5 ms·

You know why Reddit and Twitter became some toxic environments? Because they're not designed for healthy community development. And neither is this. It's a mind

You know why Reddit and Twitter became some toxic environments? Because they're not designed for healthy community development. And neither is this. It's a mindless clone and it already looks like it's turning toxic.

dejawu 9y ago
Not rhetorical - how does one design a community for healthy development? I've messed with forum design before and I'm curious how the layout and format influence behavior.
- alex_g 9y ago
  I think this is an interesting topic too. Some ideas I've had on this: You prevent people from posting terribly toxic comments in the first place, whether that's automatic moderation or warning them that their comment is toxic and to reconsider what they're about to post. I'm gonna plug http://www.getspectrum.io http://www.getspectrum.io here b/c it's relevant. Require answering a question related to the topic at hand before allowing comment submissions. I read about this being done by a news site in Europe not too long ago. Prompt the audience/community with a specific question/prompt that the discussion/comments will be in about. That way every comment is a direct response to the same question. This could help keep things on topic. I think a lot of toxic comments are often from indirect tangents. What if you could see comments that have been posted only after posting one of your own? That way your primary contribution is an organic thought and not an angered response to what someone else has said.
  - chasing 9y ago
    You're thinking good thoughts as far as being aware of the various effects that software design will have on community. Hacker News, for example, restricts certain actions (like downvoting) until you've crossed a certain participation threshold. Other sites disallow downvoting entirely. Some sites don't allow images or links. Others do. Some require a few bucks payment to join. There are all sorts of technical tricks to help tune a community. But there's also just non-technical stuff. Which I would argue is actually more important, since any piece of social software can be perverted if a certain subset of users is determined. A non-technical example: setting community norms. Hacker News also does this reasonably well -- the community doesn't respond well to goofy memes, for example. This isn't something you read in the rule book, it's something you experience by reading comments and feeling out the tone of the conversation. And if you do post something that doesn't fit the community, you'll pick up a few downvotes or some-such. Most users understand the nature of the community so it self-polices relatively well (with a little help from moderators). I think large open communities (Twitter, Reddit) that need to maintain a ton of traffic to make money have trouble with this: It's tough to want to service the community needs of the entire planet and tell people "Behavior X isn't something that's appropriate here." I'm not an expert and before you tear me a new one, remember that this is a Hacker News comment and not a peer reviewed journal article. I'm just tossing out some thoughts. But my belief is that designing for communities is actually quite a challenge, and the fact of the matter is most people putting communities up online right now don't really put much thought into it. Which is a shame. It allows a small subset of toxic users to really damage what should be a good thing for the rest of us. Back in the days of yore -- late 90s through 2006-ish -- community design was actually a pretty hotly debated topic. But, like I said, it really seems like these days old fashioned comment threads (like you see on news articles), Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter have established themselves as the blueprint for community design and people just sort of copy those without thinking about how they do and don't work. And then online communities become toxic and some people assume all online communities are toxic and then some people start thinking all people are toxic and -- hey! Look where we are. (I'm stretching a bit at the end, here, of course. ;-) )
    - alex_g 9y ago
      Not sure why you think I'd tear you a new one, that was a well thought out reply, which I very much appreciate. You bring up a great point about the self policing. That's why HackerNews, ProductHunt, and many of the smaller subreddits do quite well. But what differentiates an old fashion comment thread from a better solution if not the "technical tricks"? Also, "in the days of yore", when community design was a hotly debated topic, what were the debates about? I'd love to learn more about that discussion.
      - chasing 9y ago
        Heh. I get a little defensive sometimes. ;-) Again: I'm not an expert. But I feel I've been around the block on this topic. Some people think it's a naughty word, but: Moderation. Or -- to put it in different terms -- a community manager. That's one way to try to enforce norms. But I'd say that the most powerful way is via intelligent growth. For example, don't just open the floodgates. Grow a community at a rate where newcomers never overwhelm the existing users. Communities that "break" can be hard to "fix" once toxic norms have been established. The debates would probably seem fairly simplistic to today's ears, but remember that the community design of Twitter (140 chars, public, "following") was a novel idea a dozen-or-so years ago. There was a ton of experimentation with how different communities could be built. Big business at the time! One place I've found interesting as far as learning about community design is online games. Game designers are trying to design very specific experiences for users, and you can learn a lot by looking at how Overwatch (for example) tunes both gameplay and community to craft that experience. Even when playing with a dozen strangers. Anyway, maybe those are some leads for you.
