I just read a great article on kottke.org entitled “Does the broken windows theory hold online?” In the post, Jason Kottke examines the theory of broken windows and how it applies to online interactions:
Here’s the 1982 Atlantic article in which the theory was first discussed in a popular forum. (Great article, BTW.)
“At the community level, disorder and crime are usually inextricably linked, in a kind of developmental sequence. Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.”
Reading these articles, I wondered: how does the broken windows theory apply to online spaces? Perhaps like so:
Much of the tone of discourse online is governed by the level of moderation and to what extent people are encouraged to “own” their words. When forums, message boards, and blog comment threads with more than a handful of participants are unmoderated, bad behavior follows. The appearance of one troll encourages others. Undeleted hateful or ad hominem comments are an indication that that sort of thing is allowable behavior and encourages more of the same. Those commenters who are normally respectable participants are emboldened by the uptick in bad behavior and misbehave themselves. More likely, they’re discouraged from helping with the community moderation process of keeping their peers in line with social pressure. Or they stop visiting the site altogether.
In addition to the presence of malicious users (spammers, etc.), there’s a flipside of the broken windows theory of websites that also comes to mind: the absence of loyal and active users. Think of how many times you’ve been to a forum and had to register to ask a question. If the forum is filled with spam and off-topic posts, how likely is it that you’ll come back? And as a user, what is the chance that you’ll try to outweigh the negative effects of the bad guys?
Since there are so many options available to users, it’s simply easier for a participant to go somewhere else to find what they’re looking for.
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“And as a user, what is the chance that you’ll try to outweigh the negative effects of the bad guys?”
Never mind that – how many users will want to post knowing they risk becoming the malicious users’ next target?
Having run and moderated forums on a broad variety of topics (what can I say, I have odd interests:) ) I have personally seen membership drop quickly if spam/flaming/etc becomes a problem.
It’s the main reason I don’t recommend forums to most small business owners (unless there is a specific need and use for one)
All in all, a vast majority of the internet suffers from a high noise-to-signal ratio, and “broken windows” makes the problem much more acute.
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