The 'evaporative cooling effect' occurs when contributors see nothing to gain from the community and leave, causing a snowball effect in the overall quality of the community.
The 'evaporative cooling effect in social networks' is a phenomenon in which high-contribution members leave a community because they have nothing to gain from it, and the community as a whole declines in quality as low-quality members flow in. A blog post summarizing the four elements of this evaporative cooling effect has been published.
The Evaporative Cooling Effect in Social Network : Networks Course blog for INFO 2040/CS 2850/Econ 2040/SOC 2090
◆ Point 1
Proponents of evaporative cooling claim that openness is the main cause of evaporative cooling. When a community is first established, the majority of members are willing to give a lot of time. However, as more and more new members join, the proportion of high-quality contributors decreases, leading to a decline in overall quality.
'Since the evaporative cooling effect is inevitable as communities expand, it is prudent to work to slow this trend,' the article's authors said.
◆ Point 2
One way to combat the evaporative cooling effect is through 'social gating,' or selective entry. For example, this can be achieved by preventing users without even basic knowledge of a particular subject from joining that subject's community. Another method is to regularly close user accounts that have been inactive for a long period of time.
A common way to raise the barrier of entry is to charge other fees to maintain the quality of the community, because unless people are truly interested in the community, they are not willing to pay to remain in it.
◆ Point 3
Another way to slow the evaporative cooling effect would be to create some sort of barrier to entry to keep the general public out, perhaps by granting status to special high-contributor members.
Granting status to high-value members removes their incentive to leave the community because their prestige is immediately visible and they are respected by others, which can slow the evaporative cooling effect.
◆ Point 4
For the third measure, advocates describe communities as having two dimensions: 'plazas' and 'rabbit warrens.' Plazas are typically public open spaces, while rabbit warrens are private spaces.
Plazas allow potential entrants to get a bird's-eye view of what's going on in the community and decide whether to join, making it easier for the community to expand and increasing the impact of the evaporative cooling effect.
Rabbit holes, on the other hand, are personal content on a social network, so they are more stable but not as scalable.
It is not enough to take either approach, but rather, the author stated, 'For a social network to be successful, it is necessary to combine these two aspects in various ways, with an eye on both scalability and stability.'
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in Note, Posted by log1l_ks