[seb] You guys know about Metafilter, right? http://www.metafilter.com/ My girlfriend is obsessed with it and we had an argument this morning that went something like this: Her: I love Metafilter! Me: This is just one of many great content-filtration systems on the internet. I want to study them all, figure out what makes them work and what doesn't, and figure out how to design the Best one." Her: I love Metafilter! It also of the largest sites that is all user-generated content. Me: How does it work? Her: A number of things: a lot of it has to do with deliberate community enforcement of social norms. They are really fierce about the quality of posts, and even the political bent of the discussion. The crummy interface keeps the community size small so that self-governance can be effective. Me: That makes it sound like it's a cliquey in-group dynamic that makes it a good collaborative filtering mechanism. Her: That's a really negative way of putting it. ------------------------------------------ There was a lot more to the discussing but I took out most of the misunderstanding and pettiness. The main question I have is: we think/talk a lot about the right technology for content creation that makes it easy to process mechanically, share, filter. Here is an example of a community institution that seems to mirror many of those effects. Personally, I hate the idea that the community accomplishes that through fierce gatekeeping, but it also seems to provide an important incentive for content creation. [Or is it? Is content that is just commentary about what is cool on the internet worthwhile?] What useful or interesting results if any can be generalized from it? [jeff] I'll just be honest here. I mostly focus on tech and technological solutions to problems (read: the arcane) because, quite frankly I'm not part of anything cool. The thing is....if you're have a governing body, you don't really need much in the way of tech. You have a common intent and work to enact that intent. Again, I cite the when the State Department and the council on Foreign Relations carved up the world (if you don't know the story, i'm not exaggerating even a little) at the end of WWII. Wow. And very low tech. Obviously, such tight knit groups exist. But now, there's something about community. Again, as long as I'm being honest, I don't give a damn about community. To me, its a cultural fad in the same way that, in this age, we have defined terms for gay, straight, and bisexual (transgender, etc), but in different times and in different cultures there is no correspondence (in the same way, the Indian harmonic scale chooses different notes than the European. If you doubt this is possible, how is it there are pygmies and dwarfs?) to today's categories. Sex was just a different cultural phenomenon, and to try to make a mapping of one manifestation to the other is impossible [*]. That said, obviously there is much more good gained by having a collaborative voice. Again, to tangent, people today hold independence of a very high value. But really, there is no value in ultimate independence. That would be a very pointless existence. So we can say that interhuman interaction is important. My problem with "online communities" is the same problem I have with all communities. There are the clique leaders and the clique followers. I have no desire to be either one. A community is healthy in proportion of collective intent. As a symptom of this, how are newcomers treated? Are they welcome? Are they told "you can't do this here"? Is that a function of their fit to the community or (bad) to the point that the community has become a vehicle and that one must learn how to drive it? To strike down Buddhism, all vehicles must be destroyed. I guess all of that is a fancy way of talking around your question. In short, people don't work well together. This isn't for any particular reason, it's just how it is. There is no good, bad, better. None of this means that one should give up and woe around, but, by the same time, it does mean that there is nothing to accomplish. Groups that *do* work well together can really manifest their intent. And if they're smart (read: not fueled by greed) then they'll realize that they're painting a picture [+] instead of making any gain. [*] See also http://k0s.org/blog/20091106202127 [+] or solving a mystery or acting a play or riding a riding or playing a videogame or [egj] I think I pretty much agree with Jeff. But with the caveat that I'm not sure what Jeff's answer is or what Seb's question is. But Jeff's point that > ..if you're have a governing body, you don't really need > much in the way of tech. You have a common intent and work to enact > that intent. is absolutely right. > Heather: They are really fierce about the quality of > posts, and even the political bent of the discussion. The crummy interface > keeps the community size small so that self-governance can be effective. > Seb: That makes it sound like it's a cliquey in-group dynamic that makes it a > good collaborative filtering mechanism. Sure. It is a community of content-filterers, and the high barriers of entry make it a functional community -- i.e. keep the community from dissolving in a deluge of bad content-filterers. (To be less abstract: if the barrier of entry were lower, more people with incompatible or bad editorial judgment would show up, and then the quality of the output would deteriorate from the perspective of the people who have kept it going, and eventually those people would individually lose interest.) So what? By the way, I don't care about collaborative filtering. At least, this flavor of it. There are some concepts in Melkjug that interest me, about the reification of individual editorial preferences in a way that lets those preferences be shared and retooled. In that model, the individual filtering takes place internal to the platform; the output of individual filters is individual filtered-content; and the collaboration is in the ecosystem of individual filters and individual filtered-content. In the model that I don't care about, the individual filtering takes place external to the platform; the output of individual filters is collective filtered-content; and the collaboration is in the act of contributing to the collective filtered-content. > What useful or interesting results if any can be generalized from it? I guess my above paragraph, but I think the community-clique thing is kind of a red herring, I don't know how it relates? Well, never mind, I sort of do. It relates in that you don't need tech when you have community, and that we three are not really very good at or happy with being community members, and that the right way (for us -- or, like, the interesting way) to intersect tech and collaboration is the above pattern. The above pattern needs to be generalized beyond filtering though -- it's generally applicable. It's the pattern Jeff & I were going for (and I'm still hoping we'll come back to one day dammit) with Trac configurations as reifications of individual project management opinions, and figuring out the necessary infrastructure for an ecosystem of sharing and retooling those. Also in that pattern there's a necessary component of capture. You need mechanisms to capture the individual preferences into reifications within the platform, preferably as a side effect of the user's natural actions and expression within the platform. [jeff] I think this is a good point. Melkjug is an open-content model. That is, while cliquey communities can form around the content (content=individual filters) as they do with open-source software, ultimately freedom is increased as these communities may be ignored and individuals can just use whatever filtering they want. To contrast with a governing body, the latter gives you one choice that has been expertly chosen for you. To me, this is the apple vs. linux, or, say, microsoft vs. the web, debate: one side doesn't give you anything but tools; the other side shows (forces?) you to assemble things a certain (Right) way. It is partially out of bitterness for never being a functional member of a functional community, but I'll go with the tools approach every time.