3 ms·
Algorithmic feed + moderators. This is what makes FB, twitter such horrible places for building a real community. Each thread in a FB group is valued but it's a
by JamesAdir 4y ago
Algorithmic feed + moderators. This is what makes FB, twitter such horrible places for building a real community. Each thread in a FB group is valued but it's ability to create more traffic and more ads and not because of it's true value to the community. The result is that what comes in your feed is usually the feeds that generate extreme reactions from different sides.
On forums if it's up you know it's a real discussion and people have add true value to it otherwise the moderators would have intervened.
If something was asked and answered it saves as a reference for next time. In social media there is no such thing. The algorithms wants you to recreate the same threads again and again just to make sure more traffic will be generated. It's no coincidence that search is not useful in FB groups.
- losteric 4y agoI wonder if anyone has experimented with algorithms optimized for sustainable long-term community building. What would that even look like?
- dgb23 4y agoDon’t know about algorithms, but HN does a good job of being a forum. I think it’s a combination of sensible guidelines, restricted community moderation (votes and flags) and very good manual moderation.
- account42 4y agoHN is decent for discussion about news but is not great for any longer-running discussions - probably intentionally.
- hunter2_ 4y agoI never thought much about it before, but I guess forums should optimize the useful life of a given thread to loosely match the useful life of whatever is being discussed. For example, golfmk7.com is for a set of cars with model years of 2015-2021 (in the US; 2012-2021 globally) so the critical mass of discussions will probably taper off in the next 5-10 years. I don't know the typical lifecycle of homebrew equipment, but a similar bell curve distribution should apply. Very different timeline from discussing news and/or random gossip where nobody will care about that particular conversation a week later.