In Defense of Gated Communities - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

SecretMethod70 · 03-08-2010, 03:50 PM

I thought of TFP when I read this blog post and thought it might lead to an interesting discussion here...

In Defense of Gated Communities

Quote:

In Defense of Gated Communities
By Marcus Krzastek Mar 8th

As a pretty big sports fan, discussing the daily happenings in the sports world is a major part of my life. In person, this is generally an enjoyable experience. As pointless as it may seem to someone unfamiliar with the topic, I could spend two hours discussing the strengths and weaknesses of Kevin Durant’s perimeter game and have a great time. Most of my friends are sports fans and so these type of conversations make up a pretty high percentage of our interactions.

The Internet, in general, has acted like an amplifier for anything that people enjoy doing. If you like listening to music, now you can access a hundred times more music than you ever could have before (legally or not). In the same vein, if you like dressing up like an raccoon and playing water polo, you can find the three other people in your area who share that passion.

With discussing sports, however, this isn’t necessarily true. Anyone who’s read an Internet sports forum or the comments section on a sports blog knows that the level of discourse makes Skip Bayless look like Peter Gammons. It turns out that when you allow open discourse on something that makes people as passionate as sports does, and when you allow them to make these statements anonymously, they tend to regress to the worst possible sports fan in the world. Listeners of sports radio are nodding their heads in understanding right now.

Interestingly enough, the only place that I go to discuss sports online are the Something Awful forums. For someone familiar with Something Awful, this is a pretty strange statement. After all, this is the website that popularized All Your Base and calls its forum members “goons”. Its sports forums, however, are by far the best I’ve ever experienced. When something happens in sports and I’m looking for immediate quality analysis, I skip ESPN and go to the Something Awful sports forums.

The point is that we’ve reached a point where, in many instances, the openness of the Internet has become just as much of a burden as a benefit. Giving everyone a voice is great in theory, but more often than not, it fails to create quality content. The reason why Something Awful is such a great sports forum, despite its demographic not having a stereotypical sports bent? It costs $10 for an account, without which you can’t post. Additionally, the moderation team isn’t afraid to ban or suspend users who aren’t contributing positively to the discussion.

Ultimately, people are going to migrate more and more to controlled communities on the Internet, where the pricing and moderation are going to filter out most of the unappealing content. The sheer quantity of online content has reached a level that’s overwhelming, while the general quality of this content is largely underwhelming. This isn’t a winning recipe for a society where people seem to be increasingly strapped for free time. As a result, the people who are able to build the quality communities that filter out the weak content and discussion will be in an extremely lucrative and influential position in the near future.

Do you agree with his conclusion that people will ultimately migrate to more controlled communities on the internet?

I think it's more accurate to describe the changing internet as migrating toward reflecting real life communities. Facebook is a perfect example of this: it's not more controlled in the moderator or paid subscription sense, but people generally stick to real life contacts on Facebook and that filters out a lot of the asshattery that can come with anonymous posting.

Then again, I think there is a clear distinction between casual internet users who don't care to socially interact with strangers, and what we can call internet power users who do participate in expanding their social interaction. Perhaps the author is correct with regards to this power user class.

What do you think? Are gated communities the future of the internet? Or do you think as the internet grows the portion of users who even bother to interact with strangers will diminish? What other thoughts come to mind as you read this blog post?

Jetée · 03-08-2010, 05:21 PM

First thought that came to mind was this: people are inherently seekers of the easiest and seemingly-secure route to returns (ie intelligient laziness).

There may be a handful of cyber-personalities that might feel empowered to be a founder of a community that will eventually be the ideal vision that they had hoped for in the merits of discussion, availability, and general appeal; but with so many choices available and open for any first-time net browser, anything that can be found, probably is already there, it just depends on willing one person is to filter out which community they feel most comfortable in and maintaining toward future returns. And with such exhaustive measures in "guaging" what this particular website community is about, and what sort of demographic it is geared to, can be very hit-or-miss (especially considering when the thoughts and opinions do not come as natural where you need to process the thought through three or four channels first, then finally to your fingertips to convey a simple point).

03-08-2010, 05:21 PM	#2 (permalink)
Jetée The Reforms Location: Rarely, if ever, here or there, but always in transition	First thought that came to mind was this: people are inherently seekers of the easiest and seemingly-secure route to returns (ie intelligient laziness). There may be a handful of cyber-personalities that might feel empowered to be a founder of a community that will eventually be the ideal vision that they had hoped for in the merits of discussion, availability, and general appeal; but with so many choices available and open for any first-time net browser, anything that can be found, probably is already there, it just depends on willing one person is to filter out which community they feel most comfortable in and maintaining toward future returns. And with such exhaustive measures in "guaging" what this particular website community is about, and what sort of demographic it is geared to, can be very hit-or-miss (especially considering when the thoughts and opinions do not come as natural where you need to process the thought through three or four channels first, then finally to your fingertips to convey a simple point). __________________ As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves. —Mohandas K. Gandhi