Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change

Re:Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That ... by saint_fiasco on Thursday April 26, 2018 @05:08PM (#16935809)

If there is a correlation, it's more likely that the sort of petty asshole who likes to feel important will prefer to invest more effort in a site that is valuable.

So the more valuable a site becomes, the more it will attract highly motivated but slightly sociopathic moderators.

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Re:Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That ... by Viliam1234 on Friday April 27, 2018 @05:27PM (#16944480)

Yes, this seems more likely.

If you create a new website with first 10 toxic users, it will never grow, because they will scare away any potential 11th user.

But if you create a new website with awesome users, it get useful content and grow. When it grows very large and attracts too many users, you will have to start moderating heavily. But moderating a website is an exhausting task, and awesome people usually have other things to do; so gradually the job will be taken by people hungry for some kind of power. Then the site becomes toxic.

[ Parent | on HN ]