Originally Posted by
BriarFox
It's appropriate that people are bringing up Shattered, actually, because this situation with WB is similar to the problem with the Marlu clan, in that it's a discussion centered on how to deal with a disruptive and abusive social element. Rep is a community-based system with no administrative oversight. If all participants respected the function and the nature of it, it would work as it is designed to work. However, it's not designed to account for self-interested actors who abuse the system for their own benefit or amusement. In most modern societies, there are appointed authorities to deal with these problems. In a situation like Shattered or this forum, where there is no policing authority who maintains a balance, then the only response possible is a community-based one. If it's a large enough problem, then people need to band together to fix it.
Crying that fixing the problem at the community level is mob justice privileges individual action, in this case to abuse others, over the good of a group. That attitude is a problematic one in American politics as well, where the cult of the individual presides to an excessive extent. It's also just another situation that comes back to learning most of what you need to know in kindergarten: If there's one big kid on the playground who likes to bully others and you can't call in a teacher, your other option is to get a dozen kids to tie that fat-ass to a swing. The Wild West posse was a similar response, as was the medieval European charivari. This isn't a cowardly or inappropriate response: it's a rational and effective one.