8 ms·

Same situation as Wikipedia: Absolute power corrupts absolutely - but so does a small, petty amount.

by lainga 9y ago

notatoad 9y ago
I think it's significant though that both wikipedia and stack overflow, despite being ruled by petty assholes weilding the smallest amount of power in seemingly the stupidest way possible, have become two of the most valuable references in existence. Do toxic communities produce better content?
- saint_fiasco 9y ago
  If there is a correlation, it's more likely that the sort of petty asshole who likes to feel important will prefer to invest more effort in a site that is valuable. So the more valuable a site becomes, the more it will attract highly motivated but slightly sociopathic moderators.
  - Viliam1234 9y ago
    Yes, this seems more likely. If you create a new website with first 10 toxic users, it will never grow, because they will scare away any potential 11th user. But if you create a new website with awesome users, it get useful content and grow. When it grows very large and attracts too many users, you will have to start moderating heavily. But moderating a website is an exhausting task, and awesome people usually have other things to do; so gradually the job will be taken by people hungry for some kind of power. Then the site becomes toxic.
- lstyls 9y ago
  Not according to the linked post, at least: > Let’s reject the false dichotomy between quality and kindness. Quality matters because it means posts can help more people. But a larger, more diverse community produces better artifacts, not worse ones. We need to stop justifying condescension with the pursuit of quality, and we need better tools and queues to help power users trying to keep quality high.
- FussyZeus 9y ago
  I would argue there are way too many variables in that question to present a strong argument either way. One thing I will say on it though is how much of our humanity are we ready to sacrifice on the altar of this mythical "meritocracy" that every online community, especially those built on or around code, seems to aim for? And how long until we're ready to confront the fact that a lot of these meritocracies strangely produce very similar "top contributors" in terms of demographics, i.e. white, straight men? I'm not getting into either side of it, I'm just saying that you have to admit it's an astonishing coincidence that online communities, started by, moderated by, largely inhabited by, and currently operated by white men seemingly always have a cadre of white men on the top as the "most valuable contributors" and nobody ever seems to wonder if all those things are connected. Maybe the fears of POC/women are invalid. Maybe it's all a big damn misunderstanding. But I don't think it's right to have white men deciding if it is or not, and I don't think the best damn catalog of coding answers on the planet means a thing if everyone who isn't part of the in-crowd is too damn terrified to ask a question of it.
  - notatoad 9y ago
    >One thing I will say on it though is how much of our humanity are we ready to sacrifice on the altar of this mythical "meritocracy" that every online community, especially those built on or around code, seems to aim for? i don't mean to imply that we should preserve the toxic communities for the point of good content. but there seems to be a correlation here, and it's worth studying what positive effects the toxicity might create, otherwise it's going to be very difficult to re-create it without the toxicity and the sites that value the human creators over the content will always be at a natural disadvantage to the other sites.
    - FussyZeus 9y ago
      I'd imagine you could exploit all kinds of humanities' worse tendencies (in this case, tribalism) and create something that is "better" in some measurements, the real challenge I think is objectively ranking different communities based on the quality of the content in question, and finding how that correlates to whatever, in this case, "tribe" is being used to make it. IMHO, no problem ever, software related or otherwise has benefited or been solved better by way of having fewer brains involved, and the shortest path to having more brains is having more people, i.e. being more open and inclusive. It would seem to be that SO already has excellent tools to moderate quality without resorting to allowing users to treat each other in such a poor manner.
- kbenson 9y ago
  I can see it the other way too. Good content may lead to certain types of toxic communities. Possibly by encouraging people to police content more in an effort to "keep quality high/from falling", and putting artificially high bars on contributing.
- vkou 9y ago
  > I think it's significant though that both wikipedia and stack overflow, despite being ruled by petty assholes weilding the smallest amount of power in seemingly the stupidest way possible, have become two of the most valuable references in existence. Wikipedia is quite valuable. These days, I find StackOverflow to be nearly-useless.
  - droidist2 9y ago
    What changed to make StackOverflow to be less useful than it was?
- CM30 9y ago
