Having a self-selecting social group that strongly encourages both posting defensible claims and admitting when you are wrong will do wonders for a community. It requires a strong social consensus that these are desirable characteristics, of course—a sufficiently large group of trolls upvoting their own trolling and downvoting everybody else could pose a threat to the system—but that’s where having the group be self-selected is a good thing.
On the other hand, I find myself forced to ask: have you any citations or evidence to support those numbers? :-D
Is it just me or do others too notice that the quality of comments and dialog here is much higher than on most blogs?
It isn’t just you.
The proportion of constructive, intelligent comments on Less Wrong is about 90%. On Facebook it’s maybe 30%. On Youtube it’s about 5%.
Clearly we are doing something right!
Having a self-selecting social group that strongly encourages both posting defensible claims and admitting when you are wrong will do wonders for a community. It requires a strong social consensus that these are desirable characteristics, of course—a sufficiently large group of trolls upvoting their own trolling and downvoting everybody else could pose a threat to the system—but that’s where having the group be self-selected is a good thing.
On the other hand, I find myself forced to ask: have you any citations or evidence to support those numbers? :-D