Ask HN: Is it true that any community that grows big enough, gets ruined?

Re:Ask HN: Is it true that any community that grows big enou... by bitlax on Friday May 13, 2022 @09:16AM (#31367184)

At the page level, Wikipedia is a great example of this phenomenon. Mathematics and engineering pages are usually well-written and informative. Pages for popular political topics are routinely locked and vandalized, and the content eventually reflects the same worldview you see in forums with low barriers to entry.

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Re:Ask HN: Is it true that any community that grows big enou... by Kim_Bruning on Friday May 13, 2022 @12:44PM (#31369849)

That's a key insight.

On an average wikipedia page (or even topic), you will only encounter a small number of participants at a time. A lot of the time you can forget that the rest of the community even exists. You're likely to be fine even if you Ignore All the Rules [1][2]. As long as you mean well, good-faith interactions between individuals (if any!) will typically set you right. This is where Wikipedia is strong.

On highly popular pages, the number of participants can rise well above the actual empirical value of Dunbar's number for that page. At that point it becomes very hard to maintain order, and things can get very bureaucratic over even a single punctuation mark. This is where Wikipedia is weak.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules

[2] Yes, even in 2022. O:-)

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