There is a skillset, separate from authorship, which is “willingness to cultivate* and/or enforce* norms”. One of the problems with my initial conception of archipelago-on-LW was that it required those two skillsets be found in the same person (but, actually, they are quite distinct).
So it may be particularly valuable to ask “of people who would be interested in running a subreddit and enforcing/cultivating norms there, what clusters of norms would they be interested in cultivating?”. But I still think the value of this question is downstream of “which authors would actually want to post in that subreddit?”
But I’d guess/hope that this is addressed by the “you count as an ‘author’ for this question if you’d be motivated to actively create spaces with particular normsets.”
*there’s two fairly different conceptions of norms, one of which is where they’re something you enforce, another is they’re something you cultivate. Enforcement looks more like saying “hey, you’re violating the norm, please don’t” (which is backed up by force). Cultivation looks more like just being a “good participant” who helps steer conversations in useful ways.
In many ways I think cultivation is better, except that it’s much more costly in terms of time, and sometimes emotional energy.
For compeleteness, not sure if I endorse it: another conception of norms is that they’re something you discover. They’re an emergent feature of very complex social expectations, and even the attempt to formalize them causes ripple effects that can make the norms less effective. There are certainly ways to influence norms, both to filter for participants more amenable to norms you prefer, and to nudge those participants toward behaviors that reinforce those norms, but they remain fundamentally illegible and chaotic.
I guess that’s “lightweight cultivation”, more ‘tending’ than ‘planning’.
There is a skillset, separate from authorship, which is “willingness to cultivate* and/or enforce* norms”. One of the problems with my initial conception of archipelago-on-LW was that it required those two skillsets be found in the same person (but, actually, they are quite distinct).
So it may be particularly valuable to ask “of people who would be interested in running a subreddit and enforcing/cultivating norms there, what clusters of norms would they be interested in cultivating?”. But I still think the value of this question is downstream of “which authors would actually want to post in that subreddit?”
But I’d guess/hope that this is addressed by the “you count as an ‘author’ for this question if you’d be motivated to actively create spaces with particular normsets.”
*there’s two fairly different conceptions of norms, one of which is where they’re something you enforce, another is they’re something you cultivate. Enforcement looks more like saying “hey, you’re violating the norm, please don’t” (which is backed up by force). Cultivation looks more like just being a “good participant” who helps steer conversations in useful ways.
In many ways I think cultivation is better, except that it’s much more costly in terms of time, and sometimes emotional energy.
For compeleteness, not sure if I endorse it: another conception of norms is that they’re something you discover. They’re an emergent feature of very complex social expectations, and even the attempt to formalize them causes ripple effects that can make the norms less effective. There are certainly ways to influence norms, both to filter for participants more amenable to norms you prefer, and to nudge those participants toward behaviors that reinforce those norms, but they remain fundamentally illegible and chaotic.
I guess that’s “lightweight cultivation”, more ‘tending’ than ‘planning’.
Do you model different threads on reddit as each thread having their own norm, which can’t be entirely codified/put into words?