Draft Recommendation 4 - aka Social Networking / Social Features needs your help!

Hey Bodnotbod, it looks good so far. I think there is a lot of good support up here. But you want to lead with the concrete recommendations. I guess that's the "memes" thing you have right now. The support can come afterwards.

I'm going to be pushing pretty hard on all the recommendations since we're coming up against the deadline soon. I don't want to ruffle any feathers, but just in case I seem very intense. Let's try to get our best four recommendations forward.

Of all the recommendations on our shortlist, social networking features make me the most nervous. It really comes down to one thing: how do we stop people from abusing social networking features? Social behavior and anti-social behavior go through the same channels and tools. Open those channels, and you see greater positives AND negatives.

Take groups. Groups function well when there are diverse points of view on, say, politics. But what if I put together a "pro-conservative" or "pro-liberal" group? In fact, what if I get even more sly, and just create a "conservative" group, and invite a slew of users (on and off wiki) who are pro-conservative? It's the same thing for anything. Homeopathy, Astrology, even Fiction seem to attract people who are very "pro"-biased towards that content, without considering issues like neutrality or weight.

Another issue is hounding. If we make it easier to follow what other users are doing, this will make it easier for stubborn editors to interfere with other users. The most active users will be able to frustrate less active users, and they'll leave. How do we ensure that people follow each other in a way that is collaborative?

... and not TOO collaborative? What if we have people following each other, forming an unofficial group with some kind of shared viewpoint? We're back to the group problem, with issues like canvassing, votestacking, and opinion cartels.

If we're going to facilitate greater social behavior, we need to simultaneously make it harder to engage in anti-social behavior. If we can't do that, I'd strongly push to postpone any addition of social features.