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Journal Com2Kid's Journal: /. social dynamics 8

Journal by Com2Kid

When the /. friends / foes system first emerged I predicted that /. would fragment off into separatist groups reading each others postings, and then the journal system on /. got more and more popular and I was able to update my predictions to account for the accelerated community growth that the journals brought to /.

Well, w00t, I am right. :-D

Some provesabsolutlynothingatall empirical evidence:

I noticed Some Woman's new signature line, saw Fiver-rah's funny post, did a quick background posting history check to make sure Fiver-rah was not a troll (I do that for everybody before add them to my friends list), and then added Fiver-rah to my friends list.

and then noticed that I was already on Fiver-rah's friends list.

Nifty keen. :-D /. groups are amalgamating together without even knowing it at times. People with similar interests and habits are naturally attracting themselves into groups. Now while there are separate little sub-groups within each group (for instance Some Woman's grouping of friends has a slightly different bias to it them my listing of friends, and it likely more orientated towards her personal interests), overall the groups are rather well defined as being little social bubbles that co-exist within the /. whole.

(naturally the center of our little social bubble is Fort Knox, and I would imagine that as other social bubbles pop up, or maybe they already have, that they would have their own group dynamics and central users that others congregate around)

Next example;

There is a higher chance of people who are on each other's friends list to read, and thus respond to, each other's postings on /. In fact if I wished to isolate what I read on /. to just highly moderated comments and people who are on my friends list, I could change my threshold to +2. (friends get rated up +3, foes get rated down, err, -0. Heh. . . . .) Normally I browse at a threshold of +1 or 0, (used to be -1 until the page wideners turned me off of that.) but at a threshold of +2 even friends who where moderated down to -1 by moderators would still appear.

Likewise other users can do the same, and it is quite likely that some already have.

Err, actually that is it, heh, all the 'proof' that I have. ^_^

Hmm, ok mod settings not quite what I thought, LOL! I messed around with it so much before getting it tweaked just right. . . . :-D

First value is the modifier, the value in parentheses is the score adjustment to the comment after modifiers.

Insightful: +1(+2)
Interesting: +1(+2)
Funny: +2(+3)
Informative: +1(+2)
Offtopic: 0(-1)
Flamebait: 0(-1)
Troll: 0(-1)
Redundant: 0(-1)

People Modifiers:

Friends: +2
Fans: +2
Foe: -2
Freak: 0

Anonymous modifier: 0

New User Modifier: (just noticed this one last week, hehe, new feature!)

At defaults

1% of newest users
0 modifier

Index spill at 1000

Small character penalty of 25 characters.

Long comment bonus of (I kid yee not) 75 characters. (thus moderating almost EVERYBODY up by +1 automatically, yaah!)

Max comment size of 8192

Threshold at +1
Highlight threshold at +1

Oldest first (wow I remember when that was a big debate topic on /. hehe)

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/. social dynamics More

/. social dynamics

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  • Are there other subgroups in the journals besides the trolls? I thought for a while that it was interesting that there was the group of 50-100 people who read and respond to each other's journals and that the one that I happened upon was one of many. But, it seems that a relatively small number of /.ers utilize journals, so it is possible that the FK subgroup is the only journal community, besides the trolls, who appear to have formed their own. My question: is there any evidence of other subgroups forming besides the one centered around FK?

    This is actually a very interesting journal entry. I've been thinking about stuff along these lines for a while (especially since the /. meetup, where nobody else used the journals at all).
    • Are there other subgroups in the journals besides the trolls?

      I remember when the trolls used to have their own little communities in hidden SIDs, hehe. They where a ton more active back then and tended to have a bit higher, err, intelligence level. Now days the troll's presence on /. is rather pathetic. :-D
    • is there any evidence of other subgroups forming besides the one centered around FK?

      Oooooh...here's my next "what do I do during my recompiles?" project. I'm gonna make a graph of the /. friend-foe system. That way, we could SEE if there are any other nodes.

      Ooooh. Fun!

