Firstly…

Merry Christmas !!! ^-^

I hope you all have a wonderful christmas, and sorry for not posting in a while. ;-;

So to initiate this post, lets have a thought experiment. Imagine yourself a part of club or project of any variety your heart desires in which you and the member particapants are are all salient contributors and users of the paticular hobby or subject. All people generally follow the informal guidelines as most people are familiar with one another on a personal basis. Now, say this club/project garners enough attention for those that are not directly friends with its founders join. These new comers will generally accept the state of the project for what it is and engage with it in the same way as those there before them. Where this takes a turn is when people join on a false basis. Where in this case a false basis is simply not for the associated project itself, say a friend or significant other who is bored and follows an existing new member to the original congregation.

Aside from the fact that someone has made the cognitive blunder of taking part in something they don’t value and or like, such an individual may then take issue with the organisation or methodology of the “club”, due to their negative predisposition. Now due to the cultural zeitgeist of inclusivity these individuals have the means to berate these methods as being discriminatory. Say I am a member of a cryptography/combinatorics club where members enjoy sharing and solving puzzles of that variety and as an introduction into the group one would be presented with such a puzzle. This being a litmus test to see what techniques someone might employ, which also allows for the segway into a general conversation of the clubs premise. Cryptographic puzzles!

Now this new person who has no interest might take issue with this as they still have the underlying wish to converse with their prexisting acquaintences about whatever existing topic. A usual common denomiator being something like pop culture or interpersonal relationships. But they don’t wish to do the pesky test which stops them from doing so, and as such declare it as gatekeeping and invoke something like a public vote against such a practise. Due to the small number of participants direct democracy is quite reasonable and due to the aforementioned zeitgeist will likely yield to the benefit of the “new person”.

This negation of the core tenants of the original club to be instead subjected to instead be replaced with the discussion of whatever may be the lowest common denominator of any individual, bare in mind these people may have their own clubs in which they discuss perhaps music or train model sets but don’t have an interest in cryptography would then have to instead rely on talking about said common topics.

The main questions of this post are then raised, is the pareto effect (here being used to measure the interest in and contribution to the original subject of the club) definitionally thwarted by democratic processes? And, is the gatekeeping of communities a viable method to prevent the dissemination of a community.

This is basically a rehashing of the tyranny of the commons a list of resources for which are in the footer. However its case is often overlooked especially on the internet with its ephemeral nature. Subjects of this issue are practically everywhere, the following of which it pertains to mostly painfully (for me):

• Dungeons & Dragons

• Operating systems and Computers

• Internet “Culture”

• Video Games

These may seem especially broad, especially the last two, however with the fact that they are discussed in other places, makes the case that it is probable.

As a rant to one in paticular, there has been the forever boding promise of ‘The year of the Linux desktop’ that has spurred the hands of many into actions towards the creation of software for the platform. In the hopes that there may exist a world in which it is the predominantly used operating system of home computers. However, this aim insidiously nessecitates the simplification of the interface at the expense of complexity in the creation of the software, making those familiar with the systems at odds with being able to use it as productively as before and the new users never being able to use it in such a manner. Thereby neutering what makes the system useful in any measure. This already happened with windows and the various darwin iterations, and anyone who is mildly literate in the maintenance of an operating system can say how awful they are for anything more than the simplest of tasks.

Tocqueville, A. (1835). “Democracy in America.”

Ostrom, E. (1990). “Governing the Commons.”

Freeman, J. (1972). “The Tyranny of Structurelessness.”