I’m not sure if it’s related to what you’re wondering, but if it helps clarify anything I’ll add that I don’t exactly know what a group mind is, or what exactly it means to model a group as one, but that when I ask questions of a forum (or, as in this case, mention to a forum that I’m curious about something) I expect that a large number of individuals will read the question, decide individually whether they have a useful answer and whether they feel like providing it, and act accordingly.
In this case, more specifically, I figured that the people whose voting patterns matched the group-level behavior—e.g., the ones who upvoted Yvain but not Luke at first, or who downvoted Yvain’s request for explanation—might address my curiosity with personal anecdotes… and potentially that various other people would weigh in with theories.
What I was thinking of with the “group mind” is that it can be tempting if one is flamed by a few people in a group, to feel as though the whole group is on the attack.
I’m not sure if it’s related to what you’re wondering, but if it helps clarify anything I’ll add that I don’t exactly know what a group mind is, or what exactly it means to model a group as one, but that when I ask questions of a forum (or, as in this case, mention to a forum that I’m curious about something) I expect that a large number of individuals will read the question, decide individually whether they have a useful answer and whether they feel like providing it, and act accordingly.
In this case, more specifically, I figured that the people whose voting patterns matched the group-level behavior—e.g., the ones who upvoted Yvain but not Luke at first, or who downvoted Yvain’s request for explanation—might address my curiosity with personal anecdotes… and potentially that various other people would weigh in with theories.
What I was thinking of with the “group mind” is that it can be tempting if one is flamed by a few people in a group, to feel as though the whole group is on the attack.