Chapter 23. Communicating Many to Many

Jeff Bates and Mark Stone

Typical users in the Windows community and typical users in the Linux/open source community have different tendencies. For real-time communications, Windows users tend to prefer an Instant Messaging (IM) client like AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and Linux users tend to prefer an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client like XChat. On the surface, these clients and protocols differ little: both support channel or chat room messaging, both support one-on-one messaging, and both allow for some degree of moderated discussion. Yet IM users tend to communicate one-on-one by default, resorting to chat room discussions only for specific purposes and even then rarely, and IRC users tend to communicate in group channels, resorting to one-on-one communication only occasionally.

That tendency toward group activity underlies much of the collaborative instinct in the open source community, and ultimately provides a key to open source's remarkable success. Yet any IRC veteran knows well the scaling problems group communication encounters. A channel with a dozen or so participants, a handful of whom are vocal, can be a very productive center of communication. A channel with 20 to 50 participants suffers a crippling signal-to-noise ratio, absent some form of moderation: too much noise, not enough signal.

This pattern is reflected in all forms of online group communication: discussion forums, email lists, and Usenet from the very early days. Breaking this pattern stands as one of the chief challenges to effective collaboration. How can communicating many to many scale? What conditions enable network effects to take hold so that more participants improves rather than diminishes the quality of communication, and hence the power of collaboration?

Slashdot stands as a striking counterexample to the usual pattern. Over the years, the site has evolved into a high-quality, moderated discussion forum, one where the more people participate, the more valuable the discussion is. Network effects have taken hold; many-to-many communication is enabling a unique form of collaboration.