The Internet has had a profound impact on society and is a large part of our everyday lives.  A large part of this is the advent of online communities that let people from all over talk to each other and share their experiences, advice, and wisdom in whatever field or topic the discussion is on.  The dissemination of varied opinions in all facets of a given topic of a community both keeps things interesting and brings more to the discussion than merely one opinion parroted by multiple people.  Unfortunately, however, there is no such thing as perfection and even at the outset people grouped themselves with other people who have the same opinions and outlooks as they did.  From my observations this practice is only becoming more prevalent in the past few years, as now, due to the introduction of Reddit, Tumblr, and others, it even easy to create your own subsection dedicated to your opinion and policed by you and any others you deem worthy.  This system allows anyone to create their own box to hide from the rest of the world in, their own echo-chamber as it were and it is readily apparent the effects of this when that person comes out of the box to express their stagnant opinion and it gets demolished by people more exposed to other's opinions, ideas, and expertise and yet when their opinion is debunked as wrong they will not, they cannot, accept that they were wrong so they continue to block out everything outside of their echo-chamber.  The trend of building echo-chambers of one's own opinion and being unable to accept their opinion as wrong or based on misinformation due to the stagnation inherent in an echo-chamber is damaging to the very fabric of the Internet but there are ways to stop this trend, fix the damage done, and bring back some of the magic that had been stripped away.

First order of business is a my definition of echo-chamber in order to avoid confusion.  I define an echo-chamber as a closed community where only those of one mindset are allowed and all others banned or otherwise prevented from sharing their potentially dissenting opinions.  Since everyone in the chamber is of the same mindset the same conversations rotate around, the same opinion on a subject blurted out in every comment, the same misinformation on whatever topic from some likeminded blogger in their own box and so on.  Noticing a pattern in all this?  When one thing is all that a community is about, all that the community has to talk about, the whole community stagnates.  Stagnation is never good, stagnant water brings mosquitoes, stagnant politics results in the current primaries, and stagnant communities results in drama and nothing being added to the greater discussion.  This can easily be seen in the days following a major event or crisis where everyone is ready to state their opinion on how things should be handled, this example being from the Editorial Board of the New York Times saying that "It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency" (Editorial Board), effectively a plead to the reader's morality to call for the banning of guns in America while ignoring all the positive aspects and good that gun ownership has done since the creation of the country.  The person(s) writing this could not possibly accept that guns are used for more than killing unarmed innocent civilians, even as they state that "No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation" (Editorial Board) despite their proposed solution being banning all guns they, and they alone, deem unacceptable.  I hate to get into politics and especially gun control but the people on this Editorial Board are so sheltered from the other side of the topic that they will not accept anything other than their opinion and solution.  As you can see from this totally unbiased example the effects of an echo-chamber are obvious and does not just affect editorial writing.

The effects of the creation of an echo-chamber can be seen as well as interacted with in online gaming communities.  I have been in multiple gaming communities and it is always devastating when the walls come up between groups of people in a field that is small enough as it is.  One of the more recent dissolution events I have been a part of is in the Garry's Mod ACF community, essentially people who built tanks to show off their building skills or to fight with.  This community started out well with people from all over the world all with their own designs, techniques, ideas, and programming skills.  Over time however the administration the server began to distance themselves from the player base and instituted stricter rules based on their idea for an ideal server.  Their idea of an ideal server was an echo-chamber where everyone parroted the same opinion that they had.  The group I was a part of did not agree and after a prolonged period of dealing with the constant nagging to change our ways to that of theirs, we left.  After we left the quality of building and programming dropped severely and the effects are still seen today when a few friends and I occasionally come to visit.  One of my friends made a turret control system for everyone to use as not everyone has programming ability.  That was 3 years ago and only our splinter-group has a better one thanks to that same friend using knowledge gained from his compatriots to make it better than the one he first put out.  This great schism, as it were, in the community is what inspired me to write this essay even though at that point I did not know it yet.  Even now the splinter group I am a part of has been becoming more and more distant from other groups due to our feelings of superiority and while not entirely unfounded it could have a profound impact on the server and community going forward.  The cycle never ends and that is why it is so important to bring an end to it before it dissolves too many communities and the greater discussion is halted and brought low by people hiding in their own boxes.

