A crucial element to lowering the stakes of any particular moderation decision is the knowledge that the user has the genuine option to go to another community or start his own. The same applies to moderators: The ultimate check on a moderator’s power is that if most users start to believe he is using it poorly, users can either protest until a new... See more
the most painful groups I've had to deal with claim to have no hierarchy or centralised authority, while everyone pretends to not be engaged in a subterranean power struggle between multiple people with competing claims to being the ultimate authority
“We realized it’s almost better to empower a single editor in each market,” Heafy said, “and centralize the rest of the operations.”
Behind that shift was something few media startups bother to build: a literal playbook. Heafy described a printed manual, four to five inches thick, that detailed every step of launching and operating a local... See more
One common denominator across these myriad settings is that people participating in them have opportunities to set agendas, make plans, take risks, lead and follow, look out for, and give and take with each other. In doing so, they can better understand their own self interests, how they correspond with those of others in the group, and how best to... See more