| Maybe "positive" wasn't the right word for us to use. Let me explain what we meant, because it's not that at all. I completely agree that negative content has a place and is valuable. Not being able to disagree or only being able to say nice things defeats the purpose of conversation. Our goal, and what we meant by using the word "positive" is that Imzy, and the communities on it, enrich people's lives in a positive way. That doesn't mean every comment, post, or discussion is positive. It means that I come away a better, more informed person from the discussions I have, or maybe I just enjoy my time there. What that means is that extreme or sustained harassment that makes people unhappy, fear for their lives, or feel like they can't participate isn't okay. Communities that exist solely for hate aren't cool. But disagreement and even voicing opinions that are very unfavorable can still exist. Even saying mean things to people is okay, unless that's all you do all day following around a user or something. We all become better people when we can share our own perspectives and hear the perspectives of others, especially when they are different from our own. Otherwise you end up with an echo chamber. As an aside, this article also makes a big deal out of the "warmer, fuzzier" part of Imzy, and they're also the ones who used the words "safe place," not us. Are we trying to make things a little less toxic than we've seen some other places? Yeah, absolutely. But that's honestly a really small part of why we built Imzy and what makes us different from other platforms. We've tried to build a really broad, flexible platform that makes it so communities can do all the things they want to in one place, with a developer platform to make sure that's possible. We've built in a payments system. We've designed it to be more user and mobile friendly instead of an outdated forum style. Those are honestly the things that I care most about, and the possibilities they open are what I think will have the biggest impact on hopefully making Imzy a really viable community platform that I want to work on, not the things that we're trying to prevent. Hope that helps explain our thinking. I'm happy to elaborate further if you have any questions. |
The platform sounds great, with solid potential. But if I found it as an outsider I'd be unlikely to explore it, because as an adult the site doesn't look like it's intended for me.
Personally I've found Quora conversations both interesting and useful. The branding is adult and the comments in my feed have genuinely fresh insights based on experience. There's some random opinionation, but not much, and conversations are rarely adversarial - possibly because they're more like monologues, and everyone gets a turn, and there's little incentive for drive-by commenting or flaming.
The point being that it's not just about moderation, but about the structure of the exchange and the culture. Quora seems to work because - ironically - there's very little direct interaction and challenge. I doubt that's the only way to run a community, but I wonder if it may actually be impossible to have public debates on difficult topics like politics without having to choose between heavy filtering and moderation, or one-sided communities with echo-chamber levels of agreement.