Socratic Fishing in Lake Quora

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32 pointshanskuder2 comments

Although Venkat doesn't mention them, reddit seems like the perfect example of a community that started out as a plaza, and with the introduction of user-created subreddits, evolved into a warren-like structure.

The article predicts that this should at least halt the "evaporative cooling" effect, as the size of the community increased. I haven't spent much time around reddit in the last few years, but is this accurate? Intuitively, it seems that separating the community by topic may also result a series of low-quality fiefdoms, where those with the most extreme views on a subject hold court.

It has, but only somewhat. Mostly people stick around because it's a nice community, I think. I tend to avoid some of the most groupthinky subreddits, which does make the experience better, but everyone's pretty much concentrated in a few corners of the plaza.

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