Part II of the original "Social Software for the Anti-Social" presentation, with five more SCARY RULES!

1. Building Social Software for the
Anti-Social
Jeff Atwood
stackexchange.com

2. 1. Radically lower the bar for
participation
2. Trusting (some of) your
users
3. Life is the world’s biggest
MMORPG
4. Bad stuff happens
5. Love trumps money

3. Building Social Software for the
Anti-Social
Part II
Jeff Atwood
stackexchange.com

8. Q:
How do you tell an introverted
computer programmer from an
extroverted computer
programmer?

9. A:
An extroverted computer
programmer looks at your shoes
when he talks to you.

10. Q:
What do Computer Science
students use for birth control?

11. A:
Their personalities.

12. “But the
meek shall
inherit the
earth …”

13. Computers are simple.
People are complicated.
Introverts are writing software to
control both. How can this possibly
work?

16. Programmers move beyond merely
playing the game
They create and design games.
Very, very complicated games.

20. Social interactions are scary because
THEY HAVE NO
RULES

21. Can you define
rules for social
interactions?
Maybe.

22. … or maybe not.

23. But…
why are
social
interactions
particularly
scary for an
introvert
developer?

25. All teachers of programming find that
their results display a 'double hump'. It
is as if there are two populations:
those who can, and those who
cannot, each with its own
independent bell curve.

26. “To write a computer program you
have to … accept that whatever you
might want the program to mean, the
machine will blindly follow its
meaningless rules and come to some
meaningless conclusion.”

27. “The consistent group showed a pre-
acceptance of this fact: they are
capable of seeing mathematical
calculation problems in terms of
rules, and can follow those rules
wheresoever they may lead.”

28. Facebook is exactly that: mapping rules
to social relationships between people.
Taking what had been scary and
unknown, and adding rules and
structure.

29. Scary Idea #6
Rules can be fun and social.
Everyone loves games, and all
games are built on rules. Guess
what programmers are REALLY
good at?

30. Tragic: The Garnering, from Fallout

38. To play the game, you must accept the
rules.
The rules exist to protect the integrity
of the game, and more importantly, to
keep it fair for every player.
The rules are part of the common
good.

39. But … what’s the goal of this game?
What is its purpose?

40. Scary Idea #7
All modern website design is
game design.
Everything’s social, therefore,
everything is now a game with
rules.

42. Let’s play the Q&A game. You have a
… question. A specific question that
can be answered (see rules).
How do you get an answer to your
question?
First you must figure out how to ask.

46. What is this number and how do I get it to go up?

47. What is this number and how do I get it to go up?

48. What is this number and how do I get it to go up?

50. “Stack Exchange is like a well-designed
video game. When was the last time
you had to read the documentation to
play a video game? You don't.”
– Robert Cartaino
Director of Community Development
Stack Exchange

51. You start by walking across the room.
Then you learn to pick something up;
and then jump. By time you need
to, you're already strafing across a
catwalk, jumping and spinning 360-
degrees while simultaneously firing a
beam rifle and throwing two plasma
grenades through a window 40 feet
away.

52. When you get up from the couch after
a Halo or World of Warcraft
session, what do you have to show for
your efforts?

53. Whereas on Stack Exchange, you leave
breadcrumb trails of your
awesomeness for others to learn from
and improve on.

54. Game: get an answer to your
question, by any means necessary.
Metagame:
reputation, badges, privileges, peer
recognition.
Endgame: improve the internet for
everyone.

55. The game works in service of both
selfish (I need an answer!) and selfless
(I need a better internet!) goals.
We’re creating an oasis of high
quality, expert Q&A on the internet
that can serve as a national park of
information: a public resource for all to
enjoy and benefit from.

57. Scary Idea #8
Thoughtful game design creates
sustainable communities.
Government is a form of game
design.

59. “It is an invariable principle of all play …
that whoever plays, plays freely.
Whoever must play cannot play.”
Everything else is by definition Work with
a big W.

60. The game never ends.
Actions in the game have consequences
and history.
People will remember how you behaved
in previous rounds.

63. Permanent death.
How can that be fun?
This is a horribly flawed game
design!

64. 1. You cannot win alone.
2. Individual skill, however great, is
always inferior to teamwork.
3. Rash decisions are risky;
patience and planning pays off.

65. The design of the game forces you
to play as a team.
Whether you want to or not!

66. The rules make the game work,
even with completely anonymous
internet players.
Brilliant.
“All my teammates are my friends”

67. It’s an infinite game.
Any time, with anyone.
Counter-Strike
54k players / day

68. Stack Exchange
is my
Counter-Strike

69. 1. You cannot win without teaching.
2. Individual skill, however great, is
always inferior to communication skill.
3. Discussion is risky; sharing research
and experience pays off.

70. Teamwork:
Advance knowledge of a topic.
For everyone in the world who
loves that topic as much as you do.

72. Scary Idea #9
The community isn’t always
right.
Groups aren’t good at predicting
the consequences of their
collective actions.

