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posted by janrinok on Sunday July 19 2015, @12:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the timely-discussion dept.

We recently discussed reddit's woes and the hiring of a new CEO. However, we have seen communities come and go for many years.

Clay Shirky wrote about his experience in 1978: "Communitree was founded on the principles of open access and free dialogue... And then, as time sets in, difficulties emerge. In this case, one of the difficulties was occasioned by the fact that one of the institutions that got hold of some modems was a high school. ... the boys weren't terribly interested in sophisticated adult conversation. They were interested in fart jokes. They were interested in salacious talk. ... the adults who had set up Communitree were horrified, and overrun by these students. The place that was founded on open access had too much open access, too much openness. They couldn't defend themselves against their own users. The place that was founded on free speech had too much freedom."

There are two clear trends. One is that less input and customization tends to grow bigger. Note how Geocities was replaced with Myspace which was then replaced with Facebook and Twitter. These newer systems take away personal freedom of expression and makes people follow a 'prescribed' system, albeit an easier one to use. The other trend is that communities that try to be truly free and open end up either stifled by that openness or give up. The only obvious exception is a platform that allows us to simply filter out everything we don't want to see, which becomes a series of the feared echo chamber. With the excessive amount of data and the build up of complex rules on how information is shared, where does this leave us? It seems that like the famous iron triangle allowing free (and legal) speech with the possibility of diverse opinions, a cohesive group, and growth only allows you to pick two.

It seems to me this is a wicked problem, perhaps unsolvable. But I wonder if the community thinks there are other design options? Is this even possible with human nature as it is?


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  • (Score: 1) by TmTFx on Sunday July 19 2015, @07:40PM

    by TmTFx (5693) on Sunday July 19 2015, @07:40PM (#211159)

    Do you have a consciousness?
    when your mother taught not to steal the things of others, or not to harm anyone, or to pay taxes, or to follow the rules, you eventually learnt it and your consciousness stops you to do those things...
    rise the consciousness means that teach to respect the system, and first of all respect the other (is it a man or is it the world).
    If a top manager to raise his income through the stock market creates unemployment there's something wrong in the system, but there's something wrong even in that manager. If you continue to think that the most important thing is your own interest hiding behind the way the system is grown, we cannot evolve as species. We should start to rearrange things from the ground up and put at the top of our culture the respect of the other, so your consciousness will stop you to harm your own brother. The way that politic or economic systems evolve it's not an important matter, what's important is the way people deal with people. Sh*t it's the same things that one man 2000 years ago said. Love your neighbor as yourself. Is it so hard to learn?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @10:45AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @10:45AM (#211367)

    "Consciousness" means awareness, "conscience" is the feeling of right and wrong. Two different words in English. Not usual to say we should "raise conscience", more usual to refer to "consciousness raising", which means awareness in general, not necessarily ethical awareness, although that is not excluded.