The tough thing about running a maker community is makers don't want to sit around all day to browse products and comment. But you know who does? Growth Hackers.
I say this coming from my own experience growing a community of hardware hackers who have even less of an inclination to chat since they aren't always in front of a computer.
You just hit on one of the fundamental reasons why all online communities tend towards toxicity – the people who have the most time and energy to invest in discussions (which eventually snowball into flame wars) are the people who aren't actually doing the actual work.
These things then feed off of themselves – in a sociopolitical 'guardian' type community (/r/atheism, /r/childfree, etc etc) it ends up becoming highly caustic towards the outgroup with everyone competing for in-group status points, while in a 'trader' type community (/r/entrepreneur, /r/marketing), you end up getting flooded by shysters and self-promoters.
The moderates shake their heads and leave, and you're left with the inmates running the asylum.
This is more true of communities built around ideas rather than activities, and there are also moderating tactics you can use to avoid it. For example, online communities based around astronomy, or radio-controlled airplanes, or baking, or other hobbies remain relatively healthy even decades after their founding.
Also there are communities around conventionally caustic topics (eg. Lambda: The Ultimate for programming language design, Penny Arcade for games) that manage to survive for a decade+ with no loss of quality because of moderation policies. For example, L:tU has an "avoiding ungrounded discussion" policy - every thread must be centered around discussion of a published academic paper, which first of all keeps the focus on people who actually do work, and second of all discourages everyone without the background to read and understand academic papers.
Could you point to some examples where this has worked? It seems that the entry fee would either 1. limit the community's growth severely (not necessarily a bad thing), or 2. filter out good candidates.
SomethingAwful's forums required a paid membership and have been around a long time. IMO one of the points of a paid model is keeping membership down to people who actually care enough to pay said membership.
Additionally, the implicit threat of having your paid membership revoked for bad behavior can provide a natural check.
Something Awful has used this to great effect to keep trolls in line. I wonder what % of their membership revenue comes from banned users purchasing new accounts.
I'd say most of it, at this point. As a long-time goon, getting banned and rereging the account is a way of patronage. No joke, it's very common behaviour there.
That doesn't work at all. Just look at sponsored posts on pretty much any publication/blog/forum. Every single one is paid and they race for the lowest tolerated behavior.
This is what has killed Twitter. Both social justice Twitter and right-wing Twitter revolve around competing for status-points, and backslapping (the latest trend is linking to other people's egotistical tweetstorms along with a comment like 'This' or 'Thread'.
Very little challenge of ideas takes place - either from within communities or from outside. The whole thing has become a Wittgensteinian language game where people compete to praise or denounce the latest political trend in the most caustic or verbose way. It's tiresome and offputting to people unwilling to subjugate their entire online persona to their identity.
> the people who have the most time and energy to invest in discussions (which eventually snowball into flame wars) are the people who aren't actually doing the actual work.
Pretty sure we've reached peak-discussion. Future online communities will be based primarily on activity.
Interesting analysis, seems to explain my personal observations.
Only wrinkle I'd propose: The "moderates", or any of the characters you define, aren't fixed, and personal circumstance often colors which role one plays at any given time.
What if you made community contribution a limited resource?
Continuing the reddit example. You could limit contribution by three routes:
1) Limiting the number of posts. For example, 3 posts per week, max.
2) Limiting the visibility of posts. The more you post, the less an upvote counts. Effective Upvote Value = 1 / (posts this week)
3) Limiting the visibility of posts based on post quality. The more you post in a week and the lower your per-post average karma, the less an upvote counts. Effective Upvote Value = (per-post average karma) / (posts this week)
3) Limiting the visibility of posts based on post quality. The more you post in a week and the lower your per-post average karma, the less an upvote counts. Effective Upvote Value = (per-post average karma) / (posts this week)
You probably weren't around for it, but HN experimented with something like this where each commenter's running average point tally for the last X posts or Y time was visible on their profile and indirectly visible on each of their comments. Their name (comment?) would appear in a different (darker?) shade the higher their running average.
I personally liked it, but it was rolled back after a couple of months. I think people became afraid to make replies that wouldn't accumulate up votes, and I know I wouldn't reply to threads if someone commented a day later because "it wasn't worth it."
Based on its usage in these last two comments, I think I must not understand what the phrase "Growth Hacker" means. I thought it was someone who was critically focused on increasing the numerator and decreasing the denominator in various SaaS KPIs. You don't seem to be using it that way. Is this a new job title in the Bay Area? Or, more generally: would you define this phrase for me?
I think they mean the people that are basically marketers/sales people who aren't creators and despite often thinking so aren't visionaries either. The type of person that "just needs someone to do that nerd shit" and they'll turn it into a huge success. Like the two guys that flew from London to show up Justin Kan's house uninvited.
Which isn't to say that can't be successful. With a piece of shit MVP coded by the winning bidder, some slick design, a good sales pitch and a ton of luck you might just get enough money to pay a real programmer enough to develop something that can actually get some serious investor cash which you can use to rewrite it yet again to get a real product that can scale.
I think I know the kind you are talking about. They show up on Quora wondering how they can get a co-founder to do all the tech work for 30% of the company -- IF they can find someone who won't balk at signing an NDA to get a glimpse at their super-duper amazing idea. Thanks!
I'm unfamiliar with the term "growth hacker". I get the impression that it means marketing and sales. What I've read so far seems to indicate that, us that an inaccurate impression?
I say this coming from my own experience growing a community of hardware hackers who have even less of an inclination to chat since they aren't always in front of a computer.