3 ms·

I wonder if part of the decline of small online communities is the sheer numbers of people using the Internet today (versus the 90's). I'll sometimes connect t

I wonder if part of the decline of small online communities is the sheer numbers of people using the Internet today (versus the 90's). I'll sometimes connect to an IRC channel about a niche programming topic, and see 1000 users. Likewise, I think it would be hard to make a personal connection to others in a large community like Hacker News where, outside of a handful of prolific posters, each discussion may be filled with different usernames than the last. I guess this is sort of a "small town" vs. "big city" effect. I suppose the "small towns" of the Internet may still be out there somewhere, but under some conditions that keep them from growing into "big cities".

IIAOPSW 9y ago
Eternal September?
- simmons 9y ago
  I think a big part of Eternal September was a culture mismatch where newcomers didn't understand the norms and expectations of Internet culture, more than just the sheer numbers of new users. Now that Internet culture and mainstream culture have converged, this aspect probably isn't that big of a deal.
  - fragmede 9y ago
    > probably isn't that big of a deal. It's a huge deal, we've just accepted it as normal. If I were to create something online today, where users were allowed to comment, I'd be an idiot if I didn't predict it would get abused by spammers and trolls as quick as you could say "4chan". Anonymity was previously believed to be a barrier to that, but comments on local news sites and Youtube comments continually prove otherwise. While our systems have become more centralized (Twitter/Reddit/Facebook) compared to connecting to your ISP's Usenet server, there's no real digital-social-etiquette training system for new users given by those centralized authorities because we've simply accepted the ramificiations to Eternal September. If I try to make a new Reddit account to post a bunch of hate speech, Reddit itself does little to dissuade me from doing so. There's a huge amount of effort to dissuade bots from creating accounts, but other than drop a link to "reddiquette" during account creation, what does Reddit do to teach me social norms during account creation? Better yet, what could they do before letting me roam wild, hurtling death threats and hate speech until the post-per-second rate limiter kicks in? Laughably little, that's what. Thats Eternal September's penalty. The idea of giving an hour long lecture, followed by an hour long interview and training session, for every single person that wants an account on a site the size of Reddit, before granting them an account, is ludicrous on the face of it simply due to the sheer number of new users. Moreover, Internet culture is not a single monolithic thing. /r/AskHistorians has wildly different standards of acceptability from /r/Nintento,and those are wildly different from /b/ or Facebook.

IIAOPSW 9y ago

Eternal September?

simmons 9y ago
I think a big part of Eternal September was a culture mismatch where newcomers didn't understand the norms and expectations of Internet culture, more than just the sheer numbers of new users. Now that Internet culture and mainstream culture have converged, this aspect probably isn't that big of a deal.
- fragmede 9y ago
  > probably isn't that big of a deal. It's a huge deal, we've just accepted it as normal. If I were to create something online today, where users were allowed to comment, I'd be an idiot if I didn't predict it would get abused by spammers and trolls as quick as you could say "4chan". Anonymity was previously believed to be a barrier to that, but comments on local news sites and Youtube comments continually prove otherwise. While our systems have become more centralized (Twitter/Reddit/Facebook) compared to connecting to your ISP's Usenet server, there's no real digital-social-etiquette training system for new users given by those centralized authorities because we've simply accepted the ramificiations to Eternal September. If I try to make a new Reddit account to post a bunch of hate speech, Reddit itself does little to dissuade me from doing so. There's a huge amount of effort to dissuade bots from creating accounts, but other than drop a link to "reddiquette" during account creation, what does Reddit do to teach me social norms during account creation? Better yet, what could they do before letting me roam wild, hurtling death threats and hate speech until the post-per-second rate limiter kicks in? Laughably little, that's what. Thats Eternal September's penalty. The idea of giving an hour long lecture, followed by an hour long interview and training session, for every single person that wants an account on a site the size of Reddit, before granting them an account, is ludicrous on the face of it simply due to the sheer number of new users. Moreover, Internet culture is not a single monolithic thing. /r/AskHistorians has wildly different standards of acceptability from /r/Nintento,and those are wildly different from /b/ or Facebook.