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>If you go back to the 90s, when we first figured out how communities built software, it took a lot of work to use the internet. It wasn’t fast or easy, but tha

>If you go back to the 90s, when we first figured out how communities built software, it took a lot of work to use the internet. It wasn’t fast or easy, but that made it special: it meant that everyone on the internet cared about it, a lot. You were really committed to being there. Online communities back then were like a federation of villages; each one had its own culture, its own customs, and its own values. The open source community was like that too, and remained so for a long time. >In these kinds of environments, attracting more users really did advance open source projects, because the costs were usually worth it. When a new member joined a community, they were probably serious about it. There weren’t many “tourists” back then, so there was a real environment of camaraderie. Existing users were happy to onboard you and teach you things, because their effort would likely pay off as a good investment. >Since community members joined slowly and stuck around, there was a lot of trust and shared context in the group. Every community had a different way of working, so there was a fair amount of friction preventing users from jumping around or “surfing” from project to project. Groups could preserve and maintain their collective motivation to keep shipping; they weren’t getting paid, so that motivation was everything. >It sounds pretty idyllic, and for many users back then, it was. As the internet grew more popular, the old timers reliably complained every September as a new crop of college freshmen gained access for the first time, not knowing any of the social conventions. AOL opened the floodgates in 1993, which Usenet bitterly declared “Eternal September”, and the internet veterans have been complaining about it since. >We know what happened next with online content. The tapestry of forums and newsgroups that made up the early internet flourished for a while, but in the 2000s an invasive species arrived: the platforms. The platforms made it so easy to create, share, distribute and discover that everyone joined them, smushing everything together into common, user-friendly formats without the local context or nuance of the smaller groups. It seems to be an: Oh, let me tell you about the good ole' days when the internet sucked so badly that it amplified natural selection and all the twenty people on it could hack on the Linux kernel and the output was amazing. Now that any peasant can get on the information highway and participate, everything is ruined.

agumonkey 6y ago
I can't help but to feel just like the author of this article. I'm vastly in favor of taxing and hurdles as natural filters. Mainstream spoils everything (~almost). You end up having people not really into things, endless debates about side features, about how to organize the projects (inclusiveness, code of conducts, tooling), scandals and less about the passion of doing the thing. I'm often amazed at the difference in pacing and communication on Mailing Lists. It's slower but denser.
- Jugurtha 6y ago
  It's called nostalgia, and we pretty much all have that condition. There are some fields or scenes where I recall how it used to be magical, but I know my mind is playing with me. Many people think that it's too much, too many apps, too many people, too much complexity. Yes. That may be the case and this may not suit everyone, especially those who lived through a pretty magical period with the birth of the world wide Web, or BBS, or open source movement, or the free software movement. Yes, god damn, that has got to make someone nostalgic. However, all that is now is not 'just' ruining it. The Beatles are what they are because of all the people who've never been to their concerts who wish they had been, amplified by people who were there who thought Paul sucked at guitar at the time. People mostly are indifferent to shifts in the now, and only cling to the now when it becomes the good old days or when someone makes a documentary about it and we feel we belong special for belonging to something that is not anymore. This says much more about us, our desire to belong, to be special, than it says about what reality is or was. We can apply this to forums people thought sucked until they disappear and the memories kick in.
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    it's too much, not enough, and too many issues around I like more balanced meals in a way And it's a bit objective too. IRC, Mailing lists did a lot with few. Now you have to have discord/slack/zulip to .. do the same ? consider the average website bloat. It's not pure nostalgia (I can realize my biases a bit)
    - Jugurtha 6y ago
awkward 6y ago
The story doesn't have to be about how the old days with the old barriers to entry was the way. What it's definitely about is the flaws and problems in the current way, where platforms collect from continuous posting and participants collect from long tail effects.

agumonkey 6y ago

I can't help but to feel just like the author of this article. I'm vastly in favor of taxing and hurdles as natural filters. Mainstream spoils everything (~almost). You end up having people not really into things, endless debates about side features, about how to organize the projects (inclusiveness, code of conducts, tooling), scandals and less about the passion of doing the thing. I'm often amazed at the difference in pacing and communication on Mailing Lists. It's slower but denser.

Jugurtha 6y ago
It's called nostalgia, and we pretty much all have that condition. There are some fields or scenes where I recall how it used to be magical, but I know my mind is playing with me. Many people think that it's too much, too many apps, too many people, too much complexity. Yes. That may be the case and this may not suit everyone, especially those who lived through a pretty magical period with the birth of the world wide Web, or BBS, or open source movement, or the free software movement. Yes, god damn, that has got to make someone nostalgic. However, all that is now is not 'just' ruining it. The Beatles are what they are because of all the people who've never been to their concerts who wish they had been, amplified by people who were there who thought Paul sucked at guitar at the time. People mostly are indifferent to shifts in the now, and only cling to the now when it becomes the good old days or when someone makes a documentary about it and we feel we belong special for belonging to something that is not anymore. This says much more about us, our desire to belong, to be special, than it says about what reality is or was. We can apply this to forums people thought sucked until they disappear and the memories kick in.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  it's too much, not enough, and too many issues around I like more balanced meals in a way And it's a bit objective too. IRC, Mailing lists did a lot with few. Now you have to have discord/slack/zulip to .. do the same ? consider the average website bloat. It's not pure nostalgia (I can realize my biases a bit)
  - Jugurtha 6y ago

awkward 6y ago

The story doesn't have to be about how the old days with the old barriers to entry was the way. What it's definitely about is the flaws and problems in the current way, where platforms collect from continuous posting and participants collect from long tail effects.