gatekeeping

This note last modified September 1, 2024

Gatekeeping as its normally described is obviously bad, but I can’t help but think about the most positive interpretation: preventing the paradox of tolerance.

universities work by gatekeeping
- but I think a large part is that Universities are massive gatekeeping operations. Getting into a university is the ultimate job interview, and simply knowing someone got into a university is an indication that they have those basic skills of passing the interview. (Ideally. Often people in uni don’t have those skills or got in via legacy admissions etc.)
paradox of tolerance
- In other words, if you want to make a strong community, you need to gatekeep to an extent.
implicit gatekeeping
- Tags: gatekeeping
communities are increasingly transient
- If there’s an online community for something you are interested in, you can easily join it and leave. That ease is very good, but it means that many of the aspects of what makes a strong community (namely length of time, trust, etc.) can’t exist. Thus people overrely on gatekeeping to ensure their communities keep out undesirables. (Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on context.)
communities
- Since communities are so transient, they resort to increasingly aggressive tactics to retain the benefits of community.