> hahaha seriously. this is the internet they want to go back to.

Well there were obviously good and bad things about it.

Some people think there's a way to be inclusive unlike the way it was once very exclusive while still embracing the general ethos of the original Internet - which was people connected directly via the infrastructure rather than through third party corporations.

We can have an inclusive internet - digital democracy, as it was once called - without walled gardens.

Can we though? That comment demonstrates very clearly that it wasn't as democratic as people are remembering.

You had a chance to make an inclusive internet, and you made an encyclopedia that was blind to the largest most significant art & cultural movement in generations. What are you going to do differently this time?

I find "we didn't, therefore we can't" a kind of defeatist and unrealistic reaction. The internet has been shaped and reshaped a few times, in a lot of ways for the better, I don't see why it couldn't continue to be refined.

I'm not taking that position, quite. But I'm not seeing much contrition for it being that way the first time around, or sophisticated evaluation of why it was, or a plan for how to improve it in the future. Without those I think the hope that it'll improve in these ways is simply naive.

What I'm arguing is that we're taking 2 steps forward and 1 step back rather than a linear path of improvement. In this case one of the steps backward being the walled gardens, steps forward including the democratization of the internet as a whole.

I enjoyed the tweet above as a glimpse into the past, but it's far too cherry-picked for you to use it as an indictment of the early internet. The article for 'Gangsta Rap' (May '01) predates 'Country Music' (Oct '01), 'English Language' (Nov '01) and 'Mayonnaise' (Jul '02), but you wouldn't think very highly of me if I used that to make an opposite claim.

I don't think the 'Hip Hop Music' (Apr '03) cherry-pick even holds up on its own. The creation edit says it's being taken from an already-existing page called 'Hip hop', whose history I'm unable to find.

I tracked it down, the 'Hip hop' page is from June 2001.

No, although I understand why such a simplistic and easily-digestible idea would be appealing to a group of people who increasingly want simple answers.

We want to go back to the Internet of thick-skinned people who rarely even blocked others, much less actively tried to get them banned.

We want to go back to the Internet where you can say wild shit and people are smart / savvy enough to know you're just being edgy and not an actual hateful person.

We want to go back to the Internet that wasn't controlled by gigantic megacorporations who have incredibly outsized influence on what people do and do not see.

In short, a lot of older Netizens want 1999 back. And for good reason.

> We want to go back to the Internet of thick-skinned people who rarely even blocked others, much less actively tried to get them banned.

IRC had channel-wide, server-wide blocks available since the olden days, as well as user-to-user blocking. The term "flamewar" is old school from these days where people got hella banned. Forums had trolls that were banned and re-banned, see: the age of the term "sockpuppet".

If anything discord is way more open than IRC in that respect. In IRC you can own a channel and ban anyone who comes from another channel you dislike. You cannot pre-emptively ban all members of another server from your discord server.

> IRC had channel-wide, server-wide blocks available since the olden days, as well as user-to-user blocking. The term "flamewar" is old school from these days where people got hella banned. Forums had trolls that were banned and re-banned, see: the age of the term "sockpuppet".

And you had to really work to get a ban in most forums and IRC channels. You had to really step out of line - and continue stepping out of line.

Cast even a momentary glance at the things people get banned for on Reddit, or used to be banned for on Twitter.

A woman declaring, "Men are not women." is enough to have her Twitter account permanently deactivated. Try telling me that's even remotely close to how things were in the 1990s Internet.

> And you had to really work to get a ban in most forums and IRC channels. You had to really step out of line - and continue stepping out of line.

I disagree with this. It was easy to get kicked out of a channel for just being kinda annoying, and then if the mods just didn't like you they can just ban you. Also, like I said, it was normal to channel-ban (i.e. pre-emptively prevent any members from a channel to join yours) notorious channels.

Also yeah I would also kick people talking about "men are not women" just for being off-topic in my channel, which was about computer builds lol. If someone got kicked for being off-topic and came back and continued to be that way they got a ban for being annoying. It was super common to just ban vaguely annoying people.

The word "plonk" was coined in 1989. https://infogalactic.com/info/Plonk_(Usenet)

The problem with the culture of "just assume people are joking" is that some people aren't joking. The background of edgy jokes was used very effectively by actual hate movements, to massive impact.

We all have to live with the consequences of that, and one of yours is that you're not getting the benefit of the doubt on nasty jokes anymore.

You need to acknowledge that something went wrong, and then consider why it did. Rather than have this naive nostalgia for an internet culture that only existed because "thick-skinned" is a euphemism for "people not actually in danger."

I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but if I may try to interpret: it sounds like you want to go back to an Internet with not nearly so many people on it, where the culture of "being online" was more homogeneous.

One can imagine why that's a problem in a world of 8 billion people, all of whom (some say) have a right to be online.

Anytime someone says, "Blah blah sentiment blah blah... BUUUUUUT", what they're really saying is, "I'm doing exactly what you think I'm doing, but I don't want anyone to call me out on it!"

And just have the goddamned courage to say what you want to say to begin with. You're exactly the problem. You can't even be honest enough to say, "You just want the Internet to be white again!"

We didn't have voice communication when I was young. Sending a single high-resolution GIF took 10-15 minutes. In 1996, it took 28 minutes for me to receive a single 4 MB MP3 via DCC in IRC using mIRC. We didn't know what color anyone was. Oftentimes we didn't even know what nationality someone was. You were judged solely by the quality of your content. How good were your arguments? How cogent was your point? How well do you present yourself in communication.

> "You just want the Internet to be white again!"

I sought not to put words in your mouth because I didn't know your meaning. But if they come out of your mouth as an intepretation of my interpretation, I have to assume that's what you meant to say.

> You were judged solely by the quality of your content

I remember; I was there too. A not-insignificant portion of "quality of one's content" was whether it fit the right 'hacker' mold. How well did you present your argument? Did you use the right words? Were you savvy to the right concepts?

Those concepts were couched in the culture that originated the Internet, which leaned in a certain race, class, and gender direction. You didn't know what nationality someone was, but they got ignored if they didn't use the right words. And the choice of what words were right wasn't a democracy; it was a biased selection from the first people to trailblaze the culture, who brought their cultural baggage with them.

You and I are both old enough to remember "There are no girls on the Internet."

Now that we're building a net for 8 billion people, a lot of those norms are obsolete and over-constraining.