Dying stars are not reaching outward. They have hit the limits of their expansion, and now all they have is their gravity, which makes them fall inward. The gravity gradually increases until they become black holes that eat all matter and light around them.
Newborn stars are expanding with something like joy. They reach out toward the farthest extremes of the universe, not yet educated in the cynicism that they won't make it.
If you were a Zen master ninja Knight rock star, which of the two would you want to be?
Forums die in the same way. They become self-referential. People stop caring about what they're talking about, and start caring about who's kissed whose ass.
They start asking admins to delete pest users.
I don't want to sneak around deleting people for expressing literate opinions. Some users here may be social retards, but the content of their ideas could be good. Should I delete someone just because he irritates others?
Although I am a good Platonist, the idea of sneaking around and deleting pests reeks to me of death and failure. If someone bothers you, don't reply to his or her posts, but retaliate with something better. If you can't think of something better, you're the dying star, not the newborn.
Let us be overmen and cast aside our resentments, our social plagues and our bitterness. Forward; upward; growth; conquest; beautymaking; even sodomy! -- these are all healthy than going inward and becoming self-referential.
This forum is what you make of it. When forums die, the tendency is for a few loudmouths to dominate conversation by steering it toward socially acceptable, normal, mundane topics and away from exploration of the interesting. I think a lot of us here are watching those self-styled saviors of this forum and worrying about the kind of tedious order they would impose.