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[–]Tophat123 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

This site currently is fine the way it is. The Achilles heel of any site is that it becomes too popular and centralized, leading to the usual outcomes as seen on places like Digg and Reddit. That said, a better outcome would be the proliferation of several mid-tier sites where people congregate. I have joined quite a few and they have achieved a decent level of balance between power, influence, size.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah, I think the best way to do things is to have a bunch of small communities where everyone knows each-other; it would eliminate a lot of conflict and allow for more choices if one of them goes sour — yeah, smaller communities have their drama, but it's rooted in familiarity rather than ignorance, which is the dominant cause in larger communities.

Even when there's drama: small communities tend to heal over time, while large communities just polarize around an "us vs. them" mentality. Human nature makes it impossible for large communities to remain united, since we can only have 150 relationships on average.

That's 150 online and in real life — so the ideal size of an online community would be lower.