[CrackMonkey] Slashdot Farewell Speech

[Mr. Bad]

>>>>> "CJD" == Chris J DiBona <chris at dibona.com> writes:

    CJD> Well, I was going to write a lot , but the debate is on the
    CJD> tivo.  There are people who don't want to participate any
    CJD> more in /. discussions, I invite them to enjoy K5 and
    CJD> advogato while you can, while they are small, as as those
    CJD> sites grow I only hope they can grow as gracefully as
    CJD> [whatever].

So, it kind of begs the question, though: can *any* forum really have
meaningful, interesting discussion with hundreds of thousands of daily
users?

Or is there kind of a conservation-of-interestingness thing going on
with group discussion (wishy-washy word, I know)? By which I mean that
a small group can (occasionally) have a fairly dense, chewy and
fascinating collective thought process, but when you add more people
to the mix, the density of interesting discussion dissipates to nearly
nothing.

Which, like, collectively, wouldn't be so bad. But the fact is that
each individual reader/participant can only take in so much of the
whole at one time. Like, if there are only 10 messages on crackmonkey
in one day, and the collective energies of crackmonkey are focused on
those 10 messages, you can get real value out of them. But if there
were 10,000 messages, and the energy was spread out over all of them,
then if you only read 10, you'd walk away with like 0.1% of your daily
recommended value of crack.

Or whatever.

There's obviously other value in having mega-sites like slashdot. They
have some amazing power, and having them on "our" side is a Good
Thing. But maybe you have to trade off between really satisfying
discussion and whatever other bennies a big site will get you.

I dunno, just woolgathering here.

~Mr. Bad

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