  I wouldn't say toxic communities produce better content. I would say heavily moderated ones often do. That's because in general, a community without much in the way of moderation often becomes a wasteland filled with spammers and useless posts and misinformation, as seen on many webmaster forums over the years. If Stack Overflow and Wikipedia are doing well here, it's merely because their assholery has also stopped the SEO merchants and junk peddlers from turning it into Warrior Forums or Wikia. But that doesn't mean a toxic community is better. It's entirely possible to have a fair, evenly moderated forum with a high level of quality control, as seen on the likes of Ask Historians over at Reddit. A truly toxic community will eventually die or be replaced, as seen by one I won't name which banned people for making typos or disagreeing with the staff on any topic in history. Edit: Though I think even this may be a simplification. Basically, a small or niche forum can be extremely relaxed yet still have a high level of quality (see my own Wario Forums site), but it'll have to make a decision between going downhill in terms of quality or becoming harsher on the moderation as it turns into a big board if it doesn't want to become a wasteland.
- scardine 9y ago
  No, it is not that toxic communities produce better content, it is just the fact that encyclopedic content websites tend to atract borderline autistic people obsessed with some subject who sound like absolute jerks for everybody but themselves.
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    Can you not use autistic as an insult, please?
    - scardine 9y ago
      Dude, I don't. My 5 year old son is in the spectrum and I probably would be diagnosed as well by todays standard. We are lucky enough to be on the high-functional end of the spectrum but it is still taxing on the family. I can't possibly imagine how worst it is for more severe cases and I'm sorry if I offended you but many of my best friends are also borderline autistic and they are the best people I know.
      - theyinwhy 9y ago
        Perception of insult is highly subjective. Autistic and borderline are barely perceived as positive words in our society so I can follow the argument of insult when you describe wikipedia authors as borderline and autistic. Although I see that you did not mean to do harm with your sociological background.
    - akvadrako 9y ago
      It doesn't sound like an insult - it sounds just descriptive.
  - shagie 9y ago
    I am curious as to how Stack Overflow is perceived as toxic. Name calling of "borderline autistic" and "absolute jerk" would be met with fairly quick community moderation and condemnation there or on Wikipedia. Meanwhile, calling someone autistic as either a pejorative or an insult here (or reddit) is seemingly acceptable and is being defended.
- crispinb 9y ago
  > have become two of the most valuable references in existence Well I'm not sure about that. Wikipedia is the better of the two, but that's a low bar. Articles are poorly written, inconsistent, and targeted at wildly variable levels of existing knowledge. I rarely use it for anything other quick lookups of trivial facts (and even then only for unimportant purposes). It's much-visited, but that's an indicator only of ubiquitous availability. I remember long ago reading some study or other comparing its quality favourably to old-fashioned encyclopedias, but it was just a fairly risible surface fact-checking operation. Of course Wikipedia is huge so there may be vast areas of excellent quality unrelated to my interests. SO is worse, but a little more useful because of its narrower scope. So, no, IMO toxicity of community and quality of output aren't related (in either direction).
- psyc 9y ago
  I remember 2002-era Wikipedia. I personally found its openness far more valuable, but then other people became obsessed with making it just a bigger, hyperlinked, traditional encyclopedia. I believe something was lost.
  - droidist2 9y ago
    Exactly, Wikipedia was great long before it was toxic, and I don't see the rise of micromanagers on the site to have been that beneficial, certainly not enough to justify the negatives they cause.
- beenBoutIT 9y ago
  I think it does serve as a barrier against all but the most motivated who persist. The digital equivalent of being stuck on the porch at Fight Club.
- sanderjd 9y ago
  > Do toxic communities produce better content? Personally I think it's just that knowledge-building communities that win the network-effects battle produce good content due to the number of smart and generous people in the world who find out about them, entirely despite their toxicity. But winning the network-effects battle also seems to lead inevitably to toxicity, so we may never have a counter-example non-toxic knowledge-building community to compare to.
- untangle 9y ago
  > Do toxic communities produce better content? I don't think that's the right way to think about it. Rather, I would say that tightly-moderated communities of experts tend to produce better reference material ("wikis"). But this type of structure is "toxic" to discussions ("forums") and novices. The SO founders and key contributors built a wiki. The site's incentive structure pointed in this direction so everyone was complicit in this outcome. Now, site management seems to be saying that they want a "help-everyone" forum. They are -- like all big orgs with something to lose -- soliciting ideas, forming interdisciplinary committees, and giving "<3"-warming (yuk) speeches. Given how ingrained the current culture is, I believe that meaningful change would entail significant risk.
- chimprich 9y ago
  Wikipedia and SO are two of the most valuable references in existence because they're the only examples in their niche due to the network effect. I think the toxicity or otherwise of their community environment is independent of that, and it would only change if the experience was sufficiently bad to drive most people to a vastly smaller competitor.
mathattack 9y ago
The fights are so big because the stakes are so small. (Also said by Kissinger about Harvard)
vernie 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
jamesrcole 9y ago
And subreddit admins.

