How many users is the "right" size for FerrariChat.com?

Folks, we are not the first to face this problem. (Clue up CS&N singing, “We have been here before. We have been here before.”)

I just finished a book called Emergence which deals with a subset of complexity theory. Simply put, Emergence studies the behavior of self-organizing communities ranging from slime mold to ant hills to, yes, chat boards.

In the book, the author describes the experience of a board called Slashdot.org, which appears to be major geek board that was started by a guy in Michigan. At first, everything was groovy. There were a couple dozen posts a day with about 5,000 members. According to the author, “...within that population, community leaders and other public characters naturally emerged, i.e., the jokers, the enablers, the fact checkers and the polemicists. (Recognize anyone?)

After a while, though, things got out of hand. Listen to the Founder’s comments, “Trolling and spamming become more common, and there wasn’t enough time for me to personally keep them in check and still handle my day job.” (Again, sound familiar?)

The Founder first response was to create an elite group of 25 hit men who had the power to zap the Alanlambos, ah, I mean obnoxious posters of the world. (Just kidding, Alan. You can take it.) These lieutenants also had the power to rate posts on a -1 to 5 scale so that the other members could use these ratings to screen new posts.

This worked for a while, but when the board grew to 50,000 members, even these brave warriors couldn’t keep up.

Desperate, the Founder junked this “top-down” elite approach and instead adopted a bottom up self-organizing system he called jury duty. Members were chosen to serve as jurors where they were given a finite amount of points which they could use to rate posts on a -1 to 5 scale. (Note that the members chosen also included lurkers.)

The software then transformed these rating into something called Karma, which gave special privileges to the contributors with high ratings. Indeed, contributions with high Karma would be chosen to be jurors themselves. The result, as every apprentice plumber learns, is that ka ka flows downhill. As a participant, you could set your screen to “5" and know that you would be getting only those new posts that had already been highly rated by the rest of the community.

One advantage of this approach was that it left the door open for newcomers. One fatal flaw in the hierarchical approach is the lack of new blood. Because existing Deacons tend to strike down anything they don’t like, you end up with a F-Chat that only covers 12-cylinder cars because, according to some (Hi, Frank), these are the only true Ferraris.

But under this bottom up ranking system, even an Alanlambo could rise up to the top, provided that enough people in the community think that he brings something to the table.

The key point is that, instead of Rob having to play the heavy, the community self polices itself.

Betcha didn’t know that you are actually a rat in an experiment, eh? Trust me, there are a lot of people (particulary in the publishing biz) watching boards like F-Chat evolve. Everybody knows that online communities are the wave of the future, but nobody has a good handle on how they will actually work, meaning make money.

What we are seeing is evolution at work, and this cuts to the heart of this debate. Ferrari Chat started out as a hobby for Rob, but it has grown to the current jumping off point where it is not clear whether this community should zig or zag. That is, should Rob raise the bar for entry by charging fees and risk ending up with a stagnate incestuous community that may slowly become obsolete. Or should he just let it continue rocking along and run the risk of driving the really interesting contributors away when they get tried of dealing with 12-year kids calling everybody an ******?

In other words, these on-line communities are evolving and, just like life, only those that grow will survive.

Sorry for the length of this post. But I’m hoping that everybody understands that we plowing new ground here. (Clue up: Jefferson Airplane and Dawn of Creation.)

Thx for your patience, DrTax

 

Very interesting, but I still want to hear your take on what exactly to do.

 

Are you talking $50 a year? Ugh, that puts a burden on a lot of the student types (although maybe most people wouldn't mind that? heh)...

Are there any forum owners who actually make money? I think another point to keep in mind are Rob's costs. My guess is that they probably aren't outrageous at the moment... If the membership increases and there are 1000+ online at any given time however, the bandwith charges and server charges etc. will increase to over 1000 a month for sure.

 

John, I'm an academic. I don't do solutions. I just do committees!

Well, not really. I have been out of acadmica for a while now.

My point is that this is a complex problem that may not lend itself to a simple solution. That is, charging a $25 membership fee may not change anything, except to allow Rob to buy that 360cs that he has his eye on. (Just kidding, Rob).

The key is how do we (and I mean we here) keep F-Chat interesting. Because if we don't, it will slowly dry up and die, and we will all move on and become productive members of society once again instead wasting all this @$%#@$^@ time on F-Chat. (Just kidding, just kidding Rob. Don't ban me. I take it back.)

I'm thinking that a bottom up rating system like they did on that geek board may be part of the answer. Instead of Rob trying to act like Zeus, we all rate one another and the cream will rise and the crap will sink.

Let's see if this cuts downs on the trolls and flaming. Plus, it might lead to folks actually re-reading what they just wrote before they post. And to get really crazy, it might lead some folks to actually read what a prior poster wrote before firing off a flame! Imagine that.

In addition, I see nothing wrong with a small annual membership fee to post in this sandbox if that helps keep the Democracts and other riffrafts out.

Dr "Who hasn't worn his cap and gown in over 15 years" Tax

 

I think you should have some model specific forums

maybe something like

308/328
348/355
360
Testarossa
F40/F50/Enzo

etc

to try and clean up the general section a bit.

