[ExI] lists going quiet, was: RE: list test

[Anders Sandberg]

The basic question of why a forum goes quiet can have multiple causes. 
Few active participants and reduced likeliehood of posting are the first 
order causes, but the causes for these can be many:

* People are temporarily away or lazy, as in the holiday case
* People are temporarily or permanently distracted by other activities 
(competing forums, competing activities, competing media, ...)
* The discussion on the forum is not conducive to posting new stuff 
(everything has already been said, bad flamewars, complex in-groups, ...)
* Natural loss of old members, not enough new members (how does 
recruitment work? has the community entry threshold increased? changes 
in perceived status, benefit, ...)
* Loss of key members (moderators, facilitators, the expert, the 
discussion driver, ...)
* People post less because of perceived costs or risks (fear of leaks, 
interception, reputational loss; feelings one has to write super-good 
posts to fit in, ...)
... and probably many other categories.

I think many forums decline because of a combination. The rise of new 
media and social networking will draw some people away (how many forums, 
feeds and other media can you check per day, even with aggregation? How 
well can you keep up with multiple discussions?) while maturation of 
forum discussions/communities often makes the threshold of entry harder 
(how do we treat the newbies, who ask the same question for the 4711th 
time?) Over time, key members will also disappear simply because they 
move on in their lives, and if there is nobody to take over that role 
the community network will become less effective.

I think the new media is a likely explanation, since they dilute the 
attention (lowering p). In 1993 the only online media I had was email, 
email lists and Usenet, today I can email, use a list, blog (on several 
different blogs), tweet, post to google+, participate in numerous 
forums, use Second Life, Skype, RetroShare and whatnot. I would be 
surprised if competition for attention and forum members have gotten 
sharper, and that they have moved to some extent.

I think the darknet explanation ("virtual Galt's Gulch scenario"?) is 
unlikely, since so few people use darknets at present. They suffer 
exactly from the critical mass problem I described: unless a group moves 
en masse into it, they will have a tendency to (1) have fewer 
participants, (2) it is harder to find other or new participants. So I 
would predict that at present if the elite is using darknets, they are 
not getting that much good discussion going (outside some small groups - 
having some burning shared interest, typically illegal or subversive, 
can be a good motivator). In fact, if you want to ignite a big online 
discussion you do not want to put it on a darknet, since you want to 
broadcast it as widely as possible. Nyms are more important than 
darknets, IMHO.


-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University