kuro5hin.org || forums
The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002703/http://www.kuro5hin.org:80/tag/forums
[](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002703/http://www.kuro5hin.org/print/2009/3/12/33338/3000)**[Attacked from Within](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002703/http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/12/33338/3000)**
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)
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