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The Evaporative Cooling Effect in Social Networks (2010)
- rzk 2y agoPrevious discussion: The Evaporative Cooling Effect in Online Communities — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1777665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1777665 (2010, 35 comments) https://archive.ph/q8DlQ https://archive.ph/q8DlQ
- pockmarked19 2y agoThat’s a different discussion, because this one has the added benefit of being from a cornell.edu domain! /s The submission here is also more of a discussion of that post, so this thread would be a discussion of a discussion, not direct comments on the article.
- dredmorbius 2y agoIt's worthwhile to link earlier related discussions, and both the original article (now linkrotted) and a direct discussion of it satisfy that relation to me.
- finnh 2y agoDoesn't this complaint assume a strict stack-ranking of contributors, where the "top" person has no reason to stay and thus leaves, and then the new top does the same, etc? Which is not at all how actual humans and relationships work. We each bring different value to the table, along multiple dimensions.
- coldtea 2y ago>Which is not at all how actual humans and relationships work. We each bring different value to the table, along multiple dimensions. Sort of. In practice there are valuable and less valuable contributors. Plus all those multiple dimensions are not of equal value themselves.
- dredmorbius 2y agoA ranking need not have absolute certainty of be fixed over time to be useful. We could well rank into tiers of contributors or participants. I'd generally suggest that such tiers would likely be roughly exponential, with tier n+1 having m^1 more members than tier n, but also a lower net value. (n and m are arbitrary, I'm not insisting on log base 10, and the natural log e might well be a better fit.) This is typical of almost all large network functions which exhibit power laws, Zipf functions, or the like. Measurement itself is difficult and subject to both cost and error, as well as variability over time.
- dredmorbius 2y ago/of be fixed/s/of/or/
- zcrossing 2y ago[flagged]
- Fauntleroy 2y agoPerhaps you could start the conversation by giving some examples of this perceived toxicity.
- numpad0 2y ago[flagged]
- michaelhoney 2y agoif you have a nuanced and interesting take, go for it
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- numpad0 2y agoIsn't this model a bit outdated with prevalence of likes and retweets? Users on modern social platforms optimize output to maximize favorable responses, thereby gratification. There are not really ceilings, barrier to entry, or way around the system, so it's resistant to spams and manipulations. Classical BBS systems did have this problem. It was said that a community beegins with interesting people posting interesting topics, then uninteresting people joins to read interesting topics, and ends when uninteresting people starts posting uninteresting topics. What was missing was feedback signaling, and social media got past this at some point during 2010s.
- Groxx 2y ago>There are not really ceilings, barrier to entry, or way around the system, so it's resistant to spams and manipulations. I feel like we must be using different internets. Spam and manipulation are rampant on social networks lately, far beyond what they used to be, and while there aren't really barriers to entry there absolutely are barriers to reach: you're not as widely followed as the spammers, your stuff will be drowned out. As evidence I offer: any cursory glance at Facebook or Twitter, both of which have likes and retweets.
- numpad0 2y ago> I feel like we must be using different internets. I can't shake off the thought that this statement might be more truthful than it deserves to be. Some of social media accounts are closer to what you have described, some are more like what I have. The Dead Internet Syndrome must be not spreading uniformly, but there must be significant disparity across fields and bubbles, deepening divides between common folks without clean freshwater supply and those privileged that has access to spam-immune input source. My Twitter timeline is... not great, not terrible. Reddit is out of question.
- Groxx 2y agoThere are pockets of Internet that are still great, definitely. But "likes and retweets" are long-time major features of basically all of the absolute biggest social sites in the world, and they're also some of the most awful ones that people keep looking for ways to leave. So no, I don't think it's particularly outdated. Predictive, if anything.
