Re:Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That ...
by setr on Thursday April 26, 2018 @08:43PM
(#16937472)
I'm thinking strict moderation goes hand in hand with size of the population; in low population environments, little to no moderation is sufficient. The people govern their own culture, and with sufficiently low immigration rates, they can adequately teach newcomers the culture.
But as the population increases, driveby-posting becomes the norm rather than the outlier, and large swathes of newcomers can join at once, the culture cannot be taught at a rapid enough pace to survive. It either degrades, or enforces itself by means of an iron fist.
My thinking essentially stems from eternal september. Wikipedia's early success did not require heavy moderation, but once it became the predominant wiki, it's survival, I think, neccitated it.
The details may have issues, but the overarching idea, defending the culture from the unwashed masses, might still be correct.
People seem to think that duplicate questions are bad and something to be avoided. I think they're a terrific asset. It helps search-ability to have the same question phrased several different ways; especially when the ultimate goal is to funnel the searchers into the discussion page with the highest quality version of the question and answer. In my mind, the issue ISN'T that the mods are holding the gates against the barbarians, it is that the culture and SO itself has not given the mods the tools to convert what the "barbarians" are contributing into a valuable resource.
[1] https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html