"The big surprise for me is how much the mere voting power of the new users is changing the character of the site. A zippy one-liner that a year ago would have languished midway down the thread now becomes the top comment.
So while I agree with you that the right thing to do about overtly troll posts is to silently flag them, I'm still not sure what to do about the subtler and more dangerous decline I've been seeing."
Perhaps a lot of the new users are relatively unsavvy about some things and some instruction is in order. This might be done in the form of a "best practices" listing. I have found when dealing with Internet Newbies, it helps to list out a few things like "Don't say anything online that you wouldn't want on the front page of your local newspaper." A lot of times, inexperienced people just don't realize the potential consequences of doing certain things online. It may seem "obvious" to most people here what the best thing to do is, but perhaps the newer users just have no idea. If that is the case, some of them might be very cooperative in going along with some "best practices" posted somewhere.
This may be especially true if you are finally attracting more women. I'm female and I've spent a lot of time in online communities where the majority of members are female. The culture is very different from male dominated online cultures. It's been a bit disorienting for me to try to figure out how to effectively participate here. I consider it a growth experience and I expected to have to adapt. But not everyone will show up with that expectation.
So while I agree with you that the right thing to do about overtly troll posts is to silently flag them, I'm still not sure what to do about the subtler and more dangerous decline I've been seeing."
Perhaps a lot of the new users are relatively unsavvy about some things and some instruction is in order. This might be done in the form of a "best practices" listing. I have found when dealing with Internet Newbies, it helps to list out a few things like "Don't say anything online that you wouldn't want on the front page of your local newspaper." A lot of times, inexperienced people just don't realize the potential consequences of doing certain things online. It may seem "obvious" to most people here what the best thing to do is, but perhaps the newer users just have no idea. If that is the case, some of them might be very cooperative in going along with some "best practices" posted somewhere.
This may be especially true if you are finally attracting more women. I'm female and I've spent a lot of time in online communities where the majority of members are female. The culture is very different from male dominated online cultures. It's been a bit disorienting for me to try to figure out how to effectively participate here. I consider it a growth experience and I expected to have to adapt. But not everyone will show up with that expectation.