Same situation as Wikipedia: Absolute power corrupts absolutely - but so does a small, petty amount.

by lainga 9y ago

Same situation as Wikipedia: Absolute power corrupts absolutely - but so does a small, petty amount.

I think it's significant though that both wikipedia and stack overflow, despite being ruled by petty assholes weilding the smallest amount of power in seemingly the stupidest way possible, have become two of the most valuable references in existence. Do toxic communities produce better content?

saint_fiasco 9y ago
If there is a correlation, it's more likely that the sort of petty asshole who likes to feel important will prefer to invest more effort in a site that is valuable. So the more valuable a site becomes, the more it will attract highly motivated but slightly sociopathic moderators.
- Viliam1234 9y ago
  Yes, this seems more likely. If you create a new website with first 10 toxic users, it will never grow, because they will scare away any potential 11th user. But if you create a new website with awesome users, it get useful content and grow. When it grows very large and attracts too many users, you will have to start moderating heavily. But moderating a website is an exhausting task, and awesome people usually have other things to do; so gradually the job will be taken by people hungry for some kind of power. Then the site becomes toxic.
lstyls 9y ago
Not according to the linked post, at least: > Let’s reject the false dichotomy between quality and kindness. Quality matters because it means posts can help more people. But a larger, more diverse community produces better artifacts, not worse ones. We need to stop justifying condescension with the pursuit of quality, and we need better tools and queues to help power users trying to keep quality high.
FussyZeus 9y ago
I would argue there are way too many variables in that question to present a strong argument either way. One thing I will say on it though is how much of our humanity are we ready to sacrifice on the altar of this mythical "meritocracy" that every online community, especially those built on or around code, seems to aim for? And how long until we're ready to confront the fact that a lot of these meritocracies strangely produce very similar "top contributors" in terms of demographics, i.e. white, straight men? I'm not getting into either side of it, I'm just saying that you have to admit it's an astonishing coincidence that online communities, started by, moderated by, largely inhabited by, and currently operated by white men seemingly always have a cadre of white men on the top as the "most valuable contributors" and nobody ever seems to wonder if all those things are connected. Maybe the fears of POC/women are invalid. Maybe it's all a big damn misunderstanding. But I don't think it's right to have white men deciding if it is or not, and I don't think the best damn catalog of coding answers on the planet means a thing if everyone who isn't part of the in-crowd is too damn terrified to ask a question of it.
- notatoad 9y ago
  >One thing I will say on it though is how much of our humanity are we ready to sacrifice on the altar of this mythical "meritocracy" that every online community, especially those built on or around code, seems to aim for? i don't mean to imply that we should preserve the toxic communities for the point of good content. but there seems to be a correlation here, and it's worth studying what positive effects the toxicity might create, otherwise it's going to be very difficult to re-create it without the toxicity and the sites that value the human creators over the content will always be at a natural disadvantage to the other sites.
  - FussyZeus 9y ago
    I'd imagine you could exploit all kinds of humanities' worse tendencies (in this case, tribalism) and create something that is "better" in some measurements, the real challenge I think is objectively ranking different communities based on the quality of the content in question, and finding how that correlates to whatever, in this case, "tribe" is being used to make it. IMHO, no problem ever, software related or otherwise has benefited or been solved better by way of having fewer brains involved, and the shortest path to having more brains is having more people, i.e. being more open and inclusive. It would seem to be that SO already has excellent tools to moderate quality without resorting to allowing users to treat each other in such a poor manner.
kbenson 9y ago
I can see it the other way too. Good content may lead to certain types of toxic communities. Possibly by encouraging people to police content more in an effort to "keep quality high/from falling", and putting artificially high bars on contributing.
vkou 9y ago
> I think it's significant though that both wikipedia and stack overflow, despite being ruled by petty assholes weilding the smallest amount of power in seemingly the stupidest way possible, have become two of the most valuable references in existence. Wikipedia is quite valuable. These days, I find StackOverflow to be nearly-useless.
- droidist2 9y ago
  What changed to make StackOverflow to be less useful than it was?
CM30 9y ago
