Note that the article is from 2003. This problem has been around for a long time. As far as I know, no one has ever really solved it.
One thing I've noticed on Reddit and Digg is that discussion stops being a conversation when the number of posts gets too high.
It's still a conversation when you have forty or fifty posts: you can read the whole thing and understand what is being said before you contribute. When every conversation has over 100 posts, you don't have one conversation any more. You have a bunch of parallel conversations, often repetitive. Worse, you start seeing more posts where the author is not trying to talk to another person, but to stand on a soapbox and make points to the crowd.
I don't think this is (necessarily) a failure of etiquette or good manners, just a limitation on how much information people can digest in a casual setting like a web forum.
Of course, as you get more users, you will also get a higher absolute number of people who are intentional troublemakers or who are incapable of understanding the community standards. Unfortunately, these guys have a tendency to completely take over a thread.
One possible solution that I'd like to see someone try is intentional sharding of the community. Costly, but worth it IMO if it kept some enclaves of high quality discussion. You could give everyone read only access to any shard, which would be a decent option for the lurking majority.
Though I don't know of anyone who has solved the problem of community deterioration, my gut feeling is that it is solvable, someday. At least to the extent that a good conversation is about good manners and paying attention, and not about showing up at the place that is currently in fashion.
Note that the article is from 2003. This problem has been around for a long time. As far as I know, no one has ever really solved it.
One thing I've noticed on Reddit and Digg is that discussion stops being a conversation when the number of posts gets too high.
It's still a conversation when you have forty or fifty posts: you can read the whole thing and understand what is being said before you contribute. When every conversation has over 100 posts, you don't have one conversation any more. You have a bunch of parallel conversations, often repetitive. Worse, you start seeing more posts where the author is not trying to talk to another person, but to stand on a soapbox and make points to the crowd.
I don't think this is (necessarily) a failure of etiquette or good manners, just a limitation on how much information people can digest in a casual setting like a web forum.
Of course, as you get more users, you will also get a higher absolute number of people who are intentional troublemakers or who are incapable of understanding the community standards. Unfortunately, these guys have a tendency to completely take over a thread.
One possible solution that I'd like to see someone try is intentional sharding of the community. Costly, but worth it IMO if it kept some enclaves of high quality discussion. You could give everyone read only access to any shard, which would be a decent option for the lurking majority.
Though I don't know of anyone who has solved the problem of community deterioration, my gut feeling is that it is solvable, someday. At least to the extent that a good conversation is about good manners and paying attention, and not about showing up at the place that is currently in fashion.