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It'll depend on who is on which team. If one side has most of the haiku, photoshop, in-joke, 'cursor-always-on-post-button' members, it'll generate a lot more posts and comments than the other side. It'll also generate disproportionately high noise than the other side. Average members in the team with more 'self-appointed-MeFi-cops' will be less comfortable in that half of NewMeFi.Would the competition between the two teams raise the level of posts and discussion?
No. Even though there is no real competition, the perceived rivalry between Fark, MetaFilter, K5 and Plastic has not changed the level of posts or discussion in any of the sites. These 'relatively new' sites have not changed the posting and discussion habits in older communities like Slashdot.[W]ould the teams use up too much energy calling each other names...or at least become so preoccupied with the competition that little else would be discussed?
No. Since you are limiting membership to one group, there will be not much incentive to call others names. The sense of 'competition' will be there; just as it is there between Fark, MetaFilter, K5 and Plastic. Just like the sense of competition isn't overwhelming and taking precedence over posting and discussion habits in any of the four places right now, I don't think anything will change then. Arguments can be made about the 'loosely held federations' in Dave Winer CommunitiesTM and LiveJournal, but they too are not preoccupied with their rivalry with any of the other four 'communities' either.How would the identity of each team evolve? Would MeFiA become NewsFilter, while MeFiB, trying to differentiate itself, becomes TechFilter? Or would they both remain diverse, with a little bit of everything?
I think both sides will hit an equilibrium of a good mix within a few weeks, but the immediate posting patterns will be dictated by the make-up of the membership.
Some MetaFilter members always have some sort of 24 hour news channel turned on and rush to CNN.com to find a link to post on the front page. Unlike FreeRepublic, where members are much more news-savvy and will post to the actual news item, MetaFilter members have a habit of suffering from a restless, first-post syndrome; and more frequently will settle for a link to CNN's home page instead of searching for a specific page about the breaking news item.
Discussing technology issues, at least in depth, requires a degree of knowledge and expertise currently missing from not only MetaFilter membership, but also blog readership as well. I am not in anyway saying that members here are dumb, idiot, and technophobes. Far from it. I am thinking along the lines of Francis I, the king of France, and Leonardo da Vinci. King Francis hired da Vinci to be his "person with skill." While Francis talked of abstract concepts in his mind, da Vinci drew them up and tried to make them a reality. It also helped that da Vinci was a visionary himself. Most MetaFilter members can write a Bible with conceptual hot air, but few can actually talk about technology in depth. Anil's post about weblogs vs. journalism generated 19 comments, while his entry about "web's maturation as an application platform" got only 2. The membership’s impatience and lack of desire to 'dig deep' shows in technology threads. While everyone here is infatuated with everything Google, if you look carefully, all of those front page posts are of cursory issues, almost always found on the index page of Google.com. I have yet to see someone link to Google's failures: in business (yes, there have been a few high profile ones) and in technology (yes, there are navigational difficulties).
In both cases, almost always the discussions will have a few anchor members championing their pet issues, be it general news or technology. Just like there are 'Israel-Palestine thread regulars' now, there'll be 'technology-thread-regulars' then. There'll be the resident libertarian, the resident conservative, the resident what have you in both sides.
Karma creates competition within communities, with members tailoring their comments in order to get good ratings (with good and bad consequences). There's a bit of friendly rivalry between communities such as Plastic, MeFi, Fark, and Kuro5hin, but what would competition between two mini-MeFi's look like?
Would the competition between the two teams raise the level of posts and discussion? Or would the teams use up too much energy calling each other names...or at least become so preoccupied with the competition that little else would be discussed? How would the identity of each team evolve? Would MeFiA become NewsFilter, while MeFiB, trying to differentiate itself, becomes TechFilter? Or would they both remain diverse, with a little bit of everything? (Are there any real world analogues that would be useful to examine in thinking about this?)
posted by jkottke at 12:33 AM on April 19, 2002