4 ms·

Know of any software with different incentives? (Do you think, for example, that HK works differently because of software, because of moderation, or both?)

shagie 4y ago
The software, community, and the moderation/administration of it need to be thought of as one complete thing where each part places limits on the other. A Group is its own Worst Enemy - https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2005-shirky-agroupisitsownworstenemy.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2005-shirky-agroupisit... Consider the lessons from LambdaMOO or Communitree in there. The design of the software promotes and discourages certain types of interaction. Stack overflow famously doesn't have a great commenting system - and it was intentionally designed that way to make long running comment back and forth difficult and unpleasant because that was what Jeff wanted (incidentally, one of Jeff's mentors was Clay Shirky who wrote the above mentioned A Group and was on the board of directors of early Stack Overflow). And as much pain as comments on SO had, the alternative for moderation would have been much worse in the framework of Stack Overflow. Likewise, there's code on HN (an algorithm) that down weights overheated discussions ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16020089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16020089 ). The technological and social cannot be separated and need to be built, cultivated, and grown in tandem with intention. And this is where I get back to reddit... you can do all these things on reddit, just that it takes a bit more creative use of the features within reddit and use of external tooling to enforce it. If I was to try to build something, I'd honestly start from Discourse ( https://github.com/discourse/discourse https://github.com/discourse/discourse ) and then work to build the additional features to encourage the type of community that I'd want there and tooling for moderation. As it is, I'm not that interested in building on discourse and reddit works. If I had to deal with a larger sub where I can't read all the posts each day or was a target of trolling / low quality content, I'd likely start spinning up things like a program that rate limits people who haven't participated much in the sub initially... possibly borrowing some sentiment analyzers to try to get a heads up where there's flame war brewing. If I wanted something more "real time", discord posts are rather interesting... with the associated discord moderation bots. Think about what you want, the community that you want, and then the how you want the community to mold the technology and the technology to mold the community.

shagie 4y ago

The software, community, and the moderation/administration of it need to be thought of as one complete thing where each part places limits on the other. A Group is its own Worst Enemy - https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2005-shirky-agroupisitsownworstenemy.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2005-shirky-agroupisit... Consider the lessons from LambdaMOO or Communitree in there. The design of the software promotes and discourages certain types of interaction. Stack overflow famously doesn't have a great commenting system - and it was intentionally designed that way to make long running comment back and forth difficult and unpleasant because that was what Jeff wanted (incidentally, one of Jeff's mentors was Clay Shirky who wrote the above mentioned A Group and was on the board of directors of early Stack Overflow). And as much pain as comments on SO had, the alternative for moderation would have been much worse in the framework of Stack Overflow. Likewise, there's code on HN (an algorithm) that down weights overheated discussions ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16020089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16020089 ). The technological and social cannot be separated and need to be built, cultivated, and grown in tandem with intention. And this is where I get back to reddit... you can do all these things on reddit, just that it takes a bit more creative use of the features within reddit and use of external tooling to enforce it. If I was to try to build something, I'd honestly start from Discourse ( https://github.com/discourse/discourse https://github.com/discourse/discourse ) and then work to build the additional features to encourage the type of community that I'd want there and tooling for moderation. As it is, I'm not that interested in building on discourse and reddit works. If I had to deal with a larger sub where I can't read all the posts each day or was a target of trolling / low quality content, I'd likely start spinning up things like a program that rate limits people who haven't participated much in the sub initially... possibly borrowing some sentiment analyzers to try to get a heads up where there's flame war brewing. If I wanted something more "real time", discord posts are rather interesting... with the associated discord moderation bots. Think about what you want, the community that you want, and then the how you want the community to mold the technology and the technology to mold the community.