Re:Hidden Features of Java
by philwelch on Sunday January 08, 2012 @12:20PM
(#3439971)
As a pure matter of observation, StackOverflow seems just as deletionist as Wikipedia, except they actually keep stuff up sometimes. It's interesting to ponder why these sites develop deletionist culture.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
I suspect it has to do with the kinds of status competition/display that are possible in the online area, the personality types that thrive under such a constrained domain, and the side-effects of necessary policing/self-defense.
There are some similarities to the observations about leadership in realspace organizations made by (sci-fi author Jerry) Pournelle's 'Iron Law of Bureaucracy' and (sociologist Robert) Michels' 'Iron Law of Oligarchy'.
One of the clearest ways to demonstrate 'authority' in an online site is to say and enforce a 'No', so No's may be oversupplied.
At some point it starts to resemble an auto-immune disorder, a mis-calibrated system attacking itself.
Maybe all the sites without tight enforced rules got their discussions derailed and you never heard about them?
See "Optimizing for Pearls, not Sand": http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-...