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'Matrix is a forum that values politeness and professional discourse. More can be found below in the culture of 'Matrix. If this doesn't sound like what you are looking for in a site, then there are likely better forums for your interests. We expect our users to help contribute to this standard.
Matrix can be used as a shorthand for the two portals through which 'Matrix can be seen. It is a Reddit alternative, also known as a link aggregator. It seeks to fulfill Aaron Swartz's original conception of Reddit. It was originally part of the milestone schedule of Reddit to use votes to not just determine what content makes it to the front page, but also to customize the front page for each user based on what they voted on.
On 'Matrix, this is achieved by using a positional system. Every post and every user has positional properties. When you vote on a post, you bring that post closer to yourself and yourself closer to the post. When you downvote a post, you push it away from yourself and your community (those immediately near you) and push yourself away from that content. There are a few extra details to keep everything spread out. Since people upvote more than they downvote, there would be a tendency for everything to collapse to a single point without a few more steps being applied. 'Matrix uses a finite approximation of a Hilbert space.
But what if you don't want this positional system to come into effect? Or what if you want more of it and care more about seeing content for you rather than what is popular? Well, great news. 'Matrix also gives you control over the sort and ranking algorithm. The default sort on 'Matrix is the custom sort. The custom sort allows you to select the weights for each factor. The available factors are score, age, proximity, bump, and comments. 'Score' affects how sensitive posts are to votes. 'Age' selects how new the posts should be. 'Proximity' controls how close the posts should be to you. The 'Bump' factor operates like an image board. When 'Bump' is higher, the posts that have been commented on recently will come to the top. The last is 'Comments', and that factor prefers posts that have a large comment count.
tl;dr: Performative abrasiveness is not a part of 'Matrix culture. Those who engage in it are folks we wish to scoot along. Failing to assimilate to 'Matrix culture should not make you popular here if 'Matrix culture develops the way it should. If that describes you, you will find that you are more welcome elsewhere.
The in depth version:
'Matrix is a free speech platform. But that doesn't mean all speech is equally valued. Part of what we want to test is whether a site that has free speech can choose to value higher-value content. Imagine if you lived in a country that regulated food to the point that, ironically, everything became over-processed and unnatural. Then you moved to a country with complete food freedom. Having food freedom doesn't mean you need to eat garbage. Eating garbage isn't an expression of freedom. It's just making your own life bad. This is especially true after the first week. After a week, if you are still eating garbage, you aren't really into food freedom. You are into eating garbage. The goal is to do good things with freedom. Once you get over the novelty of being able to eat or say what you want, you should progress to eating the best, and having a community that shares the best.
So what is the best? This is an opportunity to introduce The Pyramid of Content. The Pyramid of Content is a spin-off of the Pyramid of Debate. The Pyramid of Debate, which has been shared on many websites, was an effort to encourage better content. Its flaw, though, is failing to realize that debate in general is not the highest content a site can have. The Pyramid of Debate can be seen as a sub-slice of the Pyramid of Content.
At the very top of the Pyramid of Content is sharing your work on projects you have worked on yourself. These posts take real effort. They also encourage others to put real effort into improving the world rather than just taking a passive role.
The next level is organizing other people into action. This kind of content brings people together to do something real, but not with the level of dedication that a deeper project does. This is still highly valuable content.
The next level is education and skill-building content. This is great content. This is a great level to have as the meat and potatoes of a site. But linking to and watching someone else develop a skill is a little more passive than doing it and sharing it. Still great content though. At this stage, we are still promoting the collective development of the community.
Below that is general self-improvement content. This one is almost as good as content tied to hard skills. It has a lot of the same benefits but isn't as specific. It's a near tie.
Next is humor. Humor is a positive. Just because it is lower than the others doesn't mean it isn't good. Everything on this side of the list is a positive, and we need it. Having a laugh just isn't quite as good as developing new skills. It's still good, though. Not everything can be the best content. But something does, and that's the layers above this one.
The next layer is where we get into the margin. News and politics. The items below this one are worse. The news can even be considered good, but in the lowest marginal sense. It does tend to get upvoted for a reason. In theory, it is good to keep up with what is happening in the world. But in practice, when this is all you look at, you end up dumber for it. Your community ends up dumber for it. So then the question is, how much news do you want yourself and your community to really see? In an ideal world, it would be the minority of content on an ideal site, but it can creep up to being the majority, if not exclusively the only content present, if we are not careful. This is a mistake. For this reason, it is ok to downvote the news. If you want to see less news, just downvote it. The way voting works here, downvoting news or any other content will make it so you see less of it. It will also make it easier for others to see less news, not only because of the downvote, but because of transfer learning. Voting, especially downvoting, helps establish and train the site's Hilbert space to understand the difference between news content and non-news, and who enjoys it and doesn't. If you are afraid the poster will be offended, they got a downvote; they are not the primary intended audience for this site. The worst that could happen is they leave, and we have less news.
