User:SPage (WMF)/Communitay

From Michael T. Richter's Why I no longer contribute to StackOverflow

Here is the recipe that all such "community-driven" approaches almost, but not quite, invariably follow:

1. A wide-open community based on "merit" is built.
2. The community gets a kernel of users who build up "merit" by virtue of, basically, being obsessive twerps.
3. As this kernel of "serious" users builds up its influence, they start to modify what the standards of the community are to match their own desires.
4. These standards get enforced on other members of the community who lack sufficient "merit" (read: who have a life outside the site) to fight back.
5. The tenor of the community changes to match the notions of the obsessive, but "meritous" minority.
6. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

This happened at Wikipedia...

With a little more more context:

Poor community

...

Petty children

...

Creeping authoritarianism

... That kind of behaviour is, of course, inevitable in any kind of Innarwebs™® interaction. Pseudo-anonymity makes doorknobs of otherwise-normal people. There is something else, however, in the whole Stack Exchange hierarchy that bugs me: the creeping authoritarianism.

The "flavour" of StackOverflow today is entirely different than the flavour it had when I started. When I started the community as a whole still had a bit of a sense of humour. Sure sometimes questions and/or answers would be a bit off-topic or a bit irreverent, but it gave more of a community feel that way, even if it was on occasion less-than-"professional".

This changed slowly but surely in the way that all "community moderated" things change. Here is the recipe that all such "community-driven" approaches almost, but not quite, invariably follow:

1. A wide-open community based on "merit" is built.
2. The community gets a kernel of users who build up "merit" by virtue of, basically, being obsessive twerps.
3. As this kernel of "serious" users builds up its influence, they start to modify what the standards of the community are to match their own desires.
4. These standards get enforced on other members of the community who lack sufficient "merit" (read: who have a life outside the site) to fight back.
5. The tenor of the community changes to match the notions of the obsessive, but "meritous" minority.
6. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

This happened at Wikipedia and it's happened at StackOverflow.