Even if a community has the same content, the people within it change with time.
The essential work on the subject is Clay Shirky’s A Group Is Its Worst Enemy. It says at some point it’s time for a wizard smackdown, but it’s not clear this helps—it also goes from “let’s see what happens” development to a retconned fundamentalism, where the understood implicit constitution is enforced. This can lead to problems if people have different ideas on what the understood implicit constitution actually was.
I also think this stuff is constant because Mark Dery’s Flame Wars discussed the social structure of online groups (Usenet, BBSes) in detail in 1994, and described the Internet pretty much as it is now and has been since the 1980s.
As was noted previously: the community is probably doomed. I suspect all communities are—they have a life cycle.
Even if a community has the same content, the people within it change with time.
The essential work on the subject is Clay Shirky’s A Group Is Its Worst Enemy. It says at some point it’s time for a wizard smackdown, but it’s not clear this helps—it also goes from “let’s see what happens” development to a retconned fundamentalism, where the understood implicit constitution is enforced. This can lead to problems if people have different ideas on what the understood implicit constitution actually was.
I also think this stuff is constant because Mark Dery’s Flame Wars discussed the social structure of online groups (Usenet, BBSes) in detail in 1994, and described the Internet pretty much as it is now and has been since the 1980s.
tl;dr people are a problem.