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Well that's part of the problem, stick to less popular subreddits, and you'll get less of the 'riff raff', to quote Basil Fawlty. And when they start getting po

Well that's part of the problem, stick to less popular subreddits, and you'll get less of the 'riff raff', to quote Basil Fawlty. And when they start getting popular find an even less popular one. I've been a part of many forums and internet communities and chat rooms, and they always tend to go the same way: The people who have been around for awhile get increasingly annoyed by the newcomers and their lack of decorum or 'idiotic statements' or whatever, so that segment of the group starts posting in a new more secluded place and use the other place less and less. Eventually more and more people find out about the 'secluded place' and it becomes more and more cluttered with 'undesirables', (often a few people from the previous group are now part of the old farts, or have become the new old farts), so a chunk of them break off from that community or forum and start posting somewhere even more secluded. And eventually it happens again. And again. And it's turtles all the way down. I saw the same exact shit happening in real life too with Meetup.com. People stopped posting stuff to meetup groups because they didn't want certain people to come, then there's a smaller group that's secret from the others, then either some people find out about it that shouldn't or one of the people in the secret group starts acting in a way that the other people don't want to deal with them anymore (for example, one time it was because they started dating someone who was a real jerk), so a new, smaller secreter group is formed, and so on...turtles all the way down again.

overcast 10y ago
Do you think it's right that the good standing users, have to go out of their way to find alternative routes to use the product? Start at the source, and clean up the problem. All you're doing is letting the trash take over, and the current system encourages it. The Meetup scenario is depressing. Thankfully the one Tech Meetup I attend every so often is positive.
- cableshaft 10y ago
  When you get the admins to clamp down, they're probably going to clamp down on some people or behavior that was tolerated or used by even the 'good' people because of some positive thing, and then those people start another group and take a bunch of those people with them, and it effectively becomes the same thing as before. I think it only works if you always had the rules in place, and even then, there will be some well liked people that will see how much they get away with, get removed, post a fit "I was ONLY doing blah and blah" and everyone else in the group gets mad and demands you let them back in, and blah, and blech. The meetup thing started innocently enough a couple times (with a couple people I was told explicitly they didn't want certain people to come), it's like 'we found some people we like hanging out with now thanks to meetup and now we're just inviting them over to our place', but eventually they stop posting their normal stuff on meetup and it gets harder and harder to keep the group going. I was a forum admin for way too long. Kinda glad I'm out of that now. Although now I'm an organizer for a meetup group, and it's not much different.
stryan 10y ago
It's not even just an internet thing, you see this situation in pretty much every community, offline or online. Surfing beaches getting flooded by tourists, gyms get taken over every January, the quiet, local bar suddenly becoming a college bar, it happens to any community place that starts out small but has a low barrier to entry. I can't even count how many times I've had to find new spots to skate (downhill longboarding, nothing that damages property or anything) because more and more people started showing up and the cops end up being called. It's just another example of the tragedy of the commons.

overcast 10y ago

Do you think it's right that the good standing users, have to go out of their way to find alternative routes to use the product? Start at the source, and clean up the problem. All you're doing is letting the trash take over, and the current system encourages it. The Meetup scenario is depressing. Thankfully the one Tech Meetup I attend every so often is positive.

cableshaft 10y ago
When you get the admins to clamp down, they're probably going to clamp down on some people or behavior that was tolerated or used by even the 'good' people because of some positive thing, and then those people start another group and take a bunch of those people with them, and it effectively becomes the same thing as before. I think it only works if you always had the rules in place, and even then, there will be some well liked people that will see how much they get away with, get removed, post a fit "I was ONLY doing blah and blah" and everyone else in the group gets mad and demands you let them back in, and blah, and blech. The meetup thing started innocently enough a couple times (with a couple people I was told explicitly they didn't want certain people to come), it's like 'we found some people we like hanging out with now thanks to meetup and now we're just inviting them over to our place', but eventually they stop posting their normal stuff on meetup and it gets harder and harder to keep the group going. I was a forum admin for way too long. Kinda glad I'm out of that now. Although now I'm an organizer for a meetup group, and it's not much different.

stryan 10y ago

It's not even just an internet thing, you see this situation in pretty much every community, offline or online. Surfing beaches getting flooded by tourists, gyms get taken over every January, the quiet, local bar suddenly becoming a college bar, it happens to any community place that starts out small but has a low barrier to entry. I can't even count how many times I've had to find new spots to skate (downhill longboarding, nothing that damages property or anything) because more and more people started showing up and the cops end up being called. It's just another example of the tragedy of the commons.