6 ms·

That is debatable, but what isn't is the fact that the third option exists - which never gets mentioned in the tired old "If you don't disable that pesky adbloc

by tal8d 6y ago

That is debatable, but what isn't is the fact that the third option exists - which never gets mentioned in the tired old "If you don't disable that pesky adblocker - you'll be forced to pay!" posts.

rebuilder 6y ago
Yes, the hobbyist web still exists. But it's hampered by the much larger commercial web IMO. The influx of members to any non-commercial web community is disturbed by the commercial entities that draw so much of the attention that to most people, it seems like there isn't anything else on the web. The big fish use up so much oxygen that the little fish in the pond shrivel up. They live, but in a stunted form.
- tal8d 6y ago
  Well you're going to have a hard to reasoning about it when you stick with the predator/prey, attention economy, zero-sum game analogies. A man running a site cataloging ancient internally generated IBM typeset documents... what higher unstunted form is he aspiring to - despite the machinations of unshriveled fish?
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Attention is zero-sum. There are 24 hours in a day. People only spend so much time online. There is no bigger bag or truck.
    - tal8d 6y ago
      And? I mean, obviously if you're going to correct me then you know "zero-sum game" refers to game theory. What game is Mr. Typeset playing here?
      - dredmorbius 6y ago
        The game is Attention. Focus. Discoverability. Relevance. Impact. All are inherently rivalrous Even discounting any financial returns, howling into the void / winking in the dark fails to accomplish anything if there is no receiver or audience. Ms. Typeset might be engaging in a form of personal journaling or meditation, but in a world that has so many competing distractions her curation is never shared, or even where perhaps it is but the potential community of interest, and the discovery tools possibly reaching it, are fractured and distracted to the point of dissolution ... the effort to communicate and gains of doing so are lost. Mind that large audiences really aren't communities -- I'm talking Facebook or national broadcast scale. As Dave Winer observed, conversation doesn't scale very well. Dialogue between two people is its most intense form, and past a handfull of participants or so, what remains is mostly a set of serial monologues. Above 15 or so, the graph starts trending increasingly to a star, with one broadcaster and numerous recievers, collectively an audience. At sufficient scale, selling that audience to those who'd hope to advert its attention to their own message becomes a principle commercialisation model. The baiting message tends to the minimum viable common basis. At extreme levels of specialisation, such as, say, aa maths PhD, the relevant community might easily fit in a small classroom. Possibly in a single car. My cursory analysis of Google+ communities by size and activity levels suggests diminishing returns above about 10,000 registered members, of whom perhaps 1--10% were highly active, so 100--1,000 participants, roughly within Dunbar's Number range. Extremely large groups are visible but not especially useful --- most seemed overrun with spam and memes. Pursuit of that audience tends strongly to sacrifice or ignore nuanced, specialist, or niche interests, to the point of actively trying to steer potential members of such groups to the larger, and more monetisable, vulgar pool. My own seeking of expressive outlets is an increasingly frustrating trade-off between the expressivity of the tools themselves (mostly formatting and media capabilities), technical hosting issues, audience discovery and cultivation, search, and related concerns. I'm hoping to learn, share, and discover. The sense that this used to be more viable back in the days when I used Usenet and mailing lists may be a Golden Age illusion, but its a damnedably persistent one.
        tal8d 6y ago
        So I'll just assume that you intended to answer the question, and that your response contains your strongest argument. From what I can tell, the only complaint that makes sense is with regard to community building platforms splintering potential collaborators/readers. I can somewhat agree with that, but it has absolutely nothing to do with an attention economy or corporate market capture. I can't think of a time that I was searching for something related to an interest, but instead got trapped in a dead Yahoo discussion board - hypnotized by erectile dysfunction spam. I just blast right through and eventually end up on some dude's blog with a tilde in the url, on more than one occasion this has ended up as a back and forth over email where we both come out ahead. Now I'll admit that my interests aren't mainstream, and I may not be in touch with the average consumer... but their interests are mainstream - so they are by default already catered to.
  - rebuilder 6y ago
    One where people visit his site, I suppose.
    - tal8d 6y ago
      Just people randomly stumbling in with zero interest in the subject? Or people who had previously been captured by a rival typeset historian backed by a powerful multinational commercial interest? Because one of those is a search engine problem and the other is a goofy attention economy based concern.

