This community’s value proposition is about more than being the Hacker News or reddit for travel. The focus is squarely on quality.

~ Anuj Adhiya from, https://cmxhub.com/outbounding-hook-model/

Yes, please. Based on that statement alone, I’d want to be a part of this sort of community.

The basic idea is that, to create habit-forming communities, you must move a user through a loop that over time will help them develop a habit of returning and contributing to the community. It looks like this: A trigger, internal or external, drives a user to the platform where they get some sort of variable reward, contribute something of their own, and return to the platform later for the same loop.

~ ibid.

Uhmmm… (That slight-squint with slightly-sideways, dubious look happens here.) Habituation is not, per se, a good thing. I agree that it is important to understand how what’s said there actually works; I often talk about the Oxo® handles we all have sticking out of our psyches. The ability to generate a habit in someone else is clearly one such handle.

A community comes into extence from the network of interpersonal relationships. A community isn’t, simply by its existence, a good thing. Also, if those relationships form because of habituation to come to the community space, that still doesn’t mean the community is a good thing. And we don’t even need habituation in order to form those interpersonal relationships. Yes, we may be able to “hack” those relationships into existence via habituation, but there are other ways to encourage those relationships.

I want to be part of communities that understand the nature of the interpersonal relationships, and the effect a community has as a whole. I want to be part of communities where those things are actually positive goods.

ɕ