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I can't speak about Hacker News, but Eternal September for me is synonymous with the "Disruptive Newcomers" effect - so you reduce the ability of newcomers to b

by egiva 16y ago

I can't speak about Hacker News, but Eternal September for me is synonymous with the "Disruptive Newcomers" effect - so you reduce the ability of newcomers to be disruptive by: 1. suspending accounts (maybe too drastic) 2. Community Flagging (middle-of-the-road approach!) 3. Progressively giving a user more rights as they contribute more to the community (StackOverflow does this well). 4. Giving experienced users a community monitoring (admin) position and the ability to edit or censure content according to your site's rules (again, StackOverflow does this, and rewards Admins with points when they edit new posts).

Jarred 16y ago
But isn't penalizing people for being disruptive wrong? I'm saying that how does one avoid a massive degradation of community culture when the community becomes larger?
- JoshKalkbrenner 16y ago
  teams
- ggchappell 16y ago
  > But isn't penalizing people for being disruptive wrong? I don't get that at all. Could you please explain why it would be "wrong" to penalize people for being disruptive?
  - Jarred 16y ago
    Just because two people don't agree on something doesn't make it right to penalize someone because they don't have the same opinion or rationale. I'm saying that most of the time culture "degradation" occurs with more people because these people aren't directly in that culture. They might not be part of it because they don't understand it in the same way as everyone else does. As a result a different interpretation can lead to a culture shift. This is what happened in "Eternal September", where the original culture and focus of the community was diluted with the growth of new individuals wanting to do things differently. Most of the time the new ways of doing things aren't as good as the old, simply because it needs to cater to a wider audience and to less of the niche it started with. This is what Hacker News needs to avoid.

by egiva 16y ago

Jarred 16y ago

But isn't penalizing people for being disruptive wrong? I'm saying that how does one avoid a massive degradation of community culture when the community becomes larger?

JoshKalkbrenner 16y ago
teams
ggchappell 16y ago
> But isn't penalizing people for being disruptive wrong? I don't get that at all. Could you please explain why it would be "wrong" to penalize people for being disruptive?
- Jarred 16y ago
  Just because two people don't agree on something doesn't make it right to penalize someone because they don't have the same opinion or rationale. I'm saying that most of the time culture "degradation" occurs with more people because these people aren't directly in that culture. They might not be part of it because they don't understand it in the same way as everyone else does. As a result a different interpretation can lead to a culture shift. This is what happened in "Eternal September", where the original culture and focus of the community was diluted with the growth of new individuals wanting to do things differently. Most of the time the new ways of doing things aren't as good as the old, simply because it needs to cater to a wider audience and to less of the niche it started with. This is what Hacker News needs to avoid.