by tal8d 6y ago

That is debatable, but what isn't is the fact that the third option exists - which never gets mentioned in the tired old "If you don't disable that pesky adblocker - you'll be forced to pay!" posts.

rebuilder 6y ago

Yes, the hobbyist web still exists. But it's hampered by the much larger commercial web IMO. The influx of members to any non-commercial web community is disturbed by the commercial entities that draw so much of the attention that to most people, it seems like there isn't anything else on the web. The big fish use up so much oxygen that the little fish in the pond shrivel up. They live, but in a stunted form.

tal8d 6y ago
Well you're going to have a hard to reasoning about it when you stick with the predator/prey, attention economy, zero-sum game analogies. A man running a site cataloging ancient internally generated IBM typeset documents... what higher unstunted form is he aspiring to - despite the machinations of unshriveled fish?
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Attention is zero-sum. There are 24 hours in a day. People only spend so much time online. There is no bigger bag or truck.
  - tal8d 6y ago
    And? I mean, obviously if you're going to correct me then you know "zero-sum game" refers to game theory. What game is Mr. Typeset playing here?
    - dredmorbius 6y ago
      The game is Attention. Focus. Discoverability. Relevance. Impact. All are inherently rivalrous Even discounting any financial returns, howling into the void / winking in the dark fails to accomplish anything if there is no receiver or audience. Ms. Typeset might be engaging in a form of personal journaling or meditation, but in a world that has so many competing distractions her curation is never shared, or even where perhaps it is but the potential community of interest, and the discovery tools possibly reaching it, are fractured and distracted to the point of dissolution ... the effort to communicate and gains of doing so are lost. Mind that large audiences really aren't communities -- I'm talking Facebook or national broadcast scale. As Dave Winer observed, conversation doesn't scale very well. Dialogue between two people is its most intense form, and past a handfull of participants or so, what remains is mostly a set of serial monologues. Above 15 or so, the graph starts trending increasingly to a star, with one broadcaster and numerous recievers, collectively an audience. At sufficient scale, selling that audience to those who'd hope to advert its attention to their own message becomes a principle commercialisation model. The baiting message tends to the minimum viable common basis. At extreme levels of specialisation, such as, say, aa maths PhD, the relevant community might easily fit in a small classroom. Possibly in a single car. My cursory analysis of Google+ communities by size and activity levels suggests diminishing returns above about 10,000 registered members, of whom perhaps 1--10% were highly active, so 100--1,000 participants, roughly within Dunbar's Number range. Extremely large groups are visible but not especially useful --- most seemed overrun with spam and memes. Pursuit of that audience tends strongly to sacrifice or ignore nuanced, specialist, or niche interests, to the point of actively trying to steer potential members of such groups to the larger, and more monetisable, vulgar pool. My own seeking of expressive outlets is an increasingly frustrating trade-off between the expressivity of the tools themselves (mostly formatting and media capabilities), technical hosting issues, audience discovery and cultivation, search, and related concerns. I'm hoping to learn, share, and discover. The sense that this used to be more viable back in the days when I used Usenet and mailing lists may be a Golden Age illusion, but its a damnedably persistent one.
      - tal8d 6y ago
        So I'll just assume that you intended to answer the question, and that your response contains your strongest argument. From what I can tell, the only complaint that makes sense is with regard to community building platforms splintering potential collaborators/readers. I can somewhat agree with that, but it has absolutely nothing to do with an attention economy or corporate market capture. I can't think of a time that I was searching for something related to an interest, but instead got trapped in a dead Yahoo discussion board - hypnotized by erectile dysfunction spam. I just blast right through and eventually end up on some dude's blog with a tilde in the url, on more than one occasion this has ended up as a back and forth over email where we both come out ahead. Now I'll admit that my interests aren't mainstream, and I may not be in touch with the average consumer... but their interests are mainstream - so they are by default already catered to.
- rebuilder 6y ago
  One where people visit his site, I suppose.
  - tal8d 6y ago
    Just people randomly stumbling in with zero interest in the subject? Or people who had previously been captured by a rival typeset historian backed by a powerful multinational commercial interest? Because one of those is a search engine problem and the other is a goofy attention economy based concern.