"We don’t want our best contributors feeling like the most important contribution they can make is to find stuff to get rid of - and more importantly, we want to avoid deterring people from joining the community and participating by being over-protective of what we want the site to look like. Narrow interpretation of the scope with rigid enforcement hasn’t slowed the volume of poor quality questions, but it has given Server Fault a rather hostile and insular reputation and a tendency to give a poor first impression."
The parallels to English Wikipedia are startling. But the data shared here don't say much to support the Facebook Ate My Online Community argument. Shane Madden's thesis is that community dynamics, not social media overload, are the primary culprit.
Recommended reading for the whole research-l list. Thanks for sharing this, Nemo.
- Jonathan