The Forum Ethos

This project aims to create a web-based discussion forum initially envisaged as a community of bloggers free from administrator or moderator abuse, drawn from a pool of users interested in personality and introspection. It’s uniting design ethos, therefore, consists in the following maxim:





In other words, we understand that there are causal links between the way an environment is ordered and the mental state this induces among those who inhabit it. That, in order to create a space suitable for the kind of ‘intimate, personal, and free expression’ we encourage and wish to exercise, we must make a deliberate effort to align every aspect of its structure and design to this purpose.



There are, of course, countless ways this sort of environment might be achieved, and an equally countless number of ways it might be destroyed. To take only one example, however, it ought to be obvious that the exercise of arbitrary authority is not conducive to ‘intimate, personal, and free expression’. Those who have to guard themselves against unaccountable authority, or are forced to anticipate random punitive measures against them, are not able to attain the feeling of security or openness necessary to express themselves freely. As such, the remedy is to instate an institutional structure which removes the possibility of such arbitrary authority; that, rather, creates an environment within which all members would be confident in the protections afforded to them; never taken by surprise, and never placed on guard against anticipated injustice.



We must allow ourselves to be struck by the fact, therefore, that the institutional structure of such an environment is not incidental to its core purpose of creating ‘a space conducive to intimate, personal, and free expression’, but is instead inextricably integral to it. The affective nature of an environment proceeds directly from its structure and its management.