On The Frailty of Wondir

The biggest strength of a community is also its biggest weakness - its contributors. There have been some excellent questions on Wondir recently - a particularly thought-provoking one on the subject of language marginalisation had me sitting in silence for minutes contemplating my answer (which surely made it a huge benefit for those around me) - but now it seems to have been discovered by high-school students, and has finally begun to suffer from the deadweight of question spamming.

Take for instance the sudden proliferation of questions about radiation and atomic chemistry; the questions are even numbered and are all multiple choice. It is obvious that this is just someone's homework, and it is fairly depressing that I have to battle my way through so many to get to the juicier questions.

The staff at Wondir are now faced with a difficult decision: to moderate or not? Moderation of the boards would be useful for people such as myself - keen to help but put-off by spam and horrendous grammar - and for teachers who might want to use the board as an educational aid. Moderation, though, could be the death of the board; it would remove the spontaneity that is the life blood of the community. If you make someone jump through hoops in order to ask a question, will that person bother at all?