Re: Our community seems to have grown, so many people are joining the Facebook group

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Tuesday, 29 December 2020 at 15:36:47 UTC, Guillaume Piolat 
wrote:
I see what you are saying, but that is a "controlling" position 
to hold.

Once a language break into the mainstream, there is no way to 
control the community. Any attempt to contain the community to 
this or that medium is the reverse way to think: it is the 
community that dictates where it should hang out. You would't 
expect the C++ or COBOL community to hang out in the same 
newsgroup, don't you?

It is not a controlling position, it is more like a seeding, 
weeding and cultivating exercise. So, you can have many small 
patches of land, one advantage might be that it is more resistant 
to disease. But it is also a lot more work to reach the same 
productivity levels and what happens if the person that takes 
care of that local patch of land leaves it unattended?

It is not a question of dictating anything, but of having a clear 
strategy where people gravitate towards a desirable outcome. Rust 
did this by heavy moderation in their forums, "preventing 
disease", then you have have a quite large hub. Many smaller hubs 
allows more local norms, but small communities tend to dissolve 
when the main caretaker leaves, so that is a significant weakness.

One can probably write 20 pages on for-against, which I have no 
intent of doing, but if it is ENDORSED by the D community then 
there is a responsibility for making sure that the quality in 
that group is high (both socially, long term availability  and in 
terms of advice given).

(OT: no ad hominem at all in my posts... but you talk about a 
"deliberate attempt to fracture", this is imo far from reality)

(Maybe not intentional on your part, but yes, it is ad hominem to 
make claims about what the other person does or does not 
understand.)

If you have multiple groups that are perceived as official then 
that is obviously a fracture. I fail to see how that is not a 
deliberate attempt to fracture. How many seemingly official 
groups have to be established before the effect is fracturing in 
your opinion?

Just like the D community gravitated towards dforum announce (and 
the programming reddit) and more or less agreed to not use the D 
subreddit for announcing their projects. If you have an official 
group then you have to be prepared to follow up that group so 
people get good advice. Two groups is more work than one, not 
complicated.

Clearly, anyone can create a group for anything, anywhere. That 
is not an issue, the issue is to make it more than a local group 
(e.g. "official") and what the overall long term outcome actually 
is (strategic).