Robin Harford

Someone reads “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and learns techniques. Someone reads “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and learns what it feels like to be every person in every kind of relationship, to watch love curdle into resentment, to see how societies constrain and shape individual choices. Which knowledge is more useful? Which... See more

Pure information transfer fails to change people.

Stories work.

I suspect this is why the smartest people I know tend to quote novels more than they quote non-fiction. They’ll reference the Grand Inquisitor or mention something about whales etc, and these literary touchstones carry more meaning than any TED talk summary ever could. The metaphors are load-bearing. They contain compressed wisdom that unfolds... See more

I chose Discourse for my community because I wanted to build something that couldn’t be quietly corrupted. Where power is visible, distributed, and accountable. Where if I ever turn into the villain of my own story, people can see it happening and have tools to respond. It’s not a perfect solution. But it’s better than trusting my own benevolence... See more

But if you’re building a community that’s meant to be a resource, a knowledge base, a place where people come to learn and discuss ideas that matter, you should think carefully about the governance structure. Who has power? How is that power checked? What happens when someone abuses it? Can the community see what’s happening?

For me, that option was Discourse.

When I delete a post, people can see that it was deleted. When I ban someone, the ban is logged. When I’m making decisions about how the community should run, those discussions happen in public threads where everyone can participate.

Could I still abuse this system? Of course. But it would be a lot harder to do... See more

Instead of a shared resource being depleted through overuse, we have shared social resources being corrupted through concentrated control.

What we’ve built, in other words, is a system of tiny dictatorships masquerading as communities.

In short, greatness is the patience to keep doing the small things that others stop doing.