That last example while important, does not quite showcase just how an echo-chamber gets created so much as the effects and if you cannot write a scientific paper without at least describing the procedure, I cannot write this paper without describing how the process proceeds.  I interviewed my friend, Box, who was with me while we watched servers in our online community rise and fall, always in the same manner due to the same reasons.  He said that  the "server gettin popular"  the server owner would start "feeling superior" and "letting the admins abuse their powers" (Box), often to get rid of people who disagreed with that admin.  In addition, he said in the interview that "admin arguments"(Box) due to conflicting ideologies compounded with "powertripping kids from old servers" (Box) who brought their own ideas into the server and "veterans trying to bring back "the old times"" (Box) who believed that the old ways were right.  The reason why these events were so damaging was that it messed with the administrator's echo-chamber that he built around himself and his staff, who we're most assuredly his friends, so that when his idea of a perfect server was shattered the server would disappear and the community would be gone.  In essence once people started to question the owner, everything fell apart and what could have been good disappears before everyone's eyes due to.  This example applies to many of the servers we played on as it seemed to be a part of a greater cycle although at the time we did not know it yet.

Breaking the cycle is of utmost importance to the continuation of a community, but how can it be done?  It sure seems to be a universal occurrence happening in video games, forums, and social media.  But looking at the Garry's Mod example I found a way to stop or at least drastically slow the process.  The first and likely most important facet of this plan is the administration process.  Community based moderation is far more effective than strict moderation for many reasons.  For one it gets rid of the problem with drama within the administration when there is not anyone with inherently more power than anyone else as well as keeping echo-chambers from forming around groups of people as there will not be the group of administrators who can stamp out dissenting and different opinions and worldviews if there are not any administrators.  Ren and Kraut's study says that "The third finding is that community-level moderation leads to greater commitment but not contribution" (Ren and Kraut) which I have found to be wrong as commitment to the community leads to higher quality contribution due to the people in the community having more of a stake in it if they have something to lose.  The Garry's Mod server I play on has been very community based as no one really has any power and since everyone is vastly different from each other those kinds of cliques really cannot form echo-chambers around themselves so instead we keep the server friendly to new ideas, especially since in the tank building community most of the innovations come from our server.  This notion is also supported by the existence of Wikipedia, as in an interview with co-founder Jimmy Wales, Joerg Wolfe says that " The power of collective intelligence will be seen more and more as people find innovative" (Wolfe)  which really resonates with my point as my community innovates (in tank design) due to the collective intelligence of everyone in it as everyone is trying out new things and asking others for advice even thought they might have their own doctrine on armored combat, a different point of view can bring more to the table than the drama found in a closed community.  Wolfe says that "The key is to reach a balance between total anarchy and over-moderation in online discussion forums" and while to you it might seem that a community-centered moderation structure might be anarchy it is the most balanced form of moderation as the community as a whole promotes progress and innovation while absolute chaos or absolute order crushes these notions.  Wikipedia is a fantastic site that, while not the best for sources, has a valuable lesson in community management.  As an example, if I were to go on and spread misinformation about George Washington on any page with "Washington" in the title, someone will notice and everything I did will be erased and replaced with the relevant information which is quite fascinating and fantastic.

Another very important facet of community continuation is a product.  From Wikipedia's information on any subject imaginable to a tank building community in Garry's Mod producing tanks and programs, a product is invaluable to a community as it allows everyone to focus on a certain activity which takes time away from normal human bickering and drama prevalent in non-product focused communities.  Since, as with anything if you do not innovate you stagnate, an echo-chamber's product with eventually be dated and ineffective as they have not had the outside influence so whatever they produce will not have any new qualities found in products made by more open communities.  This is why I think video game communities can last so much longer than a discussion board on Reddit as there is always a "distraction" while the whole point of the community in a Reddit board is just to talk which oddly enough does not foster support of the greater discussion because now there is far more room for setting up your own echo-chamber and causing drama.  This is one of the best ways to curb the creation of echo-chambers because not everyone can tell when their opinions are obsolete but anyone can tell when a product is objectively worse than another.  This issue goes deeper than bad administration and securing the means of production.

