Would you say all of that is true for communities outside in the real world? Ive a theory that groups can become so large the negatives nearly always outweigh the positives but I haven’t really had time to think it through entirely.
I do think the real world has some differences that make it more difficult. Mostly that whoever is coordinating the larger groups is very likely to have access to more power and resources and therefore is corruptible. And then that’s one of the systems that brings about that Pareto distribution sort of imbalance among people. Some inequality in terms of power is not destructive, but too much is almost guaranteed to end badly. But online, the sort of power and resources that are accrued are ultimately just less likely to eventually reach a point of being able to exert full control over the smaller layers of the community. I mean sure, someone could start acting despotic with their own “fiefdom” as another commenter aptly put it, like has sometimes happened with open source repositories or forums, but it’s hard for someone’s website to get so popular that they’re somehow able to directly force changes upon your website (not impossible, I know).
Would you say all of that is true for communities outside in the real world? Ive a theory that groups can become so large the negatives nearly always outweigh the positives but I haven’t really had time to think it through entirely.
I do think the real world has some differences that make it more difficult. Mostly that whoever is coordinating the larger groups is very likely to have access to more power and resources and therefore is corruptible. And then that’s one of the systems that brings about that Pareto distribution sort of imbalance among people. Some inequality in terms of power is not destructive, but too much is almost guaranteed to end badly. But online, the sort of power and resources that are accrued are ultimately just less likely to eventually reach a point of being able to exert full control over the smaller layers of the community. I mean sure, someone could start acting despotic with their own “fiefdom” as another commenter aptly put it, like has sometimes happened with open source repositories or forums, but it’s hard for someone’s website to get so popular that they’re somehow able to directly force changes upon your website (not impossible, I know).