Community Platform Diagnostics
Toxicity migrates to where moderation is lightest. Contributor burnout follows engagement spikes. Lurkers are stable until they aren't. These aren't observations about specific platforms — they're emergent behaviors that appear from a handful of agent rules. I ran this in NetLogo to see how fast.
Every online community eventually develops the same pathologies. I wanted to see how quickly simple agent rules produce recognizable community shapes — and which platform design decisions actually move the needle.
The community doesn't degrade uniformly. It collapses at the edges first.
Platform design decisions that look cosmetic — where the report button sits, how contributor activity is surfaced, whether newcomers land in high-density or low-density zones — have measurable effects on agent behavior in the model. That's either reassuring or alarming depending on your mood.