Matt McIrvin's Freaky Alternate Reality

One of the most important determinants of the social atmosphere of a discussion forum is a simple matter of sorting order. Web-based bulletin boards are usually threaded to some degree, and the threads are usually sorted by how old their most recent post is. Usenet is similar. Of course, on Usenet, with a good enough newsreader, you can sort threads any way you want. But typically the sorting has nothing to do with how the thread began, since, for one thing, under many circumstances, it's unlikely that a record of the initial post is even on the server any more.

What this means is that discussions can go on for a long time, and stay near the top of the heap, regardless of how much other discussion is going on. Every poster has an equal say in whether a thread lives or dies. So unless there's a moderator with a fairly heavy hand, discussions can go spiraling off into the aether for all eternity.

Weblogs with comment boards are different. There, threads typically hang off of initial posts by a privileged author or small group of authors, and the chronology of those initial posts determines sort order. That way, the original authors set the tone and the agenda; and if they post often enough, they'll prevent discussions from going on forever, simply because people are unlikely to keep posting to threads that aren't on the front page any more, and less likely even to post to ones that are far from the top.

This serves as a limiting mechanism even in the absence of any very active moderation by the blog's owner or owners. There's simply a damping effect on the continuation of any argument, as the associated thread slides off the bottom of the page. Crackpots and flamebaiters do sometimes add comments to the comment threads of really stale blog posts, but nobody pays attention to them (except for some easily irritated bloggers), so they don't rile anyone up.

This only goes so far, though. It depends on the ratio of original posts to comments being high enough. If the blog is so popular, or original posts are so rare, that the ratio becomes extremely small, the moderating influence of reverse chronological sorting by initial post no longer works, and third parties can effectively seize control of the conversation. Then either other filtering or moderation mechanisms must be applied (and may or may not work: see Slashdot), or the forum will become less and less readable and more and more dominated by flamebait over time.

So watch out. If your weblog or LiveJournal gets too popular, then you'll want to keep posting more and more just to compete with the rabble in your comment boards! If you're any good to begin with, then, of course, this will just make them come in larger numbers. It's a vicious cycle that will surely eventually make your fingers fall off.