4 ms·

> If you want dialogue, forums, mailing lists or better yet, the real world (if you can find the community you need to discuss things with), is a better place

> If you want dialogue, forums, mailing lists or better yet, the real world (if you can find the community you need to discuss things with), is a better place to have it. Why?

jewbacca 16y ago
Hmm... more specialized fora will have the more concentrated focus of intentionally-informed people who've gathered explicitly to discuss a topic. Too much off-topic noise will get you shunned, because people come there for the signal (Reddit, though I love it, is noise incarnate). With far fewer threads, people maintain a discussion rather than post and run. In far smaller communities, with active posters within Dunbar's number[0], will call you out on your shit or for bailing whenever you get shut down. --- [0] Dunbar's number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
Lewisham 16y ago
Because groupthink is inherent in the upvoting/downvoting system. Perhaps only Slashdot is the only community I've seen where points are awarded to comments not based on agreement, but on general merit. Admit it: you've downvoted people you don't agree with. When enough people do it, you get groupthink. Forums/mailing lists don't have that problem. Every post is given equal merit in the number of eyeballs that read it. Those comments that are not interesting can get ignored, those that are interesting will either merit a "yeah, I agree" response, or a "you're wrong for [x,y,z]". That is a dialogue. Community moderated upvoted/downvoted discussions are not a dialogue. They are a "here's what we all think" metric.
- jrockway 16y ago
  In real life people just don't talk to you. There are people I don't like, and when they say something like "want to go get beer", my answer is "no".
- kaens 16y ago
  Because groupthink is inherent in the upvoting/downvoting system. I'd almost argue that groupthink is inherent in human interaction in groups larger than one. Almost. Forums and mailing lists are certainly susceptible to it, even though it occurs less often, but I suspect that has more to do with the size of their memberships. SA, for instance, has tons of it. Oh, and /. had a serious problem with it for a long time. Their moderation system helps, and maybe it's gotten a lot better (it's been a while since I was active on it), but oh man when /. was the site, it was pretty bad. /. is a good example of what seems to happen to a lot of online communities -- a small, competent, awesome base of users is very active for a while, things snowball, you then get a huge upsurge in users and activity and trolling, and then that eventually fades and your userbase stabilizes at a point where the userbase is pretty solid and there's not too much in the way of ridiculousness going on.

> If you want dialogue, forums, mailing lists or better yet, the real world (if you can find the community you need to discuss things with), is a better place to have it. Why?

jewbacca 16y ago

Hmm... more specialized fora will have the more concentrated focus of intentionally-informed people who've gathered explicitly to discuss a topic. Too much off-topic noise will get you shunned, because people come there for the signal (Reddit, though I love it, is noise incarnate). With far fewer threads, people maintain a discussion rather than post and run. In far smaller communities, with active posters within Dunbar's number[0], will call you out on your shit or for bailing whenever you get shut down. --- [0] Dunbar's number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

Lewisham 16y ago

Because groupthink is inherent in the upvoting/downvoting system. Perhaps only Slashdot is the only community I've seen where points are awarded to comments not based on agreement, but on general merit. Admit it: you've downvoted people you don't agree with. When enough people do it, you get groupthink. Forums/mailing lists don't have that problem. Every post is given equal merit in the number of eyeballs that read it. Those comments that are not interesting can get ignored, those that are interesting will either merit a "yeah, I agree" response, or a "you're wrong for [x,y,z]". That is a dialogue. Community moderated upvoted/downvoted discussions are not a dialogue. They are a "here's what we all think" metric.

jrockway 16y ago
In real life people just don't talk to you. There are people I don't like, and when they say something like "want to go get beer", my answer is "no".
kaens 16y ago
Because groupthink is inherent in the upvoting/downvoting system. I'd almost argue that groupthink is inherent in human interaction in groups larger than one. Almost. Forums and mailing lists are certainly susceptible to it, even though it occurs less often, but I suspect that has more to do with the size of their memberships. SA, for instance, has tons of it. Oh, and /. had a serious problem with it for a long time. Their moderation system helps, and maybe it's gotten a lot better (it's been a while since I was active on it), but oh man when /. was the site, it was pretty bad. /. is a good example of what seems to happen to a lot of online communities -- a small, competent, awesome base of users is very active for a while, things snowball, you then get a huge upsurge in users and activity and trolling, and then that eventually fades and your userbase stabilizes at a point where the userbase is pretty solid and there's not too much in the way of ridiculousness going on.