Group as User: Flaming and the Design of Social Software

November 8, 2004 11:11 AM

Group as User:Flaming and the Design of Social Software is Clay Shirky's latest essay on social software. It describes some interesting experiments and avenues for experimentation in reducing flaming in social discourse software. A prime example is Bumplist.
posted by turbodog (7 comments total)

Excellent! Thanks turbodog.
posted by ba at 11:31 AM on November 8, 2004

This is good.

Thank you.
posted by loquacious at 11:34 AM on November 8, 2004

Kind of funny reading this with the knowledge that Shirky was a regular participant at my old flaming grounds - the now-removed forums there were literally dedicated to telling each other to 'fuck off' in the most amusing and intelligent way possible. A lot of good ideas about social software came up from time to time there, despite (or perhaps because of) the main goal being to flame each other senseless. I wish he'd gone a little more indepth on this one.

One idea I've wanted to see implemented for a long time now is a message board which implemented a free-floating nodal system with regards to user groups. Each post, thread, and user has two links for 'more like this / less like this', and you read (and/or browse, as you will) at a set threshhold. Groups of users, threads, posts drift towards and away from each other within the communal heirarchy as discussion progresses, and your threshold 'distance' determines what you see in you default browsing display.
posted by Ryvar at 11:39 AM on November 8, 2004

"It is a deep curiosity of the human condition that people often find negative attention more satisfying than inattention, and the larger the group, the likelier someone is to act out to get that sort of attention."

Werd.
posted by cortex at 12:57 PM on November 8, 2004

cortex: Yup. When I first started reading the essay, and especially once I hit that quote, I thought about posting this to MeTa instead of here. The alternatives and experiments are more post-worthy, though.

BTW: anyone know if Clay has a (long unused?) MeFi account?
posted by turbodog at 1:37 PM on November 8, 2004

...it's useful to contemplate both weblogs and wikis, neither of which suffer from flaming in anything like the degree mailing lists and other conversational spaces do.

Uh, been on Wikipedia recently?
posted by axon at 4:02 AM on November 9, 2004

Interesting essay - but God Almighty, will people please stop citing Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons"! It's totally historically inaccurate and Hardin misunderstood how premodern people managed communal property.

/common land usuage history rant done. :)

Actually, he missed out that they conciously managed it, which they did, and that it was communal, not common - that is restricted in use, usually by ownership or residence. Individual or Common management and restriction so you don't get overuse does happen in webspace - as mefi well knows.
posted by jb at 9:29 PM on November 9, 2004