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Hi. Some of you may know me. I'm one of the administrators of Styleforum. I've been participating on internet fashion forum since about 2000 or 2001, and have always found people's behavior on internet forums and the evolution of internet forums very interesting.
I just wanted to comment on something that Haptronic wrote:
I think that there is a difference between forums like Styleforum and Superfuture, and a forum like Stylezeitgeist. The identities of the former two forums evolved organically. Styleforum started out as a bunch of guys talking about tailored clothing - j had no "vision" of where Styleforum might be a few months after he created it, much less what it ought to look like eight years later - and our most active section is still that devoted to discussions about bespoke tailors, shirtmakers, fine shoemakers, and so on. I remember when Supertalk was the wild west, mostly unmmoderated, and with a much younger demographic than Styleforum with a focus on denim and streetwear; and as Hap wrote, Superdenim is still the heart of Supertalk, despite all of the guard changes. The different venacular used on Styleforum and on Supertalk are likewise rooted in the history of those forums.
Stylezeitgeist, on the other hand, is born of a singular vision. Their are other examples of this - The London Lounge is the tailored clothing analog to Stylezeitgeist, born out of the founder's dissatisfaction with the very conservative AskAndyAboutClothing, and AFAIK, the discussions are limited to bespoke clothing and maybe shoes. These forums are very tightly moderated, and typically hew to the vision of the founder. As long as the founder rules them with an iron hand, they can, in fact, have a purpose very close to what the founder intended.
Inevitably, there are going to be posters whose ideas conflict fundamentally with those of the founder . At this point, the founder has a choice to make re. the direction the forum is going to take. It's at this point, to paraphrase Haptronic loosely, that the founder's intent and actual purpose of the forum may begin to diverge.
One last comment, and that is that there is always going to be some animus between devoted members of different fashion forums, and by extension, different fashion tribes. I always have this funny mental image of dudes in Attolini suits with baseball bats walking across the field to face off with hipster dudes in selvedge jeans with heavy chains. I guess that now I have think of it as a three way party with a third party of guys whose first, second, and third favorite colors are black with switchblades.
Hi. Some of you may know me. I'm one of the administrators of Styleforum. I've been participating on internet fashion forum since about 2000 or 2001, and have always found people's behavior on internet forums and the evolution of internet forums very interesting.
I just wanted to comment on something that Haptronic wrote:
i seem to have gone into a long ramble about this [which i hope is at least interesting]. it does seem to me that often our perceptions about what these sites mean and the purpose is a slightly different to the way we treat them in actuality.
Stylezeitgeist, on the other hand, is born of a singular vision. Their are other examples of this - The London Lounge is the tailored clothing analog to Stylezeitgeist, born out of the founder's dissatisfaction with the very conservative AskAndyAboutClothing, and AFAIK, the discussions are limited to bespoke clothing and maybe shoes. These forums are very tightly moderated, and typically hew to the vision of the founder. As long as the founder rules them with an iron hand, they can, in fact, have a purpose very close to what the founder intended.
Inevitably, there are going to be posters whose ideas conflict fundamentally with those of the founder . At this point, the founder has a choice to make re. the direction the forum is going to take. It's at this point, to paraphrase Haptronic loosely, that the founder's intent and actual purpose of the forum may begin to diverge.
One last comment, and that is that there is always going to be some animus between devoted members of different fashion forums, and by extension, different fashion tribes. I always have this funny mental image of dudes in Attolini suits with baseball bats walking across the field to face off with hipster dudes in selvedge jeans with heavy chains. I guess that now I have think of it as a three way party with a third party of guys whose first, second, and third favorite colors are black with switchblades.
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