On: Kottke: Does the broken windows theory hold online?

[tvchurch]

Case in point: Hacker News comments vs. Reddit comments vs. Digg comments.

Sure, there's a population bias. But Reddit used to have mostly intelligent comments. Not anymore.

[ars → tvchurch]

And even stronger: digg is now better than reddit. Digg is somewhat moderated, reddit isn't at all.

[unalone → ars]

Subreddits have moderators. Some of them have really excellent communities.

Digg is still an absolute wreck. Reddit is actually pretty good once you're away from /reddit.com and /politics and /economics.

[atlbeer → tvchurch]

4chan

[unalone → atlbeer]

4chan is brighter than it lets on. But recently it's become a parody of itself. What once began hilarious and meme-laden has become a bunch of people repeating memes, which aren't funny unless they're clever.

[iigs → atlbeer]

I honestly think that 4chan has some of the highest comment standards of any board I can think of, particularly for initial posts (comments can be fairly vacuous). A lot of people go to /b for the trolling, and a lot of trolls go completely ignored or get called out almost immediately.

Sure the board isn't first-order intelligent, but intelligence (along with timing and a certain type of wit) certainly helps when trying to get people riled up.