73. 1. You should only ask
practical, answerable questions
based on actual problems that you
face.
Why can’t we have discussions?

74. What’s your favorite bicycle?
I use spatulas to turn eggs, what do you use?
Bing is doomed. I’m curious if others feel as I
do.
What if Canon merged with Nikon?
COBOL sucks, am I right?

76. Chatty, open-ended questions
diminish the usefulness of our site
and push other practical questions
off the front page.
If you don’t like these
questions, don’t look at them!

77. “Don’t look” doesn’t work in real
life, either.
Broken windows: others will see, and
use what they see as templates for
future questions.
Opportunity cost: time spent on
discussion is time that should have
gone toward sharing actual research.

78. Protip: answer the damn question.
What research and evidence can you
provide to support your answer?

79. Oh yeah? Prove it.

80. Your questions should be
reasonably scoped. If you can
imagine an entire book that
answers your question, you’re
asking too much.
Why can’t we ask broad questions?

81. Q: First let me inform you: I am new to this type of
enterprise and in a sense I am looking for all the help that
I can get so that I will have a general idea where to start. I
have a drawn out plan for the workings of an electronic
communication application. Its not that complicated in
terms of its usage and function. The impass that I am at
has to do with me not knowing how to create this
application because of my lack and understanding "how
to write a program" using programming language. I have
done my homework (undercover market research) and
found that ten out of nine individuals would purchase this
product if it were available. My second impass is that my
funds are at an all time low. So any information woild be
most appreciated. Thank You.

82. A: Begin by reading a book or two.
Come back when you have specifics.

83. 2. What research, if any, did you
do before asking?
What have you tried? What
happened when you tried that?
How did you attempt to solve the
problem?
You gotta do your homework.

84. It is unfair to ask others to do all
the work.
If you want to play the game, meet
us halfway.
Nobody should be more
motivated to find an answer to
your question than YOU.

85. “But this is such a great
resource, why can’t I ask just this
one question the way I want to?”
Did it ever occur to you that the
site is a great resource precisely
because we disallow discussions
and drive-by no effort questions?

86. There are many kinds of games on
the internet. We designed ours a
certain way to achieve a certain
result.
Perhaps you want to play a
different game somewhere else on
the internet?

87. “Innovation is not about saying yes
to everything. It's about saying NO
to all but the most crucial
features.”
– Steve Jobs

88. Can you say NO to your users?
(in a nice, educational way of
course.)
If not, then you have a problem.

89. Scary Idea #10
Some moderation required.
Someone has to protect the
community from itself. Why can’t
it be you?

90. The curse of popularity, aka
Bikeshedding.
The more general interest your
question is, the more people can
see it and answer it – with their
unique individual opinions.

91. “What is your solution to the FizzBuzz problem?”
“Best Keyboard for programmers?”
“What are some funny loading statements to
keep users amused?”
“What easter eggs have you placed in code?”
“What single discovery has given you the biggest
boost in productivity?”

92. If a question can have infinite
answers …
… is it really a question?
… or is it something else entirely?

93. “Over on FriendFeed people are
telling me ‘we have more
conversations.’ That’s true, but the
more conversations I got involved
in the less I found I was learning.”
-- Robert Scoble

94. “How can you close / delete this
question, it is hugely popular with
the community!”
Popularity isn’t the only metric that
matters.

97. “ever since the Open Beta the amount of
image macros, memes, rage comics and
generally low-quality content hitting the
front page has grown to annoying
proportions.”

99. “The problem with image macros and rage comics
(besides generally lacking wit or anything
genuinely insightful) is that they're quick and easy
to digest, and thus tend to get upvoted faster
than self posts and actual discussions which take
thought and time before an appropriate response
can meted out. If you're not careful you end up
with something akin to /r/gaming, which is now a
burbling, deformed wreck of its former self, with
anything remotely resembling intelligent
discussion being buried under a sea of vacuous
meme-repetition.”

100. “This only way this is EVER stopped on reddit is through
mod intervention, rule sets, and careful removal of
content. So along with this post, please directly contact
the mods and hope that they will act to save their
subreddit.”

101. The goal of moderation is not to punish the
community, but to
• Temporarily overrule
• Educate
• Refocus community exuberance on more
substantive content
... in other words, to lead.

102. Our biggest mistake: not building a
meta from day one.
“The place about the place” is
where all governance forms and
moderators are born.

103. Moderation requires power, the power
to (sometimes) defy the community to
lead it.
Moderation has to scale in proportion
to the size of your community.
Therefore, you must give power to
regular users: mini-moderators.

105. It’s a Democracy: moderators are
elected by the community.

108. But elected community
moderators are not infallible.
If you have an issue with
moderation, bring it up on the
meta. Citizens have input into
government and the design of
Stack Exchange itself.

111. 6. Rules can be fun and social.
7. All modern website design is
game design.
8. Thoughtful game design
creates sustainable
communities.
9. The community isn’t always
right.
10. Some moderation required.

112. JOIN US!
Help build our park.
http://stackexchange.com