that they don't have their own loyal band of readers. It bears remembering that I've been blogging almost daily for 3 years, so what I write tends to get read because there are people who bookmark my page, pass it on to others, etc.
My blog has 103,000 points, #2 has 18,000. Users who keep at it with consistently high quality articles (or at least ones people are interested in reading about) over a period of time who also do some leg work to get others to link to them will be up there as well. You get a couple points or something like that when someone comments on your article. My article on PC gaming I wrote last month has 43,000 points all by itself and has 353 referrals. It has 103 comments which isn't that significant. So of the 43,000 points it has, it has probably a couple hundred points from the comments. So anyone complaining that the point system is subject to manipulation either doesn't understand how it works or is just crying sour grapes.
Complaining about the point system is like a guy in Arizona who's sitting on his butt complaining about a guy in California is "Cheating" at a race in which he too is sitting but slowly inching northward due to plate tektonics.
So guys, the site is what you make of it. Worrying about how OTHERS make use of it is a waste of energy. It's a blog site. Blog about what you're interested in and stop worrying whether User X is doing somethign that annoys you. It's supposed to be FUN. F U N...