This, worded in far more technical terms than I had understood back at the time, is one of the reasons why I’ve always opposed the idea of “merging” communities in the Fediverse. Merging views is fine, but merging the communities themselves and all that this means (focus, themes, memberships, rules, censorships, timezones…) is just Not.
Key quote for the curious:
They [the paper he’s discussing] conclude that there’s a community-member’s “trilemma”: a set of three priorities that can never be fully satisfied by any group. The trilemma consists of users’ need to find:
a) A community of like-minded people;
b) Useful information; and
c) The largest possible audience.
The thing that puts the “lemma” in this “trilemma” is that any given group can only satisfy two of these three needs. It’s hard to establish the kinds of intimate, high-trust bonds with the members of a giant, high-traffic group, but your small, chummy circle of pals might not be big enough to include people who have the information you’re seeking.
I would say that’s not actually the key quote at all, especially since the author states that many times finding a smaller audience is the goal.
It’s at least something to explain what the title’s referencing. Acknowledging that smaller audiences are often preferred doesn’t really seem at odds with that. It just points to A and B having higher priority than C, right?
But people should just read the article, it’s pretty quick and has more context than the quote.
Yeah the article is good.
Predictably insightful.
multiple groups that prioritize different paired corners of this people-information-scale triangle
Fact remains that we’re struggling mainly with the scale corner here.
