November 24, 2007

Tact filters. Some words-in-a-line that have educated me (a little) about just how much Hard Work (TM) it is to keep a site such as Monkeyfilter chugging along. The linked post is the shortest so if you want to read one, well, it's the shortest.

This one is longer. And older. But it has some neat stuff to say about how and why a group is its own worst enemy. Now, there's a large body of literature saying "We built this software, a group came and used it, and they began to exhibit behaviors that surprised us enormously, so we've gone and documented these behaviors." Over and over and over again this pattern comes up.....The best explanation I have found for the kinds of things that happen when groups of humans interact is psychological research that predates the Internet, so the first part is going to be about W.R. Bion's research, which I will talk about in a moment, research that I believe explains how and why a group is its own worst enemy. Next up we have Teresa Nielsen Hayden (now moderating Boing Boing) on moderating conversations in virtual space. 1. There can be no ongoing discourse without some degree of moderation, if only to kill off the hardcore trolls. It takes rather more moderation than that to create a complex, nuanced, civil discourse. If you want that to happen, you have to give of yourself. Providing the space but not tending the conversation is like expecting that your front yard will automatically turn itself into a garden. And lastly a neat little piece on the ad hominem fallacy and how it can be used against an online community. Also short.

posted by polychrome 16 years ago
  • when normal people talk to nerds Well, perhaps they shouldn't. Or, in the alternative: This fall on FOX, right after When Sharks Attack comes a show you won't want to miss: When People Talk to Nerds!
  • I don't want to talk to bernockle.
  • Yeah, I saw the preview for that during the sweeps episode of Fast Food Lawyer. Really interesting articles, especially the second one. I've seen that hapen over and over again in online discussions, and always wondered if it was deliberate. And Fox News has built a network on the principle. And Suzeete Haden Elgin has a LiveJournal!!
  • I need to think about some of this stuff. I've recently been having some severe communication problems at work, and some of it is my fault in not understanding how to communicate effectively with the freaks mutants project stakeholders people involved.
  • I don't know about quoting TNH on moderating. If you've ever actually dared to disagree politely or otherwise with the slant or content or noteworthiness of something on boing boing, you probably know why. TNH responds snidely, bans posters for critical comments which do not approach troll level and disemvowels posts for less. This has a definite chilling effect on discussions and reduces Boing Boing comments into an almost completely uninterrupted stream of pablum. While I am aware that it is entirely their prerogative to set such a comment policy, I just feel it does them more harm than good. It seems that TNH's ideas do not translate so well into practice.
  • tehmoth - I've been watching boingboing comments with interest and the comparison with Making Light (TNH's own site) is interesting. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt at the moment, on the basis that BB is in the process of starting a community and that the goal is to get BB to the same level as ML.
  • I'm going to second polychrome's comments, but also add that I've seen TNH disemvowell stuff on bb that would never pass disemvowellment muster on Making Light. I find the disemvolwellment policy on bb a disincentive to posting. More generally, I'm wary of large communities in part because of the difficulties of moderation. I've been involved in a couple of social experiments with mailing lists that went badly south in very much the style Shirky describes in the second link. Once you get past a certain size, it's hard to keep a community from throttling itself.
  • Comments in this post have been moderated. Any comments by anyone with an S in their name have been deleted. New policy.
  • Linked from the first link, this bit on fan speak is fascinating. Yes, I did start thinking about whether I did these things or not - I think I may do some, but I'm not sure (I did drop out of the fan community a while ago - changed countries, but didn't entirely fit in to start with). I'm pretty sure I do the look at people to make them talk thing.
  • I don't think TNH is such a great source for information on how to moderate a virtual community. She's put together a vibrant and active community over at Making Light, which is great. But she goes on from that to infer that she's hit on some basic Universal Truths Of Moderation. Many of her basic truths are, IMHO, completely wrong (such as the absolute necessity of moderation in the first place). I'm sure she does some things well (disemvowelling is a clever tactic) and has some good insights, but to learn from her, I think it would be necessary to study what she actually did while Making Light was growing, not what she now thinks she does. (And of course no matter how well or poorly you moderate, success depends mostly on who your community's members are and how they behave.)
  • just how much Hard Work (TM) it is to keep a site such as Monkeyfilter chugging along Yeah, thanks, tracicle. Been meaning to remind you that you're appreciated, whether expressed often enough or not.
  • is that why my posties were deleted? posted by BlueHore at 04:25AM UTC on November 26, 2007
  • success depends mostly on who your community's members are and how they behave. This always bears repeating.
  • There's always the Barbelith model, which requires a new member to be proposed/approved by an existing member, much like golf clubs, or the Masons.* *This may be wrong and/or ignorant.** **Is there a way to set this sentence as a kind of post signature on everything I write? p.s. much thanks to tracicle, our beloved owner.
  • Ah, yes, the Masons. I've been using their jars for years.
  • tracicle wrote: "success depends mostly on who your community's members are and how they behave. Well, shit. Guess we're hosed then. My favorite groupthink theory: The average intelligence of any group of individuals is automatically lowered to the base level of the least intelligent member of the crowd. I know it is true because I made it up one day. It explains a lot of things. Like shopping mall crowds, amusement park crowds, Nuremberg Rally crowds (self-Godwin!), and all that kind of thing. Get a large enough group of people together and there's bound to be at least one complete moron. That moron sets the bar for the behavior of everyone else in the crowd. Think about it. It may not be very scientific but damn, it seems to happen. Think about that time in high school and/or college when you were hanging with a big group of your friends, and invariably ended up in trouble. You come home, your parents are mad, your dad asks "why did you do something that stupid?" and all you can think is that it was SOMEbody's idea, but you don't know just how it seemed like the thing to do at the time... you were a victim of the Group Idiocy Theory. It explains everything.
  • i like frogs