Now we get into layers that are below the margin. I'd rather talk about things that are good, so I'll lump these together to get through them quickly. But one of the things that puts news so much on the margin is that it encourages these other three layers that are solidly below the margin of good content. They are complaining, arguments, and peacocking assholery. Now it seems odd for me to say "no complaining." That's not what I'm saying. If you have something to complain about, go for it. But believe it or not, there are people on the internet who do that is the only thing they do. For them, hoping on the internet is an act of discovering things to complain about and doing it. They don't put any effort into improving the world. I don't know that they would want it improved. Because then they would lack a social outlet of any kind. Well, if that is you, I would encourage you to go to many of the other lovely places on the internet.
But just like there are people whose idea of internet fun is complain-tainment, there are people who are on the internet for argu-tainment. Again. They should go elsewhere. I get it. It's fun for some people. But not every place needs to be a dive bar. Those exist on the internet. Go to them. And the last is similar to the others. I'm trying to find the best way to phrase it, but it is trying to show off how much of a worthless asshole you are. Sounds like an odd thing to do. But again, this is entertainment for some people, and if you don't show them the door, they will think the place is built for them. And if it is built for them, it can't be built for the folks at the top of the pyramid. And that's just who I want to build this place for.
So will these behaviors at the bottom lead to a ban? No. We are testing if a different model is possible. We will ask them to leave and make a conscious choice not value their kind of content. If you show up to someone's party and start messing up the place, and it isn't that kind of party, they are going to ask you to leave. If someone does, be a developed human being and just leave. In real life, manners would and should work. So why not the internet?
But if we want people to read the room and be able to tell at a glance what kind of party it is, we have to set the environment ourselves. By pushing yourself to post content that is higher up the pyramid, not only do you contribute positive content, but you also help make the room easy to read for others. Now you get to be in a social gathering that will elevate you instead of one that tears you and others down. Error begets error. Improvement begets improvement. All you can do is improve yourself and your environment by a hair. But every time you make even small improvements, more improvements will follow naturally. If you want a site with an improved culture, remember that all you have to do is make even a very slight improvement to your own contributions, and it will happen naturally. Let's pick a culture where people want improvement. That is different than perfection. Some people aren't going to fit in here with these goals. The key is to help them recognize that quicker, politely, so they can move along quicker.
So to sumarize the the Pyramid of Content:
Great: Projects, organizing, skill development, philosophy, self-improvement
Good: Humor
Marginal: News
Bad: Complain-tainment, argue-tainment, posturing as an asshole or performative abrasiveness.
If someone is being abbrasive, you have to ask why. If it is their way of trying to fit in, we don't want to set up an evironment where that is how people fit in. We need users, beyond those with moderation, to make sure it isn't. Everyone contributes to what is popular. Being thoughtful/strategic about that is the intellegent thing to do.
Matrix is loaded with features, some of which are relatively unique to 'Matrix. I'm going to write up more about this here, but just outlining, we have:
Within the same ecosystem, 'Matrix also has some sibling sites that include an image host, a video platform, a small web-based game library, and a web-app platform. We hope to have a task and project management software within our ecosystem soon.
Submatrix is the hyper-curated lens to view GoatMatrix through, and is intended to be a professional-oriented Reddit alternative. GoatMatrix is a general link-aggregator platform. It is actually preferable to refer to the site(s) by one of those two names, because Matrix as a name is used by so many projects. The name Matrix was only used in this document to avoid a bias toward one or the other. It would be a little strange to be on Submatrix and read about GoatMatrix, or vice versa. Another way to refer to Matrix is as 'matrix or 'Matrix. Submatrix is also a pre-prototype phase of a hopeful future feature that is being ironed out, called 'parties,' in which groups of users can control the content they want to see.
Subs on 'Matrix are created when they are posted to. Sub names are alpha-numeric and case-insensitive but case-preserving. Because subs are case preserving, it is preferred to use PascalCase when selecting a topic to post to. That is, each constituent word is capitalized when compounding them into a topic name. The terms sub and topic are interchangeable on 'Matrix.
You can also cross-post easily to multiple topics by separating each topic with commas.
As a guideline, when picking a sub-name and when using the quick cross-post feature, it is preferred to only target one obscure topic when doing so. Good: Funny, Videos, MyObscureTopic (maybe). Bad: MyObscureTopic1, MyObscureTopic2, SomethinNoOneWillEverNavigateTo3. Doing the latter only clutters the /new page. The quick cross-posting feature is intended to help fill in the subs people will be interested in navigating more quickly. If you don't intend for yourself and others to make multiple posts to a sub, and or you don't suspect anyone will intentionally navigate to that topic or follow your post to that topic, it is likely not an ideal topic name.
The most popular subs in terms of posting frequency and consistency can be found on the top subs page. An extended version of that list also feeds into the sub-suggestions in the post submission form. Subs that have been noted to have a high visit rate relative to the amount of content present are also included in the sub-suggestions. The sub-suggestions also help encourage people to use the dominant case usage for a topic.
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