        meheleventyone 9y ago
        In this vein this talk from Raph Koster from this years GDC is great, it's VR/AR directed but widely applicable beyond as the lessons are drawn from long experience with MMOs and it's really about designing societies: https://vimeo.com/208372546 https://vimeo.com/208372546
movedx 9y ago
Then host your own.
edgartaor 9y ago
How do you design website to be a healthy community? I can't think any website/social network with that characteristic, no without moderators.
- ducttapecrown 9y ago
  Aristotle speaks at length about this in Politics.
jnbiche 9y ago
> Because they're not designed for healthy community development. How so? Would you expand on this? With Twitter, I agree. But how is Reddit not designed for healthy communities? (I agree that they are not always healthy)
mercurial 9y ago
Reddit is as "toxic" as the Internet as large, considering that it's made up of very disparate communities.
gman83 9y ago
I don't think that's entirely fair. Reddit does allow healthy community development, it just requires good mods on a subreddit. For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  Hi. I moderate a subreddit you probably haven't heard of, with only a bit over 200k subscribers and ~1M-ish pageviews/day. I can tell you right now that reddit provides virtually no useful tools to moderators -- we have to turn to browser extensions to get even basic functionality like "remove this comment and its children" or ability to issue a ban while looking at the offending post/comment -- and that for a large or growing subreddit, moderating is essentially an unpaid full-time job. So when people inevitably point to /r/askhistorians or similar as examples of "good" subreddits, please keep in mind that you are not seeing something reddit itself nurtured or helped or provided tools to do -- you are seeing something that succeeded in spite of the way reddit is built and run.
VeejayRampay 9y ago
It's not a "design" issue. Just put enough people together and anything becomes toxic eventually.
- chasing 9y ago
  That's actually not true. A lot of thought has gone into healthy community building -- both on- and offline. But, yes, it can be easy to get wrong. Takes work. Which online communities (especially) oftentimes seem either unwilling or unable to do. (Or they're oblivious that it needs to be done at all.)
pamqzl 9y ago
If there's one neologism I'd love to get rid of, it's the use of "toxic" to describe speech that you dislike. It's all over this thread. Think about what the metaphor of "toxicity" does for speech. By all means, you can find speech to be disagreeable, or annoying, or factually or morally wrong. I read all sorts of things that I disagree with, and some that I find actively annoying. But the metaphor of "toxicity" implies something more -- that these ideas are actually dangerous, and some kind of public health hazard. If something is "toxic" then you don't just dislike it, you need to actively protect yourself from being contaminated with it, and it activates your disgust reflexes. After all, better to be safe than sorry when it comes to toxins, right? Basically, the idea that ideas can be "toxic" seems to be a roundabout way of inviting censors to come in and save us all from the danger of having to read things that we don't like. Let's ditch the word "toxic" for things that aren't actually harmful chemicals, and learn to deal with the fact that things we don't like on the internet are best dealt with by not reading them.
- pjc50 9y ago
  > best dealt with by not reading them If A is discussing with B their plans for my murder, or creating fictional dossiers of alleged crimes of mine and sending them to police and my employer, or sharing compromising photos without my consent, then ignoring them does not work. Less hyperbolically, it's only safe to ignore the speech of others against you so long as it has no chance of having an effect. Whether that's through legislation or street violence. Toxicity is exactly the right word for hate speech, because it can cause hate to spread out in ways that cause real injury or death.
  - 1787 9y ago
    You can't just try and smudge the line between speech integral to criminal conduct and defamation and other speech. The way we avoid sliding down the slope is by requiring an immediate demonstrable harm - any fuzzy argument of the "can cause" variety is too easily applied.
- chasing 9y ago
  Toxic != controversial. Toxic means poisonous. Toxicity in communities spoils the community because people place bickering, verbal fighting, and beating other people at insults over communicating ideas, debating, and respecting one another. It damages and will eventually kill a community as people get upset and then tune out and go other places. And if they don't feel they can go elsewhere, they'll feel stuck, wounded, and bitter. Hate speech is an example of toxic behavior. At least, that's the reason awful people use it: It's a disruption. It distracts people and angers people so they act out in their own possibly negative ways. It's the whole MO of people like Mile and Ann Coulter: Say offensive things, but then attempt take the high road when people get visibly upset. It's a pattern that can quickly convert otherwise healthy communities into group of screaming upset people. That's toxic. So, yes, "toxic" is a great word. And communities should protect themselves from toxic behavior.
eighthnate 9y ago
> You know why Reddit and Twitter became some toxic environments? When were they toxic environments? Reddit and Twitter are what you make of it. Are you saying it's toxic because people are able to express opinion that you disagree with?
- chasing 9y ago
  > Are you saying it's toxic because people are able to express opinion that you disagree with? Nope. That's not what "toxic" means, here. See my comment further up the thread.

