5 ms·

> with people putting time into thinking about how a community should work The sort of people who try to intentionally "plan" (I.e. socially engineer) communit

by wyager 5y ago

> with people putting time into thinking about how a community should work The sort of people who try to intentionally "plan" (I.e. socially engineer) community dynamics do not have a great historical record of actually creating good communities. History is littered with failed inorganic communities - from cults and communes to web forums with overzealous mods. Not saying that's necessarily what happened here, just that people putting a lot of thought into how to control/manage a community might be more of a negative sign than a positive one.

adrianmsmith 5y ago
> people putting a lot of thought into how to control/manage a community might be more of a negative sign than a positive one. A counterexample is Hacker News itself. We all like Hacker News (presumably, otherwise we wouldn't be here) and it wouldn't be what it is without the intentions of the original creator and the current moderation team.
- staticassertion 5y ago
  > We all like Hacker News That can't be true, right? Everyone shits so hard on HN all the time. Personally I only post here because it's "the place" for people in my field, but HN has given me a more negative view of my field than positive.
  - robocat 5y ago
    > Everyone shits so hard on HN all the time. Do they? Or is it just some minority of shit stirrers? Or is it that HN is more likely to have people that can healthily laugh at themselves - a la Monty Python? I mean you can love HN and n-gate.com at the same time right? Back on topic: The very public “we quit” message seems like a very clear message to try and effect change for a cause they deeply care about. I presume the mod team had multiple other options on how to deal with the core issue. For example, they could have internally suggested a quiet rollover to a new mod team over a few months. Say modelled on how CEO leadership is changed, avoiding public drama, when a CEO is rolled by their board. Deciding on a very public option just causes all the drama to play out with every Internet and Hackernews (including me) adding their own spit into the mix. Edit: added colour.
    - staticassertion 5y ago
      Yeah, they definitely do, or at least virtually everyone I know feels that HN is a place mostly to go to laugh at the terrible opinions or, much less frequently, a good comment.
jmull 5y ago
History is also littered with failed organically formed communities, right?
hitekker 5y ago
I think the phenomena you're getting at is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectualization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectualization and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(psychology). The first is thinking to prevent feeling, and the second is thinking to soften the feeling. Both kinds of thinking are natural. Defense mechanisms are always present in the process of making up our minds. But if defense mechanisms are allowed to dominate our thought process-- to kill feelings before they can provoke new thoughts-- the result will be indecisive, ambiguous writing that implicitly dumps the burden of resolving the anxiety, resentments and other dark feelings, onto the author's audience. An elite who publishes their overthinking signals their inability to resolve their feelings or the feelings of the people they have power over.

by wyager 5y ago

adrianmsmith 5y ago

> people putting a lot of thought into how to control/manage a community might be more of a negative sign than a positive one. A counterexample is Hacker News itself. We all like Hacker News (presumably, otherwise we wouldn't be here) and it wouldn't be what it is without the intentions of the original creator and the current moderation team.

staticassertion 5y ago
> We all like Hacker News That can't be true, right? Everyone shits so hard on HN all the time. Personally I only post here because it's "the place" for people in my field, but HN has given me a more negative view of my field than positive.
- robocat 5y ago
  > Everyone shits so hard on HN all the time. Do they? Or is it just some minority of shit stirrers? Or is it that HN is more likely to have people that can healthily laugh at themselves - a la Monty Python? I mean you can love HN and n-gate.com at the same time right? Back on topic: The very public “we quit” message seems like a very clear message to try and effect change for a cause they deeply care about. I presume the mod team had multiple other options on how to deal with the core issue. For example, they could have internally suggested a quiet rollover to a new mod team over a few months. Say modelled on how CEO leadership is changed, avoiding public drama, when a CEO is rolled by their board. Deciding on a very public option just causes all the drama to play out with every Internet and Hackernews (including me) adding their own spit into the mix. Edit: added colour.
  - staticassertion 5y ago
    Yeah, they definitely do, or at least virtually everyone I know feels that HN is a place mostly to go to laugh at the terrible opinions or, much less frequently, a good comment.

jmull 5y ago

History is also littered with failed organically formed communities, right?

hitekker 5y ago

I think the phenomena you're getting at is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectualization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectualization and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(psychology). The first is thinking to prevent feeling, and the second is thinking to soften the feeling. Both kinds of thinking are natural. Defense mechanisms are always present in the process of making up our minds. But if defense mechanisms are allowed to dominate our thought process-- to kill feelings before they can provoke new thoughts-- the result will be indecisive, ambiguous writing that implicitly dumps the burden of resolving the anxiety, resentments and other dark feelings, onto the author's audience. An elite who publishes their overthinking signals their inability to resolve their feelings or the feelings of the people they have power over.