This is a good question. I was mostly not thinking of pre-FTX levels when I was writing that part of my response. I’m not sure if I think my claim holds on longer time scales! Things in the community have been calmer recently (outside of the Forum); I don’t know what would have happened had we not added the section (i.e on the Forum. whether things would have calmed down by themselves), nor what would happen if we removed the section now (and unfortunately we can’t e.g. A/B test this kind of thing, but maybe we should test in some other way at some point).
Aside (not related to what I was talking about in the “Forum has gotten healthier” section above): I agree that 4Q 22 / 1Q 23 aren’t representative in many ways, but a key underlying motivation for the Community section is giving posts that have a more niche audience a better chance by separating out posts that tend to get a lot of karma so they’re not “fighting for the same spots” (which are determined by ~karma). That phenomenon (and goal) is unaffected by recent events; ie. what we described in Karma overrates some topics; resulting issues and potential solutions should hold at all times. (On a skim, the top-by-karma posts of 2023, 2022, to some extent 2021 are Community posts. Curiously, this seems less true of 2020 but again more true of 2019.)
This is a good question. I was mostly not thinking of pre-FTX levels when I was writing that part of my response. I’m not sure if I think my claim holds on longer time scales! Things in the community have been calmer recently (outside of the Forum); I don’t know what would have happened had we not added the section (i.e on the Forum. whether things would have calmed down by themselves), nor what would happen if we removed the section now (and unfortunately we can’t e.g. A/B test this kind of thing, but maybe we should test in some other way at some point).
Aside (not related to what I was talking about in the “Forum has gotten healthier” section above): I agree that 4Q 22 / 1Q 23 aren’t representative in many ways, but a key underlying motivation for the Community section is giving posts that have a more niche audience a better chance by separating out posts that tend to get a lot of karma so they’re not “fighting for the same spots” (which are determined by ~karma). That phenomenon (and goal) is unaffected by recent events; ie. what we described in Karma overrates some topics; resulting issues and potential solutions should hold at all times. (On a skim, the top-by-karma posts of 2023, 2022, to some extent 2021 are Community posts. Curiously, this seems less true of 2020 but again more true of 2019.)