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Re:The “smolnet”, build for friends and friends of friends by bombcar on Monday June 12, 2023 @12:44PM (#36296448)
It's assimilation speed and has been seen time and time again in various contexts.

If I take my American family and move to Australia, we will become Australian over time.

If I take my family and the entire city I live in to Australia, there will be an American city in Australia.

Eternal September is just when the influx overwhelmed the "carrying capacity" of Usenet, and anyone who has been on any forum for a length of time can refer to a similar influx (often complaining that everything has gone to crap since then).

Re:The “smolnet”, build for friends and friends of friends by OkayPhysicist on Monday June 12, 2023 @01:18PM (#36297200)
Assimilation speed versus rate of joining versus rate of people leaving all need to be kept in balance to have a long running, tight-knit community. An interesting example is university clubs: they have the intrinsic property that people's tenure in the club is very finite, typically a maximum of 4 years. Despite this constant turnover of membership, clubs tend to maintain a relatively constant culture. I posit that the main driver behind this is deliberate accelerated assimilation.

Right out of the gates, you have selection bias in who wants to be in your club: probably people who share many of the same interests as the club. Then you have further selection pressure with inviting new membership: existing members are more likely to accept into the organization prospective members who are similar to themselves, or at least, an idealized version. Then, you have rituals, ranging from hazing to positive Big/Little type interactions, which proactively push new members to assimilate into the club.

Re:The “smolnet”, build for friends and friends of friends by bombcar on Monday June 12, 2023 @01:37PM (#36297604)
Those are good points; a university club almost by definition has 25% turn over each year, but it's scheduled, defined, and worked around. People don't usually just disappear; they hand off responsibilities and train, either explicitly or implicitly.
Re:The “smolnet”, build for friends and friends of friends by marginalia_nu on Monday June 12, 2023 @01:06PM (#36296941)
It probably boils down to mathematics. If your average interaction is with someone you've never met before, it's very difficult for persistent relations to form.