
Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism - revorad
http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/
======
kylec
Being a relatively new community, Stack Overflow has been wrestling with these
issues for some time. Most recently, Michael Pryor [1] posted a topic [2]
questioning the need for closing questions, which, ironically, has been closed
7 times [3], and generated a lengthy (but otherwise well-mannered) discussion
with some people on both sides of the isle and many others in between,
culminating in a blog post [4] about what constitutes an acceptable question.

Historically, my position has been similar to the unofficial policy here at
Hacker News, in that topics/questions should be allowed if they
interest/concern hackers/programmers, even though they may not specifically be
about hacking/programming. However, recently I've come to see that, if left
unchecked, generic discussion questions will overrun Stack Overflow simply
because they appeal to the greatest common denominator of the audience, and
therefore garner the most attention.

The closing system on Stack Overflow works quite well as that limited check.
By providing guidelines for acceptable questions and a mechanism for closing
those that aren't, Stack Overflow provides the means to keep it's garden (to
borrow a metaphor from the article). However, by having the community, as
opposed to appointed moderators, keep the garden, it means that fun,
insightful, or otherwise constructive yet off-topic questions can remain in a
limited capacity, so long as those that want to keep them outnumber those that
want to remove them.

1: Cofounder of Fog Creek. Partner of Joel Spolsky, cofounder of Stack
Overflow.

2: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/756650/why-do-people-
clos...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/756650/why-do-people-close-
questions-on-stackoverflow-closed)

3: On Stack Overflow, users with a certain reputation score can vote to close
a question. A question is closed when it reaches 5 close votes. The one
exception is that starred moderators can immediately close or open a question.
Once closed, the same mechanism is used to open a question back up.

4: [http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-
que...](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-
lifecycle)

~~~
jacoblyles
I question the wisdom of pure democracy and majority vote for such decisions
as opening and closing articles. As you say, fluff topics appeal to the GCD of
the population, and should have plenty of votes to stay open.

One of the things that I liked most about StackOverflow when I started using
it was how hard it was to get karma. To get it, you either had to ask good
programming questions or give good programming answers. That's not easy to do.

Then I saw a question about office chairs with 50 points on the front page.

~~~
kylec
True. However, while there is an extremely low reputation threshold for being
able to vote, there is a significantly higher threshold for closing and
opening. The term "reputation" is sort of a misnomer in that it doesn't
particularly signify technical skill, but rather an investment in the
community. With a daily cap of 200[1] and a minimum of 3000 required for
closing, an extremely active user would need to spend at least 15 days asking
great questions and giving great answers. I think that after such an
investment of time and effort, most users would want to maintain the level of
quality on the site.

Also, one thing that I didn't mention before is that Stack Overflow has a
setting called "Community Wiki" that, among other things, is customary to use
when posting subjective or off-topic material to prevent reputation gain.
Whether or not a question is marked as Wiki can mean the difference between
staying open and getting closed, and a question that gets over 30 answers is
also deemed subjective and rolls over to Wiki. This means that not only does a
closer have to earn 3000 rep, but it's also granted primarily through on-topic
posts. The question you mention, I assume, is this one [2], which has been
Wiki since it was posted.

1: It's possible to exceed the cap by hitting it then having an answer or
bounty accepted, but this is very hard to do regularly for normal users.

2: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/306708/must-haves-for-
dev...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/306708/must-haves-for-developers-
office)

~~~
jacoblyles
Good points.

StackOverflow is my favorite site that I discovered this year. Its community
is incredible. I hope you guys make enough money off of it to stay open for a
long time.

~~~
kylec
I should clarify myself - I'm not affiliated with Stack Overflow, I'm just an
engaged user that saw parallels between the article and the recent discourse
about how the community should be moderate itself.

That aside, I agree with your sentiment - SO is my newest favorite site, and
I, too, hope that Jeff & company are able to keep the site open for a long
time. Once you go Stack you never go back.

------
KirinDave
I think the most interesting part of this is the sentiment of _trust_ that is
claimed to be essential for a community to thrive. You have to trust your
moderators and they have to trust themselves to act accordingly, or your
community is at risk.

