3 ms·

100% this. It's very much in the spirit of "the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy". There's no better way for someone to

by cletus 4y ago

100% this. It's very much in the spirit of "the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy". There's no better way for someone to justify their existence than creating problems but appearing to solve problems for other people. Compliance, security, etc. These things are usually necessary but it does attract a certain kind of person who seems predisposed to empire building through obstacle creation. You see the same thing with people who become moderators. I saw this years ago on Stack Overflow. You see it on Wikipedia. You see it on reddit. You have to be constantly vigilant that these people don't get out of hand. These people end up treating the process as the goal rather than the means to an end. I remember when the moderators starting closing SO topics as "not constructive". There were a ton of questions like "should I do X or Y?" and the mods decided one day to start closing these became there was no definitive answer. You can list the advantages and disadvantages of each option and list the factors to consider. That can be incredibly value. Can this descend into a flamewar? Absolutely. But just kill the flamewars and the people who start them. No point throwing out the baby with the bath water.

btilly 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C... comes to mind as another good example of this dynamic. For another, the ever expanding administrative overhead of colleges is a large contributor to driving tuition increases. See https://stanfordreview.org/read-my-lips-no-new-administrators/ https://stanfordreview.org/read-my-lips-no-new-administrator... for an idea of how bad the problem is getting.
Floegipoky 4y ago
> I remember when the moderators starting closing SO topics as "not constructive". I don't think that was a decision made by the mods, I think that's policy created by SO. I really like that it's so focused, clearly defines what is on and off topic, and strictly enforces that policy. You're right, such discussion can be very valuable, but if these policies didn't exist or weren't enforced, I don't think the site would be nearly as useful. Doesn't mean that the people with closed questions are bad, or the conversation can't be had in chat or a different site. > Can this descend into a flamewar? Absolutely. But just kill the flamewars and the people who start them. Meanwhile the strong contributors get tired of dealing with (even more) toxicity and move on, the signal:noise ratio drops, and it turns into just another (ostensibly) programming-focused forum. Not to mention that the more time mods spend dealing with toxic behavior, the less time they have for work that improves the content of the site.
- cletus 4y ago
  > I don't think that was a decision made by the mods, I think that's policy created by SO. There was little to no direction from the top, at least at that time. Mods were just self-appointed community members who organized in such a way to impose their will on the community. It was pretty classic tyranny of the minority. Many of the more prolific contributors (of which I was one at the time) were deeply frustrated by this. It was a frequent topic on Meta SO. You saw these waves of subtle policy changes if you tracked edits to your contributions. Suddenly there'd be a bunch of edits all based on some new formatting policy and a lot of it was just pointless busywork. Some people just fall into this trap of elevating the process to where the process becomes a goal and is treated of equal (or even higher) value to the content it's applied to. Moderation is important and has a place but, left to their own devices, moderators will create work for themselves just based on their idle capacity. You need to avoid this.
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  > get tired of dealing with (even more) toxicity And then "toxicity" just gets redefined to an always leftward-moving definition of anything "right-wing". Every time.

by cletus 4y ago

btilly 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C... comes to mind as another good example of this dynamic. For another, the ever expanding administrative overhead of colleges is a large contributor to driving tuition increases. See https://stanfordreview.org/read-my-lips-no-new-administrators/ https://stanfordreview.org/read-my-lips-no-new-administrator... for an idea of how bad the problem is getting.

Floegipoky 4y ago

> I remember when the moderators starting closing SO topics as "not constructive". I don't think that was a decision made by the mods, I think that's policy created by SO. I really like that it's so focused, clearly defines what is on and off topic, and strictly enforces that policy. You're right, such discussion can be very valuable, but if these policies didn't exist or weren't enforced, I don't think the site would be nearly as useful. Doesn't mean that the people with closed questions are bad, or the conversation can't be had in chat or a different site. > Can this descend into a flamewar? Absolutely. But just kill the flamewars and the people who start them. Meanwhile the strong contributors get tired of dealing with (even more) toxicity and move on, the signal:noise ratio drops, and it turns into just another (ostensibly) programming-focused forum. Not to mention that the more time mods spend dealing with toxic behavior, the less time they have for work that improves the content of the site.

cletus 4y ago
> I don't think that was a decision made by the mods, I think that's policy created by SO. There was little to no direction from the top, at least at that time. Mods were just self-appointed community members who organized in such a way to impose their will on the community. It was pretty classic tyranny of the minority. Many of the more prolific contributors (of which I was one at the time) were deeply frustrated by this. It was a frequent topic on Meta SO. You saw these waves of subtle policy changes if you tracked edits to your contributions. Suddenly there'd be a bunch of edits all based on some new formatting policy and a lot of it was just pointless busywork. Some people just fall into this trap of elevating the process to where the process becomes a goal and is treated of equal (or even higher) value to the content it's applied to. Moderation is important and has a place but, left to their own devices, moderators will create work for themselves just based on their idle capacity. You need to avoid this.
commandlinefan 4y ago
> get tired of dealing with (even more) toxicity And then "toxicity" just gets redefined to an always leftward-moving definition of anything "right-wing". Every time.