5 ms·

In-fighting within communities is one of reddit's biggest problems.

by reitoei 11y ago

vidarh 11y ago
Yes, but then those who don't enjoy that infighting can, and often do, leave and form their own.
- reitoei 11y ago
  Which fail in 99% of cases, so they come back to the original one more bitter than when they left.
DanielBMarkham 11y ago
(Not directly applicable to Twitter, but to online communities in general) It'd be interesting if you could have two votes: whether you liked what the person posted (which would only be visible to them) and whether you'd personally share it with your friends (which would affect it's ranking only among your friends) Or put differently, I wonder if it's not possible to create a system that dynamically sorts content, instead of having static groups. Seems like static groups with a label on them inevitably end up arguing about exactly what the label means (grin). I don't want an echo chamber, and I want to be challenged -- but I don't want a daily rage fest against whomever the internet currently hates either.
- dustingetz 11y ago
  The follower system on twitter already sorts content like that, it's just the retweet system amplifies certain types of content so strongly that it drowns out other types. Amongst other glaring problems, like driving an evil feedback loop that makes twitter money by making everyone angry.
  - DanielBMarkham 11y ago
    Many times online I see a friend who is justifiably upset. Let's say they like to put their dog in a sweater and somebody said it was animal abuse. Now I could care less about dogs in sweaters, but I like my friend. I hear them and I want them to know that they have been heard. So I "like" the content. When you've only got 1,000 or so followers, no big deal. But if you're around 50 or 100K? statistically you're going to end up with dozens, maybe hundreds of likes. Some likes are "I agree!" Some likes are "I like you". How could any system distinguish the two? I have difficulties doing this in small groups where people are physically nodding their head. I know designers don't want to move away from the one-button like/vote/heart/plus/whatever, but hell if I can figure out how you'd make a system work like that without massive feedback noise (which is what's happening).
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      The other day my friend's pet died, and they put a status update on Facebook. Blow me down if they didn't get 5 sympathetic likes!
- seren 11y ago
  > I don't want an echo chamber, and I want to be challenged -- but I don't want a daily rage fest against whomever the internet currently hates either There is some scaling effect at play. Let's say in community of 1,000 - 10,000 it is easy to keep a civil discourse by small moderation and self-policing. In the 100,000 - 1,000,000 range it is much much harder. I have no idea of the size of HN but I believe it is closer to 50,000 and thus still "nice".
fredley 11y ago
I think there's probably an upper limit for how big any community can become before it becomes fractured. This size is probably variable, and dependent on the medium and structure of the community to an extent, but I'd posit it exists for any community. See: reddit, Stack Overflow, Facebook, any church, any religion, any politcal party, any country. Often secession is what happens: new subreddits, new churches, new countries. But as they grow, the same problems return. One thing I've often thought about is some kind of community-space with a fixed upper-bound on the size of communities, essentially forcing a community to split to add new members, like an old cell.
monksy 11y ago
There is bleeding over from one extremist community to others. (Namely SRS)
- nols 11y ago
  SRS is the boogeyman of Reddit. It doesn't have nearly the power so many people seem to think. There are plenty of reactionary subreddits on multiple sides of various spectrums.

In-fighting within communities is one of reddit's biggest problems.

by reitoei 11y ago

In-fighting within communities is one of reddit's biggest problems.

vidarh 11y ago

Yes, but then those who don't enjoy that infighting can, and often do, leave and form their own.

reitoei 11y ago
Which fail in 99% of cases, so they come back to the original one more bitter than when they left.

DanielBMarkham 11y ago

(Not directly applicable to Twitter, but to online communities in general) It'd be interesting if you could have two votes: whether you liked what the person posted (which would only be visible to them) and whether you'd personally share it with your friends (which would affect it's ranking only among your friends) Or put differently, I wonder if it's not possible to create a system that dynamically sorts content, instead of having static groups. Seems like static groups with a label on them inevitably end up arguing about exactly what the label means (grin). I don't want an echo chamber, and I want to be challenged -- but I don't want a daily rage fest against whomever the internet currently hates either.

dustingetz 11y ago
The follower system on twitter already sorts content like that, it's just the retweet system amplifies certain types of content so strongly that it drowns out other types. Amongst other glaring problems, like driving an evil feedback loop that makes twitter money by making everyone angry.
- DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  Many times online I see a friend who is justifiably upset. Let's say they like to put their dog in a sweater and somebody said it was animal abuse. Now I could care less about dogs in sweaters, but I like my friend. I hear them and I want them to know that they have been heard. So I "like" the content. When you've only got 1,000 or so followers, no big deal. But if you're around 50 or 100K? statistically you're going to end up with dozens, maybe hundreds of likes. Some likes are "I agree!" Some likes are "I like you". How could any system distinguish the two? I have difficulties doing this in small groups where people are physically nodding their head. I know designers don't want to move away from the one-button like/vote/heart/plus/whatever, but hell if I can figure out how you'd make a system work like that without massive feedback noise (which is what's happening).
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    The other day my friend's pet died, and they put a status update on Facebook. Blow me down if they didn't get 5 sympathetic likes!
seren 11y ago
> I don't want an echo chamber, and I want to be challenged -- but I don't want a daily rage fest against whomever the internet currently hates either There is some scaling effect at play. Let's say in community of 1,000 - 10,000 it is easy to keep a civil discourse by small moderation and self-policing. In the 100,000 - 1,000,000 range it is much much harder. I have no idea of the size of HN but I believe it is closer to 50,000 and thus still "nice".

fredley 11y ago

I think there's probably an upper limit for how big any community can become before it becomes fractured. This size is probably variable, and dependent on the medium and structure of the community to an extent, but I'd posit it exists for any community. See: reddit, Stack Overflow, Facebook, any church, any religion, any politcal party, any country. Often secession is what happens: new subreddits, new churches, new countries. But as they grow, the same problems return. One thing I've often thought about is some kind of community-space with a fixed upper-bound on the size of communities, essentially forcing a community to split to add new members, like an old cell.

monksy 11y ago

There is bleeding over from one extremist community to others. (Namely SRS)

nols 11y ago
SRS is the boogeyman of Reddit. It doesn't have nearly the power so many people seem to think. There are plenty of reactionary subreddits on multiple sides of various spectrums.