- joshdavham 2y agoThis pretty much describes a lot of what I’ve experienced in online language learning communities. A large majority of my friends who eventually reached fluency in their target language ended up leaving or becoming significantly less active over time despite their success. Over time, the quantity of ‘wannabe’ language learners has generally increased and reduced the overall quality of the communities. I used to be completely anti-gatekeeping but my opinion has been slowly changing on this point. It is interesting that HN still seems to be very high quality (though I haven’t been using it super duper long to truly judge). Does HN have any healthy gatekeeping mechanisms aside from its (ugly) UI to keep it high quality?
- hiatus 2y ago> Does HN have any healthy gatekeeping mechanisms aside from its (ugly) UI to keep it high quality? Yes, the mods.
- manoweb 2y agoI believe you are confusing "effective" with "ugly" There is only one thing that could improve HN interface, and that is an NNTP mirror feed, so you could use any NNTP client you like.
- istjohn 2y agoI mean, the upvote buttons could be bigger on mobile.
- joshdavham 2y agoGreat comment. I almost downvoted it by mistake ;)
- kedarkhand 2y agoThere is a downvote button here??
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- manoweb 2y agoThis has happened on Usenet for a while, according to my experience, and for many years it has been an Eternal September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September indeed. However, in the past few years, with many low quality users migrating to other places, and with a higher barrier to entry, good content has returned. I infer there are waves, cycles of evaporation and condensation.
- kelseydh 2y agoSimilar paper that's also fascinating, on why online communities grow more insular and rigid over time: https://researchers.westernsydney.edu.au/en/publications/communal-quirks-and-circlejerks-a-taxonomy-of-processes-contribut https://researchers.westernsydney.edu.au/en/publications/com... Full paper: https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/7275/7129 https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/7275/7129
- nthingtohide 2y agoI have voiced this feature request many times. Why don't social networks provide recommendation profile transfer. Sort of like stepping into someone else's shoes. E.g. I would like to view how twitter looks like to Simon Willison. This would also make it easier for people to break through filter bubbles.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- wizzard0 2y agoDreamwidth has this feature, agree it's awesome. Obviously you don't see private journals someone is reading, still a good way to discover new things. [username].dreamwidth.org/read
- shalmanese 2y agoHi, I'm the author of the original piece which was originally penned to warn Quora that their social software design seemed purposely designed to drive evaporative cooling. With the benefit of 15 years of hindsight, Quora has thoroughly evaporatively cooled to an extent beyond even my imagining.
- eganist 2y ago1) https://web.archive.org/web/20101012105003/http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software-sundays-2-the-evaporative-cooling-effect/ https://web.archive.org/web/20101012105003/http://blog.bumbl... since the original piece is timing out 2) shalmanese, how would you relate this back to platforms like Reddit that are driven both by community members as well as volunteer janitors?
- _yb2s 2y agoI think about this a lot- many of the online spaces I used to enjoy have been completely overrun by people that are a particular combination of mean, ignorant, and 100% sure their opinions on everything are objectively correct and final. Anyone not fitting into those 3 in the same way they do, quickly gets fed up and leaves. In particular, I am not sure why people are so mean online. I try to be kind to other people even if I disagree with them, but pretty much cannot find anyplace with other people that feel the same. I feel like it is infecting me, and I am not as kind to other people as I used to be or would like to be. I probably need to just stop talking to people online entirely for my own mental health, and contribute to the evaporative cooling of the entire internet.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> 100% sure their opinions on everything are objectively correct and final The internet isn’t great for nuance. When commenting or communicating online, I’ve often tightened up my language for succinctness.
- _yb2s 2y agoThe problem is that the world itself is just too complex that without nuance, you're not talking about anything meaningful- so what's the point? On HN this is particularly challenging because we get a mix of experts and non-experts (and people that have different levels of pedanticness) - so almost any possible statement is going to be attacked for both lacking nuance or being too detailed (and frequently both at the same time). However the people here are nicer, more open minded, and more accepting of nuance than most places online.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> problem is that the world itself is just too complex that without nuance, you're not talking about anything meaningful- so what's the point? To get someone to do something. There are very few corners of the internet conducive to debate. (Here is one of the exceptions.)
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