kuro5hin.org || society

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Attacked from Within

By anaesthetica in Internet
Fri Mar 13, 2009 at 11:17:19 AM EST
Tags: k5 isn't dying, community, society, scaling, internet, forums, group dynamics, moderation, tl;dr (all tags)

Traditional methods for protecting community from the effects of scale and poor behavior are now manifestly unfeasible. Raising barriers to entry, relying on the assumption that users will maintain only one registered account, and placing faith in the ability of admins and user moderation to reproduce a forum's organic culture are all easily circumvented, gamed, and/or ineffective when faced with the problems of scale. Moreover, they tend to reinforce self-destructive behaviors, by increasing returns to the most persistent rather than the most constructive, reinforcing groupthink, and providing ample targets for trolling and griefing.

This article attempts to fundamentally rethink what constitutes community and society on the web, and what possibilities exist for their maintenance and reconstruction in the face of scale and malicious users. The recommendations reached, after analyzing the weaknesses of the web forums we all know and love, are:

User anonymity should be forced.

Barriers to participation should be as low as possible.

Moderation should not focus on users or on comments in isolation, but on the relational quality of comments.

Passive moderation filters can mitigate problems of scale.

Preservation of community must shift from being based on exclusion to being based on demonstrated constructive interaction.

Forums should discriminate between content types: original content, links, and personal content.

Story promotion and front page position should be driven by conversation, not voting.

Full Story (76 comments, 9119 words in story)

Time is money

By Gutza in Gutza's Diary
Sat Sep 16, 2006 at 09:11:49 PM EST
Tags: economy, money, philosophy, society, time (all tags)

I'm a medium. I can hear your thoughts. "Time is money—how lame, everybody knows that—moron!" Right? Good.

But have you ever really thought why "time is money"? I mean, why not "time means money", or "time's as precious as money", or something?

Target audience

Well, some of you have—you need not apply, I won't give you people any miraculous insight. But most of you haven't—and it is you who I'm talking to. So please, don't read any further, and by all means do not comment if you're an economist, or you know all about this—this diary entry is not for you.

This diary entry is about explaining the factual identity between time and money in the modern economy, in an abstract way, without any social or economical bias.

Full Story (25 comments, 1138 words in story)

Friday, October 9th
Biofilms (49 comments)