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The Death of Reddit
I don't use Reddit, but I thought this was interesting, and somewhat germane to any online community.
The Death of Reddit
Posted by Chuq Von Rospach on Jul 11, 2015
My favorite visualization of online communities is the community bar. I’ve used, managed and built online communities going back into the 1980s, many of them sports related, so it’s natural to look at those communities as sports bars. The thing I’ve always told people interested in community management is this: if you’re running a sports bar, and you have a gang of bikers move in, you have two choices. You can either eject the bikers, or you’re running a biker bar. I never set out intending to put my time and energy into a biker bar, so I always worked to prevent the rowdy elements from taking over my communities, because I knew that would cause the people I wanted to be around to leave and find some other place to be.
To carry this visualization to Reddit, what you have is a really large, multi-floor building with a large ground-floor common space and a huge bar area filled with a wide variety of people. Much of the rest of the building are community rooms that people can use for their organizations and meetups to get together and interact. it’s a huge — and very successful — community space.
Reddit, however, has a basement, and in all honesty, the owners of this building would prefer nobody look down there, because again, it’s a big space full of community rooms as well, but down there are the groups Reddit feel are part of the community but would prefer most of us would stay avoid. In some ways Reddit should be lauded for being inclusive of all community groups, even the uncomfortable ones, but down in that basement is a big part of the ultimate death of Reddit.
Here’s the thing. there are groups that don’t feel the need to behave, that see that rebellion against authority as the base of their enjoyment. And there are people who simply get off by destroying what others build or screwing up what others enjoy. If you invite those people into your house, eventually some of them are going to start pissing into your fireplace or throwing chairs at each other in the main hall. Even if you keep them in their own out of the way mostly hidden community room, the things they do will attract attention adn the authorities, and when the police come through your front door and raid your basement, your other patrons will notice. When that happens often enough, you’ll see more and more of those become ex-patrons. Most of us don’t want to party in a biker bar. Hell, most of us don’t want to party next door to a biker bar, or within blocks of a biker bar. Once your place gets that reputation, it’s going to make everyone around it nervous.
more: http://www.chuqui.com/2015/07/the-death-of-reddit/
Posted by Chuq Von Rospach on Jul 11, 2015
My favorite visualization of online communities is the community bar. I’ve used, managed and built online communities going back into the 1980s, many of them sports related, so it’s natural to look at those communities as sports bars. The thing I’ve always told people interested in community management is this: if you’re running a sports bar, and you have a gang of bikers move in, you have two choices. You can either eject the bikers, or you’re running a biker bar. I never set out intending to put my time and energy into a biker bar, so I always worked to prevent the rowdy elements from taking over my communities, because I knew that would cause the people I wanted to be around to leave and find some other place to be.
To carry this visualization to Reddit, what you have is a really large, multi-floor building with a large ground-floor common space and a huge bar area filled with a wide variety of people. Much of the rest of the building are community rooms that people can use for their organizations and meetups to get together and interact. it’s a huge — and very successful — community space.
Reddit, however, has a basement, and in all honesty, the owners of this building would prefer nobody look down there, because again, it’s a big space full of community rooms as well, but down there are the groups Reddit feel are part of the community but would prefer most of us would stay avoid. In some ways Reddit should be lauded for being inclusive of all community groups, even the uncomfortable ones, but down in that basement is a big part of the ultimate death of Reddit.
Here’s the thing. there are groups that don’t feel the need to behave, that see that rebellion against authority as the base of their enjoyment. And there are people who simply get off by destroying what others build or screwing up what others enjoy. If you invite those people into your house, eventually some of them are going to start pissing into your fireplace or throwing chairs at each other in the main hall. Even if you keep them in their own out of the way mostly hidden community room, the things they do will attract attention adn the authorities, and when the police come through your front door and raid your basement, your other patrons will notice. When that happens often enough, you’ll see more and more of those become ex-patrons. Most of us don’t want to party in a biker bar. Hell, most of us don’t want to party next door to a biker bar, or within blocks of a biker bar. Once your place gets that reputation, it’s going to make everyone around it nervous.
more: http://www.chuqui.com/2015/07/the-death-of-reddit/
13 replies
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