 

uh.... nobody told me there were democrats here.......

must..... go...... wash......

ewwwww...........



doody.

 

Good one, Dude Man. Nighty Nite...

 

In an evolving dynamic community of *people* (not robots), I strongly subscribe to the KISS principle (Keep It Simple)... ratings and karma and what not do NOT sound simple. The issue is that you have to carefully craft the system to prevent personal vendettas from harming otherwise generally likable people... given that *people* will be very inconsistent in when and how they give ratings.

Soooo, here's my thinking...

1) Eventually, Rob must charge based on population size. Nothing else scales reliably... and we are clearly growing fast enough, that it will soon be too big a burden for Rob to bear alone.

2) Charging a moderate fee will be enough disincentive to keep out many of the casual trolls, plenty of barrier to newcomers too lazy to do a search before asking the same damn question again and again, and enough of a cost that people will listen to the moderators if they are told they are misbehaving.

Thus, it is *possible* that instituting the inevitable fee for posting will be enough that with light moderation quality can be maintained despite continued growth. I believe it will. I may be wrong... but given we have to do the fee eventually anyway, we lose nothing by putting it in place to solve #2. If it works, then it is the simplest possible solution. If it doesn't, then we look for more complicated solutions.

Try the simplest thing first.

 

Agreed on both counts. We need to do all we can to attract and retain those high-value contributors... free is easy... high-quality content is the key, though.

One possibility: identify a select group... propose to them (as a group) that you set up a forum that only they (and others that they choose) can post to... absolutely always on-topic... those with low tolerance for anything else, can happily participate... the rest of us can watch and learn... and if we have questions, we can post them to the normal forums. Some of those in that select group will choose to participate in the normal forums as well. They'll answer the questions from the non-experts... as they would anyway... as they do now. But when they get stumped, they may choose to bounce it to the expert forum, to get exposure to the smart guys who are uninterested in the more generic stuff.

For example, I think the historians have a private mailing list now... I think some of the above happens now... except that none of the rest of us get to learn from it... it would be fascinating.

Consider the Tech forum... there's a lot of super-experts out there that cannot handle the multitude of "easy" questions posted to Technical... just too much volume, and not enough value to them... but if there was a Technical Experts forum, where only the hot-shot mechanics are asking questions, then the content would be very low volume and very high quality... probably of value to them all... they'd all participate... we'd all learn a ton watching... and when one of us comes up with a truly challenging question in Technical, one of the hot-shot mechanics can bump it up to Technical Experts. We all win.

Just an idea.

 

What are you saying?


There's a world outside of Ferrari-land??? <sound of bubble bursting>

 

Brian, I have been an advocate of a user fee from the get go. Compared to a magazine subscription or even my FCA membership, paying $25 or so for F-Chat would be a deal.

My concern is that your Occam razor may be too sharp in that it may not address the real problem, i.e., the quality of posts, not the quantity.

Moreover, despite being a Republican, I am suspicious of "top-down" approaches. I realize that this Emergence stuff is over the top, but what it really says is to let the market talk. The problem with the dictator approach is that it gets boring. If you need an example, go over to Ferrari-Talk, and you'll see that they average about a half-a-dozen posts a day, most of which are posted by the dictator or a few cheerleaders.

Rob has a tiger by the tail here. Personally, I believe that it needs to keep growing because this is the way of world. You grow or die. Nobody gets to stand still. Again, the problem is how do attract interesting new talent if you close the door?

For example, I discovered F-Chat roughly one year ago. If I had to pay $$$ just to see what was going on, I probably would have passed on it unless I could see some sample stuff that I found interesting.

The trick, it appears, is to design a community that encourages high-quality posts and discourages the 12-year old kid who get off calling people A-holes. Again, I like the idea of a pay to play bar, but I'm not sure that this will solve the real problem.

We'll see, eh?

DrTax

ps Actually, I don't hold much hope for F-Chat after finding out that our Dictator is one of those "one-world," "huggie-buggie" types. I say "Nuke em all and let God figure it out!"

 

Another idea would be to give first time users a maximum of 50 posts or so before they have to throw the site some $$$. That way they can initially view and participate. That might be enough to get them hooked...

 

>The key is how do we (and I mean we here) keep F-Chat interesting. Because if we don't, it will slowly dry up and die,

>I'm thinking that a bottom up rating system like they did on that geek board may be part of the answer. Instead of Rob trying to act like Zeus, we all rate one another and the cream will rise and the crap will sink.

Greets:

First, I was a member of slashdot until it grew to the creature that it is today. Not that im a geek, mind you.

I wouldn't go back unless I was confined to a wheelchair, heavily drugged, and well paid.

>(Clue up: Jefferson Airplane and Dawn of Creation.)

Uh, okay, but I believe you are referring to "Crown of Creation"

> I strongly subscribe to the KISS principle (Keep It Simple)

Excellent application of Occam's razor...

 

Care to share what you didn't like. I have never gone there.

Dawn, Crown, what's the difference. Nuke em all, I say.

