My reaction when I first heard of the concept of a "wiki" where everyone is allowed to edit some post (curiously before I heard about Wikipedia): I thought such a system would immediately be ruined by vandalism. It didn't occur to me that there may be way more people who undo vandalism than there are vandals.
Or when I first heard about Twitter. My immediate reaction was: "I'm unusually open to wacky Web 2.0 ideas, but even I have to admit you can't say anything of substance in just 140 characters." And indeed, looking up some random tweets seemed to confirm this suspicion. Interestingly, this wasn't just my reaction. A lot of us "tech enthusiasts" had this opinion about Twitter.
> My reaction when I first heard of the concept of a "wiki" where everyone is allowed to edit some post (curiously before I heard about Wikipedia): I thought such a system would immediately be ruined
There are people who think that today, despite well-known existence proofs we have to the contrary.
I mean a lot of internet places have been destroyed by vandalism and upkeep costs, what were seeing us just survivorship bias and survival of the fittest.
I'd disagree, they require a massive amount of moderation and clean up to keep running. The default state is ruined and only by herculean effort is it usable by others.
It's like a park in a high drug use area. Quite often they are ruined, and only by massive expenditure of effort are is it even near safe.
Or when I first heard about Twitter. My immediate reaction was: "I'm unusually open to wacky Web 2.0 ideas, but even I have to admit you can't say anything of substance in just 140 characters." And indeed, looking up some random tweets seemed to confirm this suspicion. Interestingly, this wasn't just my reaction. A lot of us "tech enthusiasts" had this opinion about Twitter.