  • ....I started reading /. around 2 years ago. I finally got a /. handle when one day someone posted something that was so blatantly wrong that I simply had to correct. Ironically (and please don't be upset, because I've been hoping you won't remember it), that user who was so wrong was banky, and I stumbled across his journal later that day. I was astounded to note this whole side of /. that wasn't just news related existed. I quickly browsed around and got myself some friends and started posting on a regular basis. It's amazing to me though that I ended up with so many fans, and that so many people actually read my journal.

    After reading people's responses to my breaking up with the former-DG entry, Technolust said in an email One thing that hit me today was, looking at your journal, all those people taking time out of their lives to give you advice. It kind of makes me feel a little better about the human race. That so many people who you don't even know their real names are so willing to help you. I too, am equally amazed.

    So, does anyone know of another circle of folks other than the troller circuit that exists? BTW, I will admit, rather sheepishly, that I like some of the trolls. They are actually very helpful to me and have added me to their friend-lists and when I have computer problems, are the first folks to respond. And they realize that I really am just a karma-less girl who likes to learn stuff, and given that I know almost nothing, I have a lot to learn, so they don't even respond with rtfm's. You have no idea how cool I think that /. really is... I have yet to really meet a certified card-carrying nerd here.

    • I have yet to really meet a certified card-carrying nerd here.

      I think you have it backwards, we are (mostly) all certified card carrying nerds, it is just that what society tends to deem as being a Nerd, is well, heh, a bit off. :-D

      Though in all honesty that "pocket protecter" image that Nerds have was kind of put on on purpose to keep people away. ^_^

      Think of a mad scientist who is having a party at his castle so he invites all of his friends, and then spreads word of a hoard of monsters going down to invade the village that night just to keep everybody else inside and to keep party crashers away. :-D

      and please don't be upset, because I've been hoping you won't remember it), that user who was so wrong was banky

      I'll figure out exactly what you mean by banky some other day! LOL! Darn /. and its lack of an ability to showi all of a user's past posts. . . . every other halfway decent message board style software can do that. . . .

      • Umm, banky, he's a user. And I won't tell. Ever. Mostly b/c I like him and think he's all right now...heck, I thought he was right later on that first day. The reason for the disclaimer is that I thought he might read your journal.

        About the castle... who wouldn't stay in a castle? Especially without monster rumors. And the way you avoid crashers is via the drawbridge and the moat. Great fun.

  • Dittos to Liora and Some Woman's comments.

    Here's the really freaky thing: I was wondering about this '/. social dynamics' thing the other night. What I was noticing is that even within my 'macro-group', there are several sub groups. There is the ultra-techie group, the social issues group, etc. Different viewpoints: ultra-pinko liberals to (almost:) kill the niggers and kikes conservatives. (You know what? Perhaps the best thing about this group is that people seem to understand that that last comment was not my feelings on blacks and jews, but rather a description of the brand of conservatism practiced. Cool. I could probably use the word 'niggardly' in a post, and most of my fans/friends would know what I meant.) But the weird thing, the really weird thing, is when I'm in one of the hippy-dippy liberal journals... And I see that one of the ultra-conservatives is posting there. And a further check shows that they are on each other's friends lists.

    With the moderation, it's a damned good situation. I think there is some self-policing to avoid flames. But part of that seems to be a willingness to listen and rebut arguments in a logical fashion on both sides.

    Be careful with setting the modifiers for posts, and ignoring it. If I remember correctly, if you change (offtopic) to (+1), it only counts one time. So if some post gets modded offtopic three times, the net moderation is (-1), not (+3). I've never checked to make sure.

    My threshold is +3 for comments, but I have no problem with opening up an interesting comment and setting the threshold to -1 or 0.

    I'm not aware of any center other than FK's. I think the other people who could have formed one have left, don't post journals, or are already in the group under a pseudonym.

    • I'm not aware of any center other than FK's. I think the other people who could have formed one have left, don't post journals, or are already in the group under a pseudonym.

      Sllort was on his way to becoming something, but his activities have dropped down. Too bad, good guy, nice arguments, just doesn't know how to fight the system right. Last I saw of him he posted some old pre made craptacular troll post, ick.

      So if some post gets modded offtopic three times

      And the odds of a /. post being modded the same way three times in a row are. . . . ? :-D

      Typically I only end up with a few dozen (if that) comments hidden per article, and I usually end up clicking and reading those as well. . . .

      (give it up for speed reading, woohoo!)

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