

A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy - franze
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/05/a-group-is-its-own-worst-enemy.html

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willvarfar
I'm curious: is there any site where:

1) logged in users can vote for what they like, both up and down. A profile is
built identifying other users who vote like you, and so your vote influences
the post prominence for those others more than for other users who have
different voting patterns

2) anonymous users get post prominence based on a smattering of different
group votes

Its a bit like movie recommendations. In this way, trolls will quickly be
grouped with other trolls and those who consistently vote up articles they
like will see post prominence from like-minded devotees, and a single board
can have a wide range of subjects that end up not needing categorization
because they are self-organising.

(Would this work for, say, HN?)

~~~
Harkins
I think (1) roughly describes HubSki, but that's going from descriptions I've
heard rather than personal experience.

~~~
markkat
It's not too far off. On Hubski, the content you see is based on who you
follow (people and/or tags). Importantly, you don't just get the posts of the
people you follow, but the posts they share with you. (you might be interested
in following someone that doesn't post at all, if they find and share quality
posts). Likewise, posts you share go to your followers. -You can share and
unshare.

My thinking on Hubski has been guided by the idea that groups should form and
dissolve as people wish, and that Hubski become a multitude of overlapping and
ever-changing groups. As user following-relationships are color-coded
(<http://hubski.com/about>), you tend to build a familiarity with a number of
people that are connected with you this way.

IMO it's not just content that should be the result of choice, but also how
familiar you want to get with members of the community. I'm currently doing
more work to this end.

In a nutshell, I feel effort is best spent enabling users to build and break
boundaries and groups as they are wont to. -It's not as important that you
behave as I would like you to, if I can easily avoid you.

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ColinWright
In case anyone is interested I've submitted the original paper with this title
here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3003574>

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iwwr
I wonder about the implications of this WRT free speech in general. While
ostensibly, free speech is a pillar democratic societies, not all forms of
expression are actually allowed (think: porn or public nudity).

This implies that free speech is less about the content, but about the freedom
to assemble and exchange information. That is, freedom manifests itself in
self-selected groups of peers, who can then moderate the content of their
communities.

"Free speech" is not a guarantee for a platform for any particular message,
but rather a promise (by political powers) not to suppress free private
exchanges of information; while public spaces (streets, squares, airwaves) may
still be moderated.

~~~
techiferous
With respect to free speech and, in general, freedoms within a group, it's
important to realize we're dealing with two boundaries. The first is the rules
the group agrees on that are enforced. The second are your own personal
boundaries that you choose.

I think the tendency is to make the enforced rules light; we like to tip the
balance in the favor of more freedom as much as possible. That said, this
works best if individuals make an effort to be genuinely concerned about the
interests of others in the group and therefore draw much more conservative
boundaries around their own behavior.

In other words, groups need lots of social restrictions on behavior to work
well, but it works best when each individual has a lot of room to decide what
those boundaries are. Only the egregiously bad behavior is formally addressed
as a group.

Sometimes people don't realize there are two boundaries going on and
rationalize rude behavior under the umbrella of freedom or free speech.

------
gordonguthrie
Kuro5hin - brings back memories. Rusty released the source code as Scoop and I
hacked on its Perl for a while.

Scoop was the original code base for The Daily Kos if I remember rightly. I
took a swatch at the sources but no signs, its probably been boiled down to
bones now.