The topic and the breadth of topics that a community discusses and produces for also has a profound effect on the creation of echo-chambers and the health of the community.  If the topic is too broad then it is very easy for cliques of people to form and as cliques form so do the echo-chambers.  This is due to there being so much information coming in that it is impossible to process it all so the cliques that form are there to discuss a smaller section of the larger topic.  In Ren and Kraut's study on online communities they have a similar opinion on this as " The simulation experiments suggest that broad topics and high message volume can lead to higher member commitment" (Ren and Kraut 1) which is true in a way since echo-chambers do have a lot of contribution and commitment but they are still detrimental to the health of the community since they bring down the level of discussion as they will not accept outside opinions as stated previously and ultimately the community devolves to the point of the Sub-reddits Technology and Politics which might have been good before but now I have to avoid like the plague due to the lack of quality in all respects.  A smaller community or one built around a more narrow topic has a much higher chance of the quality continuing on far longer than a larger community as there is a more concentrated subject to discuss and produce around.  A smaller community also allows for the creation of more personal bonds between different peoples as while there is not as much time as there is in a larger community the time is better spent so the bonds formed are less tribal and more friendly.  I know that in large games like Triple A shooters I never met anyone that I would really want to be friends with but in Garry's Mod and other community driven games I have made many lasting friends who I talk to daily, despite many of them being from around the world and having completely different opinions on the world than me.  This is why I found this topic so powerful, as without all this discussion and differing opinions I would never have met any of the people I call my friends despite them being behind a screen and anywhere from one to two thousand miles away.

Finally we're to the most emotionally charged section: the magic that was lost.  While you may not have the same experience I have had online and may have even been bullied on social media or some such but I only found camaraderie where I went, from forums to gaming communities I made friends, joined people, built tanks with different but likeminded individuals.  All these friends and memories only makes watching the echo-chamber cycle happen more painful because I know that not everyone will be able to get the same experience I did, even if they do not play community driven games.  It could be considered an infection of sorts where once the echo-chambers start to pop up the disease is getting close to killing the organism, or community.  This does not mean that this cannot be stopped, cannot be helped, it is just that more people have to be more aware of the issue and be ready to fight the infection lest we leave coming generations with nothing but a misinformation and clique filled wasteland.  Sure, one person such as yourself might not be able to stop this on your own, but what you can do is just be more open to all views from all sides, not just the side you agree with because you might find some hidden information that could change your views and give you something more out of your time surfing the web.  That is really what this is all about, broadening your horizons, making friends with new people from places you might not have heard of or had any interest in, and becoming more of a person than you were before.  The Internet is a powerful tool for progress of one's self, it just has to be used to innovate and progress rather than stagnate and decay.

The Internet is used by billions to access information, chat with people from across the globe, discuss politics, and a million other uses, which is why it is so important to protect what makes it good from people wanting to box themselves in and only to come out when they feel the need to promote their outmoded opinion to others.  There are many ways to fight against this accelerating trend however.  One such way is through community-level moderation which puts the moderation of the community in the hands of the community rather than some arbitrarily picked administrators who can prove more dangerous to the community than the community itself can.  This style of moderation is best seen in the Garry's Mod community I am a part of, where everything runs as smoothly as the game allows due to our community members all having the same amount of power over each other as well as producing tank designs and programs.  That is another great way of preventing echo-chambers is a product that can easily be made obsolete if outside influences are not accounted for resulting in everyone turning away from the clique and it stagnating but enough for the members of it to notice.  A smaller community or a community with a smaller topic range is also ideal as it allows for more commitment from the members while at the same time allowing less room for echo-chambers as the community appeals to everyone in it already as there is not a myriad possible things to discuss as well as being more suitable for community-level moderation interaction and bonding between community members.  The last step is having more people be aware of the danger presented by these echo-chambers as they can be the (hopefully quick) death of a community if left unchecked and ruining the worldviews of those present in the community when it finally kicked the bucket.  Echo-chambers do nothing but promote sameness and stagnation as the members of an echo-chamber have no new views due to being sheltered and only accept information that conforms to their narrative and their narrative only.  They bring down the level of discussion when they occur as their members will only parrot out the same opinion they have always had while getting offended when told they are wrong and running back into their box to do it all over again another day.  I have seen it happen, I have been in the communities when they have died and I have seen what happens to the people affected by the decay of what they spent so much time in.  A quick death is preferable to a slow one but where I have seen echo-chambers occur it is rarely fast acting and this can destroy some people's optimistic views on social interaction if what they have built is destroyed, perverted, or otherwise damaged irreparably by the actions of people too cowardly and weak to form their own opinions and let them be tested by those who oppose them.  How can one be wrong when everyone they are with tells them they are right?

