Reddit Inc. is weighing feedback from early meetings with potential investors in its initial public offering that it should consider a valuation of at least $5 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, even as it is estimated below that figure in the volatile market for shares of private companies.
If they really understood the phrase ‘too many cooks spoil the soup’, then they’d realize the advantage of smaller online communities.
Reddit was at its best when it had a low count but engaged userbase, and became actively worse as it grew.
I think this is because trolling and response isn’t a 1 to 1 ratio. All it takes is 1 toxic person to make an entire subforum rancid and takes the effort of several mods to mitigate it.
The more people you have, the more chance you will have these trolls organize, the more likely they will either overwhelm or infiltrate the mods.
Yeah I tend to agree. I think all communities have a critical mass and past that point they go downhill.
I was just googling for the rat overpopulation experiment because I think it works as a great example of this and it turns out this whole concept has a term.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
I think a better metaphor is fermentation.
It happens naturally whenever the ingredients are brought together but in order to get a quality product you need ridiculous amounts of knowledge, process, and technology.
And even a tiny bit of the wrong bacteria can ruin an entire batch, but people will still drink it and go blind.