Digging into the community's lore with lei

Posted Dec 20, 2021 1:56 UTC (Mon) by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
In reply to: Digging into the community's lore with lei by Wol
Parent article: Digging into the community's lore with lei

> > Maybe we could lead a page from "modern" social networks. After all, developers are a social network, too. Imagine receiving an stream of messages/patches from the developers you are subscribed to, and resending to your subscribers those that you find interesting/relevant...

+1, I've always hated this "IN or OUT" binary aspect of mailing list subscriptions. Memories of middle school and exclusive groups of "cool kids" :-)

> What about people who AVOID social networks because they see this as a PROBLEM, not a solution.

Whether it's coffee machines, Twitter, LWN comments, conferences, WhatsApp groups, dinner parties or direct messaging, "social networks" in a very broad sense have always and will always provide plenty enough of the "serendipity" mentioned in the article. Humans are extremely social animals.

Granted, the algorithms of some (a?)social networks are tuned to make money out of confirmation bias and irrational response but let's not throw the baby with the bathwater. Like so many others before it, "modern" social network technology is neither good or bad, it's what we make of it and in this case especially how we _pay_ for it. Funding it with our attention and brain time: now that is the bad idea.

> Then again, such a world sounds like fertile ground for news sites providing a broad view of what's happening in the community, so perhaps it's not an entirely bad thing.

Indeed.