Exactly. It’s not easy, I’ve seen it done well and I’ve seen it devastate sites.

The issue I run into is it’s like stacking blocks, except the blocks you stack at the start can’t be removed later to change them if they were the wrong blocks. Once a community moves down a certain path, you can’t really undo elements of its growth towards what it becomes, you can’t pull out a block and install the block you should have originally installed.

So in trying to reach the same endpoint those spaces have, you can try something, but if there’s a mistake along the way you’re shit out of luck, you can’t force a community built with the wrong blocks to become something different. It collapses a community.

I say that tentatively of course, I have had success in changing communities through force but only in the ideological sense. Mass baiting of liberals to purge them and build a communist community is totally viable, but the behaviour of those communists will still be shaped by the original blocks. You are limited in what you can and cannot force to happen.

What are the first things a new user sees? What values do the pinned sticky posts promote? What values does the sidebar impart? Will they even read that? If a moderation team is too overwhelmed with moderation duties, there’s no real time to get much feedback or to design a good space, it’s just reacting as crises come up.

Yes this is what I mean with building blocks you lay down.