If you spend any amount of time perusing the small internets (for there are many), you will come across a link to yesterweb.org. However, you’ll quickly discover that it is no longer active (see forum post explaining). It’s a bittersweet feeling for anyone coming in late to the game.

But if you continue reading the available corpus, especially the “Summary” you’ll find some interesting resources. I particularly enjoyed reading the sections under Significant Errors. To select a couple (just read the bolded parts for the gist):

On community size

It makes no sense to have over a thousand people in one chatroom and simultaneously have high standards for the quality of social connection and discussion.

On picking good moderators

Since moderation is (typically unpaid) work, many moderators rationalize this sacrifice through non-monetary compensation. […] Others will realize this value in their self-aggrandizement …

On compromising on technology

From our time with the Discord refusers it became clear that the vast majority were more concerned about the technology (and, ultimately, themselves) and less concerned about its social implications. […] without [Discord] it would have been impossible for us to accomplish in any significant manner what we had set out to do.

I don’t agree with this take, obviously, since I’m on here and not a Discord server. But I appreciate the authors sticking their neck out, and putting their rationale in writing, where it can be picked apart by armchair copy-pasters like me. :P

Misunderstanding terms/aims of project

Our understanding of culture had evolved over time and we realized at the very end that there was a widespread confusion with members mistaking a counterculture for a subculture.

See their definition of subculture v. counterculture here

There are a tonne of other notes, forum posts, blog entries, etc etc etc to dig into, but ultimately the project “failed” in some interesting and v well documented ways. I found this snippet from the forums of particular interest as someone who struggles even to raise their personal consciousness:

… the old culture returned and we could not progress from a tech-nostalgia-fandom server with a petty-bourgeois sense of rebellion that emulates what one would commonly find on Tumblr, Mastodon, or homes in a wealthy first world suburb.

Something to think about, right?

PS. If you poke around, you might find certain offshoots and capsules still pinging the void.