I think my main confusion now is whether we are thinking of archipelago mainly as “fuzzy boundaries between individual authors’ preferences” or “explicitly cut-out regions built into the site” like subreddits. The former seems to be where the meta decisions are going, but the latter is what I instinctively anchored on when I heard the word archipelago.
My sense is that the first model will be unlikely to result in clear enough boundaries between islands for LW to noticeably separate. Few people (certainly not myself) have the energy and mental fortitude to tend a walled garden the way Scott does. Also, there’d be too many sets and combinations of norms and tastes to keep track of.
Meanwhile, if you end up building “subforums” or “subreddits” there really only deserve to be O(5) of them, and it will be possible to keep track of norms and values across them for authors and readers alike.
tl;dr: Moderation power is a safety blank eject button for most authors, and not an active tool we will use to actually build gardens. If this is the main meta change towards archipelago it is unlikely to work.
The former seems to be where the meta decisions are going, but the latter is what I instinctively anchored on when I heard the word archipelago.
Gotcha. There’s a different phrase we’d tossed around a bit which was “Private Fiefdoms”, which I think has more of the connotations of what the currently implementation is pointed towards.
But, the longterm goal is (most likely – plans can change a bunch in the meantime) more like a genuine archipelago where people with shared conversational goals/norms have banded together. Subreddits or what-have-you. It’s just that for the immediate future, it’s unclear what sort of islands we might coalesce into, or who trusts who to run an island.
Some random bits of my worldview here:
I think it is necessary to have a leader or small trusted council run an island.
If an island is named after a topic, that means anyone else who wants to run a space around that topic but optimized around different norms has to fight over the namespace.
A lot of what I’m trying to do is sidestep fights over overton windows. A subreddit still creates a venue to fight over, if people have subtle or not-so-subtle differences of opinion on what’s good. A newly created subreddit might created a power vacuum for people to fight over. Starting with “users-fiefdoms” first lets people get a sense of who they trust, and who they might want to join forces with to start a council.
I think if there end up being a few dominant modes of discussion, it’ll be easier to express a given user’s space as “X Norms, but with this small diff”.
I think my main confusion now is whether we are thinking of archipelago mainly as “fuzzy boundaries between individual authors’ preferences” or “explicitly cut-out regions built into the site” like subreddits. The former seems to be where the meta decisions are going, but the latter is what I instinctively anchored on when I heard the word archipelago.
My sense is that the first model will be unlikely to result in clear enough boundaries between islands for LW to noticeably separate. Few people (certainly not myself) have the energy and mental fortitude to tend a walled garden the way Scott does. Also, there’d be too many sets and combinations of norms and tastes to keep track of.
Meanwhile, if you end up building “subforums” or “subreddits” there really only deserve to be O(5) of them, and it will be possible to keep track of norms and values across them for authors and readers alike.
tl;dr: Moderation power is a safety blank eject button for most authors, and not an active tool we will use to actually build gardens. If this is the main meta change towards archipelago it is unlikely to work.
Gotcha. There’s a different phrase we’d tossed around a bit which was “Private Fiefdoms”, which I think has more of the connotations of what the currently implementation is pointed towards.
But, the longterm goal is (most likely – plans can change a bunch in the meantime) more like a genuine archipelago where people with shared conversational goals/norms have banded together. Subreddits or what-have-you. It’s just that for the immediate future, it’s unclear what sort of islands we might coalesce into, or who trusts who to run an island.
Some random bits of my worldview here:
I think it is necessary to have a leader or small trusted council run an island.
If an island is named after a topic, that means anyone else who wants to run a space around that topic but optimized around different norms has to fight over the namespace.
A lot of what I’m trying to do is sidestep fights over overton windows. A subreddit still creates a venue to fight over, if people have subtle or not-so-subtle differences of opinion on what’s good. A newly created subreddit might created a power vacuum for people to fight over. Starting with “users-fiefdoms” first lets people get a sense of who they trust, and who they might want to join forces with to start a council.
I think if there end up being a few dominant modes of discussion, it’ll be easier to express a given user’s space as “X Norms, but with this small diff”.