Stardate 20020130.1645

(On Screen): James has finally come to the conclusion that MetaFilter has become a waste of time. I fear that I agree with him, and I've pretty much decided that I'm not going to participate there anymore, either.

To some extent, MetaFilter has become a victim of its own success. It is ostensibly a "community web log", a collaborative effort. But it's not clear that it is possible to create a community out of 13,000 completely equal self-selected participants. Such collections of people can be formed, but will there be community spirit, a feeling of collective good will? Experience suggests that there will not be. As a result, as the number of participants rises, the chances for friction and general snarkiness will rise.

This kind of community-drift is a standard part of the life-cycle of all public-participation fora. But it appears to be avoidable. There are such communities which have gone on for years without decaying. The granddaddy of them all is Risks Digest. It has existed for more than fifteen years and is still going strong. (I made some contributions to it in 1988, and it was old then.)

What keeps such a forum clean is a dominating editorial voice. The problem with MetaFilter has been Matt's idea that "we're all in this together". Neumann, on the other hand, moderates Risks and won't include anything that he doesn't think is up to his standards. He himself also contributes heavily. As a result, the quality has stayed high and the snarkiness non-existent.

A community without a dominant voice will drift and mutate uncontrollably. It's like truck moving down the highway with no-one's hand on the wheel. For a while it will still go straight, but over time it will gradually veer off the road, until it crashes. The overall voice of the community changes but not in a predictable fashion. It's a crap shoot; it's completely random, and the damage is cumulative as the bad drives out the good.

There are many such online communities whose voices remain reasonably pure and fresh. One, for example, is at the legendary web site Something Awful. Another is associated with Ars Technica.

When there is an acknowledged official voice of a forum, then other users will adapt themselves to its rhythm. On Something Awful, people adapt to Rich Kyanka's (rather unusual) world view. On Ars Technical, it is Hannibal.

A combination of active moderation (i.e. deletion of unacceptable posts) with a unifying forum character can keep a forum fresh and alive indefinitely.

That's what I'm trying to do with my own forum on this server. I am actively moderating it: I have had to boot a couple of users, I've deleted posts, I've closed threads that I thought were spinning out of control, and I actively participate. But I think that the most important thing I have done is to decide that it won't be an open forum for arbitrary subjects. By making it so that it is only for use discussing things I've posted on the front page of this site, I have enormous control over the subject matter. As long as I'm willing to do the work to keep the FP interesting, the forum will also be interesting.

I have a distinctive way of writing (to say the least); I tend to be very analytical, and to back up my comments with proof or demonstration. What with all the limits I've placed on it, I've been very pleased with the high level of discussion which has taken place there. Given that I don't accept contributions for this site, you may not realize that the discussion system is my reward for the work I do. That is the contribution my readers make back to me; it gives me something to read comparable to what I give you. It is the high quality of that feedback which I have found so gratifying. Only time will tell whether it will remain that way, but I think it can.

MetaFilter hasn't, though. Matt Haughey, the site owner, has expressed his frustration on several occasions with how it has developed, but hasn't seemed to know what to do about it. I know how it can be saved, but it would require a lot more of his time, and that may not be a sacrifice that he (or his wife) is willing to make.

Matt moderates MetaFilter; he deletes extreme posts (although it's arguable that he doesn't do enough of that) and ejects unpleasant users (and likewise with this). What he doesn't do is to present a forum voice. His own participation on the site is minimal; he hardly ever starts front page threads, and doesn't post comments very often, either. As a result, there is no unifying personality driving the site, and it has become that truck veering out of control.

If Matt were to post more, both thread starts and comments in threads, people would cue in on subject matter and style from what they see him do. Just as posters in my forum tend to write at the level I do, so posters on MetaFilter would begin to post again the way Matt does. That doesn't mean they'd become sycophants; but it would control the extreme voices, and the extreme attitudes, and most of all the extreme behaviors. It amounts to leading by example.

Absent such guidance from Matt, some people on MetaFilter have become self-appointed voices. But even among