V2ex is a very special presence in the tech world, a very active community. It now has about 20 MB of PV per month, with nearly 30 WATTS of registered users. I am very curious about V2EX. I think it is an amazing product. The features of ORDINARY UI, no official mobile terminal products, personal maintenance and so on have enticed me to have a comprehensive understanding of it and its owner Livid.
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How did Liu Xin design V2EX? What was the original idea?
From this zhihu post, we can learn some of the history and story of Livid and V2ex. Of course, my favorite part of livid’s last paragraph.
To be honest, most communities on the Internet are pretty boring to me. If there is a technical term for it, it is the low signal-to-noise ratio. I try to avoid being boring, and I hate dealing with boring people or things. So what is boredom? Boredom, in my opinion, is like repeating what the nation already knows, or selling other people’s opinions without thinking. So WHEN I do an online community, I want it to be as informative and as boring as possible. This process will inevitably upset some people, but I think that’s the way it should be — it’s not about who you say yes to, it’s about who you say no to.
Think about the community in terms of information and I talked about the community product as a tool, a tool for users to get information. One of the most important indicators of information dissemination is signal-to-noise ratio. Therefore, the signal-to-noise ratio of a community is the key to whether a community is attractive. The community should increase the amount of information as much as possible to improve the efficiency of users’ information acquisition.
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How does Livid guarantee SNR?
- Build a model for hosting content production and distribution. Please refer to the current v2EX product structure
- Establish a monetary system within the community and allocate and limit power. V2ex’s experience point system (currency system) has a reference to World of Warcraft, which limits user posts and replies. It is a distribution of community power that encourages valuable recovery and limits worthless blowing. Under v2EX’s current product structure, the right to speak is expressed through participation in replies and posts, and the restriction and distribution of this power is dependent on the monetary system.
- Gather people with expected characteristics to improve signal-to-noise ratio. Communities are ultimately a group of people gathered together, and information access is dependent on other community users. Therefore, the signal-to-noise ratio of a community is highly relevant to the rest of the community. We say that different ways do not conspired with each other. Only people with similar interests and background knowledge can communicate more effectively. What we often refer to as generation gap is simply a difference in background information in our heads.
There is nothing particularly special about the three above, and most famous communities rely heavily on these three. However, livid’s remarkable feature is that he has been pursuing SNR for many years and has never changed because of the increase of community users or growing demand. Most communities, as the number of users increases, dilute the core user base, which in turn reduces the signal-to-noise ratio of the community, followed by the flight of active users. Go to Zhihu search: Livid V2ex can still see a lot of posts spraying Livid, these people are livid with unkind words and deeds of non-target user groups. Livid’s “bad guy” image is what keeps V2EX alive today.
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Livid is a very interesting person with a deep understanding of online communities. The following is to recommend the kernel panic when the interview with Livid, special meaning. Oh yeah, let’s see what you think about V2EX in the comments section. 🙂 interview with Livid