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> You can't have wizards without first having noobs.

But maybe some wizards feel miserable when they are forced to interact 95% of the time with noobs, instead of other wizards? Maybe they want a circle for themselves, as a basic human need?






I'd follow "Thumper's Rule"[0].

If you don't want to interact, you don't have to comment or engage.

  > Maybe they want a circle for themselves, as a basic human need?
Fwiw, I'm a big fan of having private spaces and niches. It helps to filter this out. I think it is a mistake we make in our community designs, that everything needs to be public or whole cloth (e.g. Reddit doesn't allow subdivisions within the community). I do like that HN puts a threshold on the downvote, but I'd even like a lower threshold on the upvote. Allows people to wade into the community.

But yeah, I think there is a problem now that the majority of communities have no ability to self filter and self form hierarchies. Without this, noob voices tend to drown out experts and frankly, noobs begin to believe they are experts. I'm sure we've all seen the typical CS stereotype of "read first line of wikipedia article, assume I know the rest" type of person...

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fYngTUZeUQ




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