I also suspect that it’s positively tractable to change that frontier for any given individual relationship through deliberate effort, while that would be much more difficult[1] for larger communities.
[1] I think basically impossible in nearly all cases, but don’t have legible justifications for that degree of belief.
This seems diametrically wrong to me. I would say that it’s difficult (though by no means impossible) for an individual to change in this way, but very easy for a community to do so—through selective (and, to a lesser degree, structural) methods. (But I suspect you were thinking of corrective methods instead, and for that reason judged the task to be “basically impossible”—no?)
No, I meant that it’s very difficult to do so for a community without it being net-negative with respect to valuable things coming out of the community. Obviously you can create a new community by driving away an arbitrarily large fraction of an existing community’s membership; this is not a very interesting claim. And obviously having some specific composition of members does not necessarily lead to valuable output, but whether this gets better or worse is mostly an empirical question, and I’ve already asked for evidence on the subject.
Obviously you can create a new community by driving away an arbitrarily large fraction of an existing community’s membership; this is not a very interesting claim.
Is it not? Why?
In my experience, it’s entirely possible for a community to be improved by getting rid of some fraction of its members. (Of course, it is usually then desirable to add some new members, different from the departed ones—but the effect of the departures themselves may help to draw in new members, of a sort who would not have joined the community as it was. And, in any case, new members may be attracted by all the usual means.)
As for your empirical claims (“it’s very difficult to do so for a community without it being net-negative …”, etc.), I definitely don’t agree, but it’s not clear what sort of evidence I could provide (nor what you could provide to support your view of things)…
This seems diametrically wrong to me. I would say that it’s difficult (though by no means impossible) for an individual to change in this way, but very easy for a community to do so—through selective (and, to a lesser degree, structural) methods. (But I suspect you were thinking of corrective methods instead, and for that reason judged the task to be “basically impossible”—no?)
No, I meant that it’s very difficult to do so for a community without it being net-negative with respect to valuable things coming out of the community. Obviously you can create a new community by driving away an arbitrarily large fraction of an existing community’s membership; this is not a very interesting claim. And obviously having some specific composition of members does not necessarily lead to valuable output, but whether this gets better or worse is mostly an empirical question, and I’ve already asked for evidence on the subject.
Is it not? Why?
In my experience, it’s entirely possible for a community to be improved by getting rid of some fraction of its members. (Of course, it is usually then desirable to add some new members, different from the departed ones—but the effect of the departures themselves may help to draw in new members, of a sort who would not have joined the community as it was. And, in any case, new members may be attracted by all the usual means.)
As for your empirical claims (“it’s very difficult to do so for a community without it being net-negative …”, etc.), I definitely don’t agree, but it’s not clear what sort of evidence I could provide (nor what you could provide to support your view of things)…