I see this exact same pattern in every startup I've been in. Everyone has to
trust one another to do the Right Thing (at least to the limits of their
ability), to Work Hard and Preserve The Culture. You hear these phrases a lot,
but it is very obvious when a startup _gets_ the ideas and has a staff that
can still be productive when not hounded and driven back to their desks. Even
the moderation aspect is reflected in the way startups tend to do recruiting.
In small groups, if even _one_ person objects to a new hire, then they should
be out. And if you ever question that objection, you're creating a huge
potential problem in the future.

Someone should go grab an anthropologist and ask them if this has any relation
to humanity's tribal cultures in history. I bet the answer would be really
fascinating and informative. :)

------
dave_au
Dealing with mass migrations is also interesting in this context. I'm one of
what appears to be many reddit refugees, and I mainly left because of what
appeared to be a medium size exodus from digg to reddit.

I assume that the people were moving from digg to reddit because they saw that
there were generally "better" elsewhere - why would you move to somewhere if
you didn't think it was better? - and then some proportion of those people
didn't take the time to get to know the prevailing culture, and so they
brought parts of the culture they were fleeing with them.

Seeing that has made me stop and think and then think again before posting
here. I'll probably start to consider myself part of the community after a
year or 500 comment karma, whichever comes last. Unless reddit implodes and
they all come here.

------
tjic
I think that the thesis here is true, but the statement "communities that X
cease to have X when any old person is allowed in" applies not just for values
of X == "intelligent discourse", but also for X == "group-think leftism",
"group-think rightism", etc.

Shirky nailed it here:

<http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html>

 _The third pattern Bion identified: Religious veneration. The nomination and
worship of a religious icon or a set of religious tenets. The religious
pattern is, essentially, we have nominated something that's beyond critique.
You can see this pattern on the Internet any day you like. Go onto a Tolkein
newsgroup or discussion forum, and try saying "You know, The Two Towers is a
little dull. I mean loooong. We didn't need that much description about the
forest, because it's pretty much the same forest all the way."

Try having that discussion. On the door of the group it will say: "This is for
discussing the works of Tolkein." Go in and try and have that discussion.

Now, in some places people say "Yes, but it needed to, because it had to
convey the sense of lassitude," or whatever. But in most places you'll simply
be flamed to high heaven, because you're interfering with the religious text._

Sometime the religious texts are opinions, sometimes they're people, sometime
they're both.

I was a semi-frequent commentor on a popular blog. I'd spoken to one or two of
the founders of the blog on the phone a few times, had done some business with
them, and all-in-all had a cordial relationship, even though we differed on
major-party-politics.

Then the popular blog hired a well known blogger to do their moderation. This
well known blogger had a VERY strong political stance ... and brought with her
to the group blog a bunch of her alcolytes.

A few times someone would post "politician X did Y and is the worst person
ever". And I responded calmly "ummm...didn't politician Z do the exact same
thing? Are they both the worst person ever, or might the situation be a bit
more nuanced?".

...and for that, the moderator censored my comments.

I appealed to the founders of the blog, they agreed that I had said nothing
untoward, the moderator was talked to ... and then the same thing happened two
more times.

At that point I gave up on the group blog.

If they were willing to tolerate a bit of intelligent dissent from the
orthodoxy, I was happy to be there ... but if the purpose of the group blog
was veneration of the religious texts ... well, I've got better things to do
with my time.

So... it is true that moderating can increase the IQ of a conversation. ...but
it can also increase all sorts of other things: insularity, group-think,
distrust of dissenting voices, etc.

~~~
quoderat
What the article argues is sometimes true, but sometimes it happens that a
community dies because of insane moderators, as the above commenter observes.

It happened on the MaxPC forums a few years ago, where I and a few other long-
time posters were banned for reasons that were trivial, because one of the
mods -- a very hotheaded and patriotic Canadian -- was threatened by the
respect others accorded us.

BoingBoing is doing the same thing, from what I can tell, with its idiotic
disemvowelling.

~~~
tjic
> BoingBoing is doing the same thing, from what I can tell, with its idiotic
> disemvowelling.

Apparently I didn't do a good enough job obscuring the identity of the group
blog and moderator I was referencing... ;-)

~~~
throw_away
I would love to make a subreddit that auto-posted bb links and allowed
unmoderated discussion of them. bb links are pretty good, but I agree that
their human moderation is dumb and heavy-handed. I've always gotten stuck on
how to programatically submit reddit posts.

------
mayonesa
It's a good summary of one of the points Plato made in The Republic. Great
article, even with the post-LSD writing style.

