[thoraway1010]

This exactly, and I'd add another thing - online only communities can become dominated by the folks with the absolute strongest feelings / opinions. Most offensive or most offended, most absolute in their thinking. It tends to drive the folks I'm interested in hearing from out. In a social group they'd quickly just not be invited to stuff, or might value other aspects of a relationship and so dial back a bit. Online - not so much.

There's also very little consequence for blowing things up into bigger / click-bait style headlining.

If community is bouncing ideas around, thoughts, etc, then that is much harder online.

I've found getting off social media helps HUGELY in naturally helping get other communities going.

[demadog]

This is so extremely true, it’s insane. I’m particularly thinking about these “polymath” guys on Twitter that have a following for reading the Stoics, into Keto, and following Naval and Tim Ferris. They sell their courses and continue to espouse their strong takes on everything.

At a real life event they would quickly be seen as a know it all and too domineering, and taken down a few notches. But online they grow a “community”. It’s not all bad, and they share some good thoughts, but it is very different, for better or for worse.

[ZephyrBlu]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds the preaching on Twitter a bit weird.

[mc32]

I agree. Sometimes the more reasonable people lose control to the more acerbic folks because the latter are a bit better at dealing with moderation issues (or are willing to take it on) However the bad side is by their nature these people can exercise strong opinions and dismiss other people’s input and they end up shaping the community into their image rather than the of the group. To add to that they’ll violate the principles they set up and use to moderate often without consequence.

[cosmodisk]

The extremists types need to be controlled both online and in real world: the same way as you kick out THAT guy from a party who is trying to convince everybody for the 25th time that the earth is flat, the online platform would have to do the same. I had a few warnings on HN for the way some of my post were written and while initially not quite satisfied about it, I did reflect on it and it made me realise that these rules do make HN better.