Do you have the sneaking suspicion that Askville is really a giant Psychology experiment?
If this were a psychological experiment, it would be one about intolerance. You take a group that is not very young and not very internet savvy. They were culled from the book buying customers of amazon.com rather than gathered from other interactive internet sites. These would be people who are mostly housebound so that they don’t have much else to do and they don’t have many outside interests beyond their books. These would be generally rigid people who believe that theirs is the only proper worldly experience. Let them get comfortable on the site and then bring in others who would challenge their world view. After that, it would be an all out battle of conservatives versus the liberals and the educators versus the homeschoolers. The born again Christians going head on against the atheists and the secular humanists. Quickly it becomes a spite and malice situation when the impoverished realized that some of the other members have more money in their pockets. The untraveled begin to at
