This week I read the artical "A group is its own worst enemy" from Clay Shirky. In his artical, he stated that group is one of the most important problems that may affect social software developing.
He gave an example of BBS system (CommuniTree) to show us why a group is worst enemy. It's a free dialogue software that everyone could say something or publish news on it, however, each person has different behaviour and interest, some students publish some obscene and scatological information on it , it's effect legal problem, and finally shut down. Therefore, when we design a social software group, we must consider that people may have same task, same goal or same interest, it's much easier to develop a group. Flick, Blogger were a very good example that everyone has their own space that could publish photos or information on them and interaction each other, it's freedom. However, in order to avoide the same result as CommuniTree, Shirky said that group must set a stucture (rules) that can protect itself and restraint members, and also it's a good way to identify good members. Now, a lot of social websites members are not allow publish scatological information on the internet, if you do that,you will be list in the black list.
When the group user become more and more, Shirky advice us using soft folking to separate group into smaller groups, and each group could connect each other, or shut off the new users.
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