I wouldn't say toxic communities produce better content. I would say heavily moderated ones often do. That's because in general, a community without much in the way of moderation often becomes a wasteland filled with spammers and useless posts and misinformation, as seen on many webmaster forums over the years. If Stack Overflow and Wikipedia are doing well here, it's merely because their assholery has also stopped the SEO merchants and junk peddlers from turning it into Warrior Forums or Wikia. But that doesn't mean a toxic community is better. It's entirely possible to have a fair, evenly moderated forum with a high level of quality control, as seen on the likes of Ask Historians over at Reddit. A truly toxic community will eventually die or be replaced, as seen by one I won't name which banned people for making typos or disagreeing with the staff on any topic in history. Edit: Though I think even this may be a simplification. Basically, a small or niche forum can be extremely relaxed yet still have a high level of quality (see my own Wario Forums site), but it'll have to make a decision between going downhill in terms of quality or becoming harsher on the moderation as it turns into a big board if it doesn't want to become a wasteland.
scardine 9y ago
No, it is not that toxic communities produce better content, it is just the fact that encyclopedic content websites tend to atract borderline autistic people obsessed with some subject who sound like absolute jerks for everybody but themselves.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  Can you not use autistic as an insult, please?
  - scardine 9y ago
    Dude, I don't. My 5 year old son is in the spectrum and I probably would be diagnosed as well by todays standard. We are lucky enough to be on the high-functional end of the spectrum but it is still taxing on the family. I can't possibly imagine how worst it is for more severe cases and I'm sorry if I offended you but many of my best friends are also borderline autistic and they are the best people I know.
    - theyinwhy 9y ago
      Perception of insult is highly subjective. Autistic and borderline are barely perceived as positive words in our society so I can follow the argument of insult when you describe wikipedia authors as borderline and autistic. Although I see that you did not mean to do harm with your sociological background.
  - akvadrako 9y ago
    It doesn't sound like an insult - it sounds just descriptive.
- shagie 9y ago
  I am curious as to how Stack Overflow is perceived as toxic. Name calling of "borderline autistic" and "absolute jerk" would be met with fairly quick community moderation and condemnation there or on Wikipedia. Meanwhile, calling someone autistic as either a pejorative or an insult here (or reddit) is seemingly acceptable and is being defended.
crispinb 9y ago
> have become two of the most valuable references in existence Well I'm not sure about that. Wikipedia is the better of the two, but that's a low bar. Articles are poorly written, inconsistent, and targeted at wildly variable levels of existing knowledge. I rarely use it for anything other quick lookups of trivial facts (and even then only for unimportant purposes). It's much-visited, but that's an indicator only of ubiquitous availability. I remember long ago reading some study or other comparing its quality favourably to old-fashioned encyclopedias, but it was just a fairly risible surface fact-checking operation. Of course Wikipedia is huge so there may be vast areas of excellent quality unrelated to my interests. SO is worse, but a little more useful because of its narrower scope. So, no, IMO toxicity of community and quality of output aren't related (in either direction).
psyc 9y ago
I remember 2002-era Wikipedia. I personally found its openness far more valuable, but then other people became obsessed with making it just a bigger, hyperlinked, traditional encyclopedia. I believe something was lost.
- droidist2 9y ago
  Exactly, Wikipedia was great long before it was toxic, and I don't see the rise of micromanagers on the site to have been that beneficial, certainly not enough to justify the negatives they cause.
beenBoutIT 9y ago
I think it does serve as a barrier against all but the most motivated who persist. The digital equivalent of being stuck on the porch at Fight Club.
sanderjd 9y ago
> Do toxic communities produce better content? Personally I think it's just that knowledge-building communities that win the network-effects battle produce good content due to the number of smart and generous people in the world who find out about them, entirely despite their toxicity. But winning the network-effects battle also seems to lead inevitably to toxicity, so we may never have a counter-example non-toxic knowledge-building community to compare to.
untangle 9y ago
> Do toxic communities produce better content? I don't think that's the right way to think about it. Rather, I would say that tightly-moderated communities of experts tend to produce better reference material ("wikis"). But this type of structure is "toxic" to discussions ("forums") and novices. The SO founders and key contributors built a wiki. The site's incentive structure pointed in this direction so everyone was complicit in this outcome. Now, site management seems to be saying that they want a "help-everyone" forum. They are -- like all big orgs with something to lose -- soliciting ideas, forming interdisciplinary committees, and giving "<3"-warming (yuk) speeches. Given how ingrained the current culture is, I believe that meaningful change would entail significant risk.
chimprich 9y ago
Wikipedia and SO are two of the most valuable references in existence because they're the only examples in their niche due to the network effect. I think the toxicity or otherwise of their community environment is independent of that, and it would only change if the experience was sufficiently bad to drive most people to a vastly smaller competitor.

mathattack 9y ago

The fights are so big because the stakes are so small. (Also said by Kissinger about Harvard)

vernie 9y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law

jamesrcole 9y ago

And subreddit admins.