dejawu 9y ago

Not rhetorical - how does one design a community for healthy development? I've messed with forum design before and I'm curious how the layout and format influence behavior.

alex_g 9y ago
I think this is an interesting topic too. Some ideas I've had on this: You prevent people from posting terribly toxic comments in the first place, whether that's automatic moderation or warning them that their comment is toxic and to reconsider what they're about to post. I'm gonna plug http://www.getspectrum.io http://www.getspectrum.io here b/c it's relevant. Require answering a question related to the topic at hand before allowing comment submissions. I read about this being done by a news site in Europe not too long ago. Prompt the audience/community with a specific question/prompt that the discussion/comments will be in about. That way every comment is a direct response to the same question. This could help keep things on topic. I think a lot of toxic comments are often from indirect tangents. What if you could see comments that have been posted only after posting one of your own? That way your primary contribution is an organic thought and not an angered response to what someone else has said.
- chasing 9y ago
  You're thinking good thoughts as far as being aware of the various effects that software design will have on community. Hacker News, for example, restricts certain actions (like downvoting) until you've crossed a certain participation threshold. Other sites disallow downvoting entirely. Some sites don't allow images or links. Others do. Some require a few bucks payment to join. There are all sorts of technical tricks to help tune a community. But there's also just non-technical stuff. Which I would argue is actually more important, since any piece of social software can be perverted if a certain subset of users is determined. A non-technical example: setting community norms. Hacker News also does this reasonably well -- the community doesn't respond well to goofy memes, for example. This isn't something you read in the rule book, it's something you experience by reading comments and feeling out the tone of the conversation. And if you do post something that doesn't fit the community, you'll pick up a few downvotes or some-such. Most users understand the nature of the community so it self-polices relatively well (with a little help from moderators). I think large open communities (Twitter, Reddit) that need to maintain a ton of traffic to make money have trouble with this: It's tough to want to service the community needs of the entire planet and tell people "Behavior X isn't something that's appropriate here." I'm not an expert and before you tear me a new one, remember that this is a Hacker News comment and not a peer reviewed journal article. I'm just tossing out some thoughts. But my belief is that designing for communities is actually quite a challenge, and the fact of the matter is most people putting communities up online right now don't really put much thought into it. Which is a shame. It allows a small subset of toxic users to really damage what should be a good thing for the rest of us. Back in the days of yore -- late 90s through 2006-ish -- community design was actually a pretty hotly debated topic. But, like I said, it really seems like these days old fashioned comment threads (like you see on news articles), Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter have established themselves as the blueprint for community design and people just sort of copy those without thinking about how they do and don't work. And then online communities become toxic and some people assume all online communities are toxic and then some people start thinking all people are toxic and -- hey! Look where we are. (I'm stretching a bit at the end, here, of course. ;-) )
  - alex_g 9y ago
    Not sure why you think I'd tear you a new one, that was a well thought out reply, which I very much appreciate. You bring up a great point about the self policing. That's why HackerNews, ProductHunt, and many of the smaller subreddits do quite well. But what differentiates an old fashion comment thread from a better solution if not the "technical tricks"? Also, "in the days of yore", when community design was a hotly debated topic, what were the debates about? I'd love to learn more about that discussion.
    - chasing 9y ago
      Heh. I get a little defensive sometimes. ;-) Again: I'm not an expert. But I feel I've been around the block on this topic. Some people think it's a naughty word, but: Moderation. Or -- to put it in different terms -- a community manager. That's one way to try to enforce norms. But I'd say that the most powerful way is via intelligent growth. For example, don't just open the floodgates. Grow a community at a rate where newcomers never overwhelm the existing users. Communities that "break" can be hard to "fix" once toxic norms have been established. The debates would probably seem fairly simplistic to today's ears, but remember that the community design of Twitter (140 chars, public, "following") was a novel idea a dozen-or-so years ago. There was a ton of experimentation with how different communities could be built. Big business at the time! One place I've found interesting as far as learning about community design is online games. Game designers are trying to design very specific experiences for users, and you can learn a lot by looking at how Overwatch (for example) tunes both gameplay and community to craft that experience. Even when playing with a dozen strangers. Anyway, maybe those are some leads for you.
      - meheleventyone 9y ago
        In this vein this talk from Raph Koster from this years GDC is great, it's VR/AR directed but widely applicable beyond as the lessons are drawn from long experience with MMOs and it's really about designing societies: https://vimeo.com/208372546 https://vimeo.com/208372546

movedx 9y ago

Then host your own.

