> ever-increasing variance in quality of those users
I'm not sure it's necessarily the quality of the users. Call me an optimist, but I think most people in general are decent and most people that bother to come here are pretty smart.
I think the problem with size is the same reason everyone else is a crappy driver but you. In a normal day of driving, you are surrounded by mostly good drivers, but a couple of them are bound to make really stupid mistakes (just by random chance). Since this is your only experience with them, you label them a "bad driver" and it overshadows all the good driving around you. If you only drive on lightly traveled roads, you are less likely to see a stupid mistake, but get on a major interstate highway in a major city and there are enough people that something is bound to happen.
Likewise with large social news sites. Every user is a 'good user' 99% of the time, but has that random moment when they do something trollish or get carried away with an argument and say something mean. (I know it has happened to me before.) When a site gets large, the probability of this happening on any given thread rises accordingly, and since everyone focuses on these instances, it seems like every thread is full of trolls and angry people.
I think anonymity also plays into it. Large communities are by default anonymous, and small ones are not. People in small towns don't cut each other off or tailgate each other, because you are likely to know the person in the other car, or at the very least be headed to the same place. (I know, I'm from a small town.) In a major city, you are never going to see that other car again, so no one cares if they act like an asshole.
I'm not sure it's necessarily the quality of the users. Call me an optimist, but I think most people in general are decent and most people that bother to come here are pretty smart.
I think the problem with size is the same reason everyone else is a crappy driver but you. In a normal day of driving, you are surrounded by mostly good drivers, but a couple of them are bound to make really stupid mistakes (just by random chance). Since this is your only experience with them, you label them a "bad driver" and it overshadows all the good driving around you. If you only drive on lightly traveled roads, you are less likely to see a stupid mistake, but get on a major interstate highway in a major city and there are enough people that something is bound to happen.
Likewise with large social news sites. Every user is a 'good user' 99% of the time, but has that random moment when they do something trollish or get carried away with an argument and say something mean. (I know it has happened to me before.) When a site gets large, the probability of this happening on any given thread rises accordingly, and since everyone focuses on these instances, it seems like every thread is full of trolls and angry people.
I think anonymity also plays into it. Large communities are by default anonymous, and small ones are not. People in small towns don't cut each other off or tailgate each other, because you are likely to know the person in the other car, or at the very least be headed to the same place. (I know, I'm from a small town.) In a major city, you are never going to see that other car again, so no one cares if they act like an asshole.