V - THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE PROPOSITION:
Now, I will go more into details on the notion of change to make you understand how such a change is possible. For that, I will use a post that I have already made elsewhere about the science of groups and crowds.
Change usually comes from the outside. It's because the environment's evolution that we start to change, not because of something inside of us.
Let's take an example to understand why:
Put 100 person on a field of a stadium for 2 hours. You will give 4 people an earpiece and you will place a big speaker in the middle. We will try to make them dance together.
Now.. Before going further, I need to explain to you a few things about crowd and group psychology and the way informations or elements are shared among groups:
There are, in group behaviors like in epidemiology, two types of sharing (called contagion) of elements:
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The Simple contagion : For example, diseases or informations. It's a type of contagion where only one contact is enough to propagate the element
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The Complex contagion : It can be non familiar behavior or risky behavior that are hard to adopt. This is a contagion that will need a social reinforcement, in other word a certain % of individual in a group will have to adopt those elements or behavior to propagate it to others.
In 1978, a sociologist, Mark Granovetter, published a
paper where he proposed a new concept to understand group behavior : The Threshold model for those complexe contagion.
The threashold effect is the INDIVIDUAL threashold in % that people will have before they start to adopt a behavior or an element adopted by someone with a lower threashold.
For example, Activists or very motivated people (from the right or the left) will have a
very low threashold % for certain things, they will directly adopt a belief or a behavior because they are completely convinced. On the other side, people who will be very conservative to adopt new belief systems or behavior will have a
very high threashold % (the political side doesn't matter, it's just a question of our ability or refusal to adopt new elements. (said threashold can fluctuate in function of the subject or the behavior)
What we need to understand is that this Threashold effect create chain reaction effects after a certain point that we call "
the critical mass".
But first : With our example, we can sort the 100 persons from the lower to the highest threashold.
Here is a screenshot representing the lower part of the graph:
It comes from this video. If you want you can watch it with subtitles I think you can make the translation work:
As you can see, among those 100 persons, there are 4 that have a threashold of 0%, they will adopt the behavior very easily. After that, you have one that has a threashold of acceptation of 4%. This means that to adopt the behavior, said person will need to see 4 people adopt the behavior first.
And by domino effect, the one with a threashold of 5% will adopt the behavior and so on.. until everyone else adopt the behavior. In our example here, it means that 4 people are needed to start the spreading. 4 is therefore the
critical mass of the example.
But we also need to understand that critical masses and threashold are different from context to context. For ex, in a period of crisis, people are more sensible and therefore to spread information that could create conflict, the critical mass will be lower.
Another important thing to understand is that the more you have a group that is highly connected, the more the threashold for the members of said group will be lower. For example: You will be more encline to adopte a belief or a behavior if all your friend do it than if a group of stranger does it.
This is why
revolution don't start because of influencal people, but because of the streets where people are highly organized and connected on peripheries. Revolutions are a peripherical phenomenon. (The Arab spring is a good ex of that). So it's very unlikely from a big personnality to spread beliefs if the audience doesn't have a very low threashold to adopt said belief in the first place.
Now, lets come back to our example : if, after serving some drnk and let people enjoy their time, you put music in the big speaker of the stadium and you ask to the four people with earpieces to go dance... chances are that you will create a group phenomenon where people will start to dance one after the other. Like this in this example where the critical mass was very low due to the relax context and where the threashold was only 1 guy :
NOW... HOW DOES THIS APPLY TO THE CONTEXT OF WORSTGEN AND MY PROPOSITION ?
Well, as I explained, we need to take into account
the critical mass AND
the threashold of the group (the users of Worstgen) to go further.
What is currently happening on worstgen right now : The environment, structure and moderation of the forum creates a situation where the threashold for negativity of new users for the acceptation of negativity will potentially fall very LOW.
What does it means for me ?
It means that it's practically impossible for me to change toxicity by myself. The threashold for the acceptation of more positive behaviors and the end of toxicity is so high (too much people are against it) . It would need a LOT of people (I don't know how many) with the same point of view to create a change. It also means that the critical mass for a positive change to happen here is TOO HIGH.
So .. What do I want to do ?
Well, my goal is simple : I want to LOWER the critical mass for the acceptation of positive behaviors on this forum.
In other words: I want to create a situation where the threashold for the acceptation of more positive behavior will be lowered and where less people will be needed to create a change !
But like I said : I CAN'T do that by myself. So I need to be more clever and use sociology and group behavior studies and try to BYPASS the threashold problem by attacking DIRECTLY the critical mass.
To attack the critical mass, I need to have an impact on the
ENTIRE SYSTEM. Just like if I had an impact on the guy who is telling people to go dance in our example. This is why I'm trying to convince directly the staff to evolve on different subjects.
By changing the entire system, it will be possible to influence the critical mass and the acceptation for positivity.
It doesn't mean that this forum will become a paradise, but it will be a lot safer, more attractive and less problematic.
