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I agree with you that we’re in the infancy of context free communication (text only posts). But disagree that it wasn’t built (or couldn’t be changed, my extend

I agree with you that we’re in the infancy of context free communication (text only posts). But disagree that it wasn’t built (or couldn’t be changed, my extended interpretation) There are wildly different experiences with communities online. Communities are also a thing that can be built intentionally. We can also learn from prior works. Lessig (1999) identifies four elements that regulate behavior online: Laws, norms, markets, and technology - *Code/architecture* – the physical or technical constraints on activities (e.g. locks on doors or firewalls on the Internet) - *Market* – economic forces - *Law* – explicit mandates that can be enforced by the government - *Norms* – social conventions that one often feels compelled to follow

lapcat 3y ago
I think the biggest factor is actually moderation. Smaller communities can be effectively moderated. This may fall under "Norms", but the difference is that (non-government) moderators will enforce the social conventions regardless of whether you feel compelled to follow them. But perhaps familiarity is still a factor in smaller online communities, because the participants often get to know each other. Unfortunately, larger communities are effectively beyond moderation IMO. I don't think that the one or two moderators are enough on Hacker News, and of course the social media platforms are even worse. In the "real world", the non-online world, a significant portion of the population will flout the laws, regardless of government enforcement, and a significant portion will flout the social conventions. That will also occur in the online world. To put it another way, all you need is one bad reply to ruin your day. :-)
- schneems 3y ago
  I’m a mod on /r/ruby and it’s got 80,000 subscribers. I like to think it’s not “beyond moderation”. We have fairly aggressive rules (around tone and impact) and very high standards and I would say most of the time the community meets or exceeds those standards I think there are limits but I also don’t feel that most platforms have hit them or really even tried. Most platforms that would benefit from a stronger sense of community typically do the bare minimum to not run afoul of laws (in terms of paid moderation). Even the ones with strong volunteer mods (like Reddit) are known for underinvesting in mod tools, that’s the source of the recent protests. > one bad reply to ruin your day On /r/ruby we have two kinds of problems that bubble up intentional and unintentional. The majority of slights are unintentional and when called out are very apologetic and seek to make things right. For the intentional abusers, there’s the ban. I think of it less like building a wall and more like flattening the curve. If you can stop the cascade of frustration (where one pissed off user leads to another…) then it pays off dividends, even if you can’t catch 100% of the cases. Anyway. Thanks for the opportunity for a chat. I love thinking about this stuff.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > I’m a mod on /r/ruby and it’s got 80,000 subscribers. I think that's smaller than Hacker News, which has only 1 or 2 moderators, whereas it appears that r/ruby has 8 moderators? As far as scale is concerned, it looks like r/ruby had 19 comments within the past 24 hours? https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/ Whereas HN had 19 comments within the past 2 minutes. https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments And a site like Twitter has something like 350,000 tweets per minute. The most important difference, in my opinion, is that /r/ruby is focused on a single technical topic. In a sense, it's self-selecting and self-moderating, unlike HN or social media sites which are general-interest and include topics such as politics and other controversial social issues that are prone to generate nasty disagreements.
    - schneems 3y ago
      I don’t disagree with any differences you pointed out. I still think a lot of the internet could have much higher standards than it does today.
- nomat 3y ago
  did you use this handle on slashnet?

lapcat 3y ago

I think the biggest factor is actually moderation. Smaller communities can be effectively moderated. This may fall under "Norms", but the difference is that (non-government) moderators will enforce the social conventions regardless of whether you feel compelled to follow them. But perhaps familiarity is still a factor in smaller online communities, because the participants often get to know each other. Unfortunately, larger communities are effectively beyond moderation IMO. I don't think that the one or two moderators are enough on Hacker News, and of course the social media platforms are even worse. In the "real world", the non-online world, a significant portion of the population will flout the laws, regardless of government enforcement, and a significant portion will flout the social conventions. That will also occur in the online world. To put it another way, all you need is one bad reply to ruin your day. :-)

schneems 3y ago
I’m a mod on /r/ruby and it’s got 80,000 subscribers. I like to think it’s not “beyond moderation”. We have fairly aggressive rules (around tone and impact) and very high standards and I would say most of the time the community meets or exceeds those standards I think there are limits but I also don’t feel that most platforms have hit them or really even tried. Most platforms that would benefit from a stronger sense of community typically do the bare minimum to not run afoul of laws (in terms of paid moderation). Even the ones with strong volunteer mods (like Reddit) are known for underinvesting in mod tools, that’s the source of the recent protests. > one bad reply to ruin your day On /r/ruby we have two kinds of problems that bubble up intentional and unintentional. The majority of slights are unintentional and when called out are very apologetic and seek to make things right. For the intentional abusers, there’s the ban. I think of it less like building a wall and more like flattening the curve. If you can stop the cascade of frustration (where one pissed off user leads to another…) then it pays off dividends, even if you can’t catch 100% of the cases. Anyway. Thanks for the opportunity for a chat. I love thinking about this stuff.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > I’m a mod on /r/ruby and it’s got 80,000 subscribers. I think that's smaller than Hacker News, which has only 1 or 2 moderators, whereas it appears that r/ruby has 8 moderators? As far as scale is concerned, it looks like r/ruby had 19 comments within the past 24 hours? https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/ Whereas HN had 19 comments within the past 2 minutes. https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments And a site like Twitter has something like 350,000 tweets per minute. The most important difference, in my opinion, is that /r/ruby is focused on a single technical topic. In a sense, it's self-selecting and self-moderating, unlike HN or social media sites which are general-interest and include topics such as politics and other controversial social issues that are prone to generate nasty disagreements.
  - schneems 3y ago
    I don’t disagree with any differences you pointed out. I still think a lot of the internet could have much higher standards than it does today.
nomat 3y ago
did you use this handle on slashnet?