This post builds off Xkeeper and DecayWTF's posts on this subject, which got me thinking about generally important differences, and someone else suggesting that a social problem could be solved if people did something differently, which made me realize something.
On a forum, people generally know how to act and what is expected of them, in various contexts. I posted primarily on Something Awful until I started using Twitter in earnest; I found that the ability to choose who I hang out with online helped me enjoy it a lot more and form lasting friendships with folks. It's a party with people you invite, instead of a big room (or, say, a forum, in the Roman sense). That's nice! Same thing goes for Cohost.
However! Forums have rules. Subforums have rules. Everyone can see the rules, as on Cohost (one the community guidelines are out). A subforum is a distinct place people can wander into, and when they do so, they immediately see the stickied threads at the top of the page. Generally, if there are expectations for behavior specific to a subforum, a moderator will have posted them as a stickied thread. Everyone will see that. If someone makes a thread talking about people's behavior, everyone browsing the subforum will see it.
There are no stickied threads here. Everyone sees a different view of Cohost's world, depending on who they follow. Tags are the same for everyone, but tags are not easily discoverable unless you already know what to look for.
We have no reliable way to spread community knowledge of behaviors and norms, other than staff doing something that's visible to everyone on the platform. The closest thing we have is entirely stochastic, relying on virality.
This means that what might be an easily solved social problem on a forum is difficult to solve socially. If, say, it was communally decided (already difficult) that people should tag things in a specific way to allow people to muffle their posts on a subject, the only way they'll know they should do that is if they saw a viral post, or managed to pick up on it from someone else doing it.
The only guaranteed way to change user behavior for the better on here is by action from staff, in one of two forms:
This also depends on users being able to understand and internalize the rules, and increases the moderation workload; the more rules there are to break, the more mods have to work. Every rule has to be seen by everyone, because (unlike a forum) the only divisions between groups of users are social; mandating a norm for tagging a subcommunity's posts would mean that the entire site has to know and internalize that rule.
Changes to site design made with the intent of changing user behavior. This requires lots of technical effort to implement, extremely careful design, and post-implementation observation and adjustment. It takes a great deal of effort to ensure that new features or changes to any existing ones are effective in convincing people to behave in a certain way, not producing undesired behaviors, and a generally welcome addition to the user experience.
Many of the features on here were added by user request, and the staff have considered them, designed them, and been able to see how user behavior changes with their addition. That experience would be valuable in designing a feature meant to shape user behavior and social norms; if you add a visible button and let everyone know what it's for, it's probable that people will use it. Choosing what the button does, how it works, and making it do that is the hard part. Moderator load is increased, but likely to a lesser extent than with a rule, because the button is right there and you can click it.
There might be other crucial differences I'm missing here that would affect the above two things, but overall, when we are thinking about how we post on here, and thinking about how people should post on here, it's important to remember that we have no reliable way of guaranteeing people will do that, other than by direct action from above. We can blanket the site with viral posts titled , but there will still be people who never saw the post, and people who saw it but can't reliably tag it because it is something to remember that's not written down in any lasting way, or in any way one can find it.
