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The Tragedy of Gemini

maya.land

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Re: The Tragedy of Gemini

#11

Post by dancek »

kixiQu wrote: post #3
ruined wrote: post #2

digital frontiers fold ever inward. gemini is a little secret nook carved out behind the clubhouse in the corner of a hidden cul-de-sac of a massive global labyrinth. there's no wall, it's just hard to find unless you know the way. there's no tragedy, it's just not everybody chooses to walk the paths you chose to walk. we're all running away from everyone forever. it's okay. that's the point. when we get out here we…

Do you only want to hear from people like you? To only make your community with people like you?

We can belong to many communities, and indeed we have many different facets or identities. That's what it's like to be human. Attending a chess club doesn't mean you cannot also hang out with tennis players.

So yes, the small internet movement seems to be about esoteric technologies and only people interested in them will join. But I don't see that as exclusionary on a personal level. It's just a weird hobby.

Re: The Tragedy of Gemini

#12

Post by dancek »

lmm wrote: post #10

Exclusivity and elitism get a bad rap. The most important ingredient for a high-quality community is high-quality people, and to keep out the lower-quality people you need to have barriers to entry. I suspect that most Gemini users are smart enough to realise that, whether they'd admit it or not.

I strongly disagree about "lower-quality people". Yes, some people post low quality content, say horrible things and behave antisocially. Yes, in a community you want to restrict destructive behavior (by excluding people if need be).

But deep inside we all are, at times, selfish and evil, and at times, beautiful and wise. You can learn something from everyone. But you need to meet people at their terms. For some, it's over an esoteric internet protocol that you need to be a geek to use. And for some, it's over a glass of cheap lager in the backyard of an auto repair shop.

Re: The Tragedy of Gemini

#14

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 »

lmm wrote: post #10

Exclusivity and elitism get a bad rap. The most important ingredient for a high-quality community is high-quality people, and to keep out the lower-quality people you need to have barriers to entry. I suspect that most Gemini users are smart enough to realise that, whether they'd admit it or not.

I don't know... This argument makes sense to me in theory but in practice I find it hard to implement successfully, as someone who manages a medium-sized online community. It reminds me of the "You only need 1000 good customers" article. Sure, but unless you bring in 100K you're not going to find those 1000.

So then we implement artificial barriers to entry but at the cost of destroying all the diversity in your community which I think is also essential, and instead of the 1000 good members you have 100 and they're all clones.

As a result I've opted for the opposite approach where I'm very welcoming to everyone and try to only get rid of the worst of the worst, and we have a great, diverse set of very skilled and interesting people but a lot of them leave rather quickly because they don't want to deal with the 90k less well-behaved members.

Re: The Tragedy of Gemini

#15

Post by papaf »

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #14
lmm wrote: post #10

Exclusivity and elitism get a bad rap. The most important ingredient for a high-quality community is high-quality people, and to keep out the lower-quality people you need to have barriers to entry. I suspect that most Gemini users are smart enough to realise that, whether they'd admit it or not.

I don't know... This argument makes sense to me in theory but in practice I find it hard to implement successfully, as someone who manages a medium-sized online community. It reminds me of the "You only need 1000 good customers" article. Sure, but unless you bring in 100K you're not going to find those 1000. So then we implement artificial barriers to entry but at the cost of destroying all the diversity in your comm…

So then we implement artificial barriers to entry but at the cost of destroying all the diversity in your community

If the community consists of people who are uncomfortable with the feature creep and privacy loss on the modern web, I don't consider Gemini to be an artificial barrier.

To try to explain my reasoning, to join the Vegan community you need to stop eating animals.

Re: The Tragedy of Gemini

#16

Post by 627467 »

The September internet is also the ad/bloat-driven internet. It's cool in its way too, but Gemini (at least for now) is meant to be a different place.

Soon, we'll have easier publishing tools for Gemini, so soon September will come

Re: The Tragedy of Gemini

#17

Post by ruined »

kixiQu wrote: post #3
ruined wrote: post #2

digital frontiers fold ever inward. gemini is a little secret nook carved out behind the clubhouse in the corner of a hidden cul-de-sac of a massive global labyrinth. there's no wall, it's just hard to find unless you know the way. there's no tragedy, it's just not everybody chooses to walk the paths you chose to walk. we're all running away from everyone forever. it's okay. that's the point. when we get out here we…

Do you only want to hear from people like you? To only make your community with people like you?

Community, even diverse community, requires commonality of some sort. Everyone has a few people they relate to a bit more than others, and that's valuable. Subcultures and esotericism are one way to find those people. And none of this means that everyone who fits must fall into whatever boring conformity you're imagining.

Most people are nothing like me and i've definitely suffered for it. If you don't have that problem maybe you don't need to go looking for people like you.

Re: The Tragedy of Gemini

#18

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 »

papaf wrote: post #15
ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know... This argument makes sense to me in theory but in practice I find it hard to implement successfully, as someone who manages a medium-sized online community. It reminds me of the "You only need 1000 good customers" article. Sure, but unless you bring in 100K you're not going to find those 1000. So then we implement artificial barriers to entry but at the cost of destroying all the diversity in your comm…

So then we implement artificial barriers to entry but at the cost of destroying all the diversity in your community If the community consists of people who are uncomfortable with the feature creep and privacy loss on the modern web, I don't consider Gemini to be an artificial barrier. To try to explain my reasoning, to join the Vegan community you need to stop eating animals.

The barrier to entry described in the post is technical, it's orthogonal to the properties you cite. For example look at signal, it's also made for people who are uncomfortable with privacy loss but it's still accessible to non technical people.

Re: The Tragedy of Gemini

#19

Post by bzb6 »

dancek wrote: post #12
lmm wrote: post #10

Exclusivity and elitism get a bad rap. The most important ingredient for a high-quality community is high-quality people, and to keep out the lower-quality people you need to have barriers to entry. I suspect that most Gemini users are smart enough to realise that, whether they'd admit it or not.

I strongly disagree about "lower-quality people". Yes, some people post low quality content, say horrible things and behave antisocially. Yes, in a community you want to restrict destructive behavior (by excluding people if need be). But deep inside we all are, at times, selfish and evil, and at times, beautiful and wise. You can learn something from everyone. But you need to meet people at their terms. For some, it'…

> You can learn something from everyone.

That’s... extremely charitable.

Re: The Tragedy of Gemini

#20

Post by lovemenot »

bzb6 wrote: post #19
dancek wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree about "lower-quality people". Yes, some people post low quality content, say horrible things and behave antisocially. Yes, in a community you want to restrict destructive behavior (by excluding people if need be). But deep inside we all are, at times, selfish and evil, and at times, beautiful and wise. You can learn something from everyone. But you need to meet people at their terms. For some, it'…

> You can learn something from everyone. That’s... extremely charitable.

Perhaps. And if so, it is charitable to those whose closed-mindedness prevents them learning something from anything and anybody.
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