DrTax

 

Well, let me step into this academic ooze with you...

I would argue that I am proposing a bottom-up approach to higher quality posts. How? Right now, due to Rob's "light moderation" approach, the site is largely bottom-up as it is self-regulated for the most part. Rob adds just enough top-down to fix those that don't adequately self-regulate.

The problem right now is that there is near-zero accountability. The only disincentive right now to misbehaving is that you'll lose your name and post-count (as you create a new ID). Rob cannot ban anyone right now... he can basically just take away their post-count. Further, people put low value on things that are free and have an equal. For a troll or a smart-@ss kid, all free forums are essentially equal ... a place to harass people.

So, the membership fee establishes value to their membership, and that establishes a level of accountability. Getting banned doesn't just cost a post-count and user ID, it costs the membership fee! Getting banned is now a very bad thing (relatively speaking)... it means having to pay again. If they aren't getting value out of the site equal to the membership fee, then they won't pay it. And given there are plenty of free forums, they will simply choose not to play here.

IOW, it gives Rob's "minimal moderation" some real teeth, such that he can get greater effect with less moderation. The key effects happen bottom-up... people only join if there's real value to them, and then they put more value in the quality of the forum since they paid for it, and so on.

So, I would argue the approach is bottom-up... but, I will agree that it is NOT clear that's strong enough. As you say, only time will tell... a more complicated mechanism may be needed... but its very hard to simplify later, if you go too complicated.

My fear is that a more complicated approach of ratings and karma and such is that such complexity will, on its own, chase away many of those people that we'd like to attract. Not all who are Ferrari-savvy are computer-savvy... and even those that are, may not be willing to put up with that extra burden. If we want to attract them, we need to make it EFFORTLESS, as well as HIGH VALUE.

Due to Rob's style of moderation, I disagree that we have a dictatorship or that the pay-to-post approach would result in one.

To extend your analogy, I'd say Rob's trying to keep the Tiger in its pen (high quality posts) using a squirt gun when the Tiger strays too far. The pay memberships give Rob a bullwhip... for the most part Rob wants to let the Tiger roam in its pen... he just needs to keep it in its pen... but over time, as that Tiger grows (as we both agree it must), that squirt gun is not going to cut it.


How's that for academic drivel?

 

>Care to share what you didn't like. I have never gone there.

Oh, heck, It was outright war there for awhile, with enough black hats trolling for victims.com The CDC group hung there for awhile (Cult of the Dead Cow) and managed to nuke my box once.

The format is different from here,as well. You can't just open a post to view the replies to the thread; you open each reply, one at a time.

Took *forever* to view pages - all loaded with LARGE advertising content.

Huge group - around 300,000 members & I was simply trying to interact
about Linux programming and other open source code questions. - Not enough time in the day to wait for the pages to load, end run around the trolls, search through post replies.. ARGHH, I'm getting that headache again!

I do understand that thing has gotten much better since they instituted a *paid membership program* that allows you to view certain amounts of material sans advertising, amoung other things.

View it youself - it's a good looking site, actually, by going to this different )) URL:
http://foo.slashdot.org

 

Pretty good actually. Only problem I see with the pay to play approach is that there will be no turning back if it bombs. We'll just move on to something else like work, which I need to do so now.

Again, personally, I'd gladly pay a small fee if this put a damper on the flame wars.

I guess that we will have to see, eh?

DrTax

 

Interesting site, I think. It is way to complicated for an old fart like me. But if does appear to have above average postings from what I can tell. Most of this stuff is geek, I mean greek to me (sorry).

I'm just wondering if F-Chat can learn from the lessons of others and maybe improve on this as we go onward and upward through the fog!

DrTax

 

Rob.

I think the answer is, as many as you can comfortably handle.

If it gets to be a burden for you, then the whole thing falls apart.

Finding a way to control that size, is up to you. Charge a small fee. I don't think that will discourage the average owner. It might slow down some, the under 18 non-owner crowd that wanders in and out. I don't think car ownership is the answer, it discourages people who want to own and need this board's info to make wise buying decisions. It's also tough to prove, one way or the other. Track Vehicle #s etc.

One of the reasons I like Ferrari sites and clubs in general is that they are more inclusive than say the Porsche Club of America, which charges a fee and requires ownership of a Porsche to belong.

I'm pretty new to FerrariChat.com, but have found it to be an invaluable source of information, and contacts.

 

Isn't a big part of the problem being that you can't really ban people with bad karma cause they just sign up again?

Agreed.

Yes, indeed. Personally, I wouldn't have any problem with Alan, to use your example, if he stayed on his meds. He actually makes some good points, but they get lost in the flaming. So maybe the real question is how do we get people like Alan to quit flaming while they post?

Well, say that eveybody votes to ban me. What's to stop me from signing up another a different name?

Another approach is to end anonymous registrations. To sign up, we'd have to give you a credit card number, even if you don't charge a fee, that ties to a name and address. This info should be kept private, i.e., you could still use anonymous names to post, but as the moderator of the board, you would be able to really track folks.

Just a thought. Gotta go to work, must stop, fingers getting weak...