edgartaor 9y ago

How do you design website to be a healthy community? I can't think any website/social network with that characteristic, no without moderators.

ducttapecrown 9y ago
Aristotle speaks at length about this in Politics.

jnbiche 9y ago

> Because they're not designed for healthy community development. How so? Would you expand on this? With Twitter, I agree. But how is Reddit not designed for healthy communities? (I agree that they are not always healthy)

mercurial 9y ago

Reddit is as "toxic" as the Internet as large, considering that it's made up of very disparate communities.

gman83 9y ago

I don't think that's entirely fair. Reddit does allow healthy community development, it just requires good mods on a subreddit. For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/

ubernostrum 9y ago
Hi. I moderate a subreddit you probably haven't heard of, with only a bit over 200k subscribers and ~1M-ish pageviews/day. I can tell you right now that reddit provides virtually no useful tools to moderators -- we have to turn to browser extensions to get even basic functionality like "remove this comment and its children" or ability to issue a ban while looking at the offending post/comment -- and that for a large or growing subreddit, moderating is essentially an unpaid full-time job. So when people inevitably point to /r/askhistorians or similar as examples of "good" subreddits, please keep in mind that you are not seeing something reddit itself nurtured or helped or provided tools to do -- you are seeing something that succeeded in spite of the way reddit is built and run.

VeejayRampay 9y ago

It's not a "design" issue. Just put enough people together and anything becomes toxic eventually.

chasing 9y ago
That's actually not true. A lot of thought has gone into healthy community building -- both on- and offline. But, yes, it can be easy to get wrong. Takes work. Which online communities (especially) oftentimes seem either unwilling or unable to do. (Or they're oblivious that it needs to be done at all.)

pamqzl 9y ago

If there's one neologism I'd love to get rid of, it's the use of "toxic" to describe speech that you dislike. It's all over this thread. Think about what the metaphor of "toxicity" does for speech. By all means, you can find speech to be disagreeable, or annoying, or factually or morally wrong. I read all sorts of things that I disagree with, and some that I find actively annoying. But the metaphor of "toxicity" implies something more -- that these ideas are actually dangerous, and some kind of public health hazard. If something is "toxic" then you don't just dislike it, you need to actively protect yourself from being contaminated with it, and it activates your disgust reflexes. After all, better to be safe than sorry when it comes to toxins, right? Basically, the idea that ideas can be "toxic" seems to be a roundabout way of inviting censors to come in and save us all from the danger of having to read things that we don't like. Let's ditch the word "toxic" for things that aren't actually harmful chemicals, and learn to deal with the fact that things we don't like on the internet are best dealt with by not reading them.

pjc50 9y ago
> best dealt with by not reading them If A is discussing with B their plans for my murder, or creating fictional dossiers of alleged crimes of mine and sending them to police and my employer, or sharing compromising photos without my consent, then ignoring them does not work. Less hyperbolically, it's only safe to ignore the speech of others against you so long as it has no chance of having an effect. Whether that's through legislation or street violence. Toxicity is exactly the right word for hate speech, because it can cause hate to spread out in ways that cause real injury or death.
- 1787 9y ago
  You can't just try and smudge the line between speech integral to criminal conduct and defamation and other speech. The way we avoid sliding down the slope is by requiring an immediate demonstrable harm - any fuzzy argument of the "can cause" variety is too easily applied.
chasing 9y ago
Toxic != controversial. Toxic means poisonous. Toxicity in communities spoils the community because people place bickering, verbal fighting, and beating other people at insults over communicating ideas, debating, and respecting one another. It damages and will eventually kill a community as people get upset and then tune out and go other places. And if they don't feel they can go elsewhere, they'll feel stuck, wounded, and bitter. Hate speech is an example of toxic behavior. At least, that's the reason awful people use it: It's a disruption. It distracts people and angers people so they act out in their own possibly negative ways. It's the whole MO of people like Mile and Ann Coulter: Say offensive things, but then attempt take the high road when people get visibly upset. It's a pattern that can quickly convert otherwise healthy communities into group of screaming upset people. That's toxic. So, yes, "toxic" is a great word. And communities should protect themselves from toxic behavior.

eighthnate 9y ago

> You know why Reddit and Twitter became some toxic environments? When were they toxic environments? Reddit and Twitter are what you make of it. Are you saying it's toxic because people are able to express opinion that you disagree with?

chasing 9y ago
> Are you saying it's toxic because people are able to express opinion that you disagree with? Nope. That's not what "toxic" means, here. See my comment further up the thread.