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In the linked post, the difference between 1 & 2 emerge in most communities, it's the September that never ended, the inner circle pulling up the drawbridge at

by buro9 13y ago

In the linked post, the difference between 1 & 2 emerge in most communities, it's the September that never ended, the inner circle pulling up the drawbridge at the sight of the hordes of outer circle people swarming in. Group 3 belong to group 2 and are hoping to jump to group 1 but just haven't managed it yet (and don't know what it takes). The caretakers seek to either preserve things how they were, or to make it conform to some twee memory (sentimental, nostalgic imagining of how it was, which doesn't conform to reality... i.e. people imagining HN was once better even though pg showed that the quality in the past and present was similar) or unrealistic ideal. I personally don't think the first two groups can co-exist peacefully without a degrading in the quality of the experience from the perspectives of both groups. To please either group will rub the other the wrong way. My take is that communities work best with gated circles and steps of promotion. That there is progression. I don't mean karma (the computer measurement of progression and merit). I mean that this is a social problem and people solve it and not computers. That all communities are able to recognise themselves pretty well, and would organise themselves accordingly. I mean cliques. Cliques cannot be coded out of existence as if they are a non-meritocratic scourge. They are an entirely natural way in which people organise themselves and people will continue to organise themselves thus. I think that attempting to apply a meritocratic measure (karma, a technical solution to a social problem) will always fail. It needs to be recognised that it's a social problem that merely needs technical tooling. By which, I mean that these self-identified networks, hierarchies, groups, should be able to control access, visibility for their collaborative work. In the context of Stack Overflow, it's obvious that the goal of keeping everything visible at the highest scope is to drive as many eyeballs to unanswered questions as possible. But I would argue that it is better to allow sub-communities to thrive and to allow them to control the granularity of those sub-groups... thus putting them in charge of how many eyeballs see their particular set of unanswered questions. Just like HN, a single SO tends to be far too broad. Just like HN, SO would benefit from allowing users to create smaller groups within the larger scope to deal with ever more niche interests. Communities don't scale, so allow them to perform their own version of cell-division to remain highly relevant to their members.

camus2 13y ago
> I think that attempting to apply a meritocratic measure (karma, a technical solution to a social problem) will always fail. Give one exemple of a QandA site that has a better system than stackoverflow at that scale(i insist on the latter).There is none,because nobody has done better. > Communities don't scale, so allow them to perform their own version of cell-division to remain highly relevant to their members. Communities scale when they have strict rules that help promote civil discussions and interesting content.
- yungchin 13y ago
  Maybe nobody has, but that doesn't make it a wrong observation. As one of the answers on the OP puts it, "I spend an excessive amount of time as of late trying to find a question that interests me enough to do the research to answer it." Karma SO-style doesn't solve that. I think buro9 has some really interesting ideas that might.
- buro9 13y ago
  That's the wrong question. Plus you've precluded any ability for me to answer with an example as "at that scale" requires something equal or bigger within the limited Q&A space. The reason it's the wrong question is that Q&A is merely one form of communication that can exist within a community. Conversations (forums) are another. News/Link/Image sharing (the reddits, HNs, Diggs, Slashdot, etc) are another. Even e-commerce has communities (through reviews and recommendations - Amazon reviews are an example). Communities are merely groups of people that have a shared interest and agree to use some form of communication to collaborate around that interest. I would argue that Reddit is a great example of a community that allows the type of division I describe (through subreddits). Reddit shows that by doing so that they are able to keep the quality very high with a low and highly varied moderation policy at every applicable level of scope. Communities don't scale. But providing tools that allow them to naturally divide into smaller communities increases the total size of that group of communities whilst retaining a high quality and low moderation effort within each area. Edit: You've edited to add another line, but maybe you want to read this: http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html (Audiences scale, communities don't) . Also, I think the Tragedy of the Commons applies http://dieoff.org/page95.htm http://dieoff.org/page95.htm and on Kuro5hin back in the day that argument was made fairly well and relates to the problems of scaling a community: http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2002/1/17/21155/1564/46#46 http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2002/1/17/21155/1564/46#46

by buro9 13y ago

camus2 13y ago

> I think that attempting to apply a meritocratic measure (karma, a technical solution to a social problem) will always fail. Give one exemple of a QandA site that has a better system than stackoverflow at that scale(i insist on the latter).There is none,because nobody has done better. > Communities don't scale, so allow them to perform their own version of cell-division to remain highly relevant to their members. Communities scale when they have strict rules that help promote civil discussions and interesting content.

yungchin 13y ago
Maybe nobody has, but that doesn't make it a wrong observation. As one of the answers on the OP puts it, "I spend an excessive amount of time as of late trying to find a question that interests me enough to do the research to answer it." Karma SO-style doesn't solve that. I think buro9 has some really interesting ideas that might.
buro9 13y ago
That's the wrong question. Plus you've precluded any ability for me to answer with an example as "at that scale" requires something equal or bigger within the limited Q&A space. The reason it's the wrong question is that Q&A is merely one form of communication that can exist within a community. Conversations (forums) are another. News/Link/Image sharing (the reddits, HNs, Diggs, Slashdot, etc) are another. Even e-commerce has communities (through reviews and recommendations - Amazon reviews are an example). Communities are merely groups of people that have a shared interest and agree to use some form of communication to collaborate around that interest. I would argue that Reddit is a great example of a community that allows the type of division I describe (through subreddits). Reddit shows that by doing so that they are able to keep the quality very high with a low and highly varied moderation policy at every applicable level of scope. Communities don't scale. But providing tools that allow them to naturally divide into smaller communities increases the total size of that group of communities whilst retaining a high quality and low moderation effort within each area. Edit: You've edited to add another line, but maybe you want to read this: http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html (Audiences scale, communities don't) . Also, I think the Tragedy of the Commons applies http://dieoff.org/page95.htm http://dieoff.org/page95.htm and on Kuro5hin back in the day that argument was made fairly well and relates to the problems of scaling a community: http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2002/1/17/21155/1564/46#46 http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2002/1/17/21155/1564/46#46