Riding the Failure Cascade

An anonymous reader writes "The Escapist has up an article looking at a curve that represents the dissolution of large social groups, like online guilds. Called the Failure Cascade, it's essentially a way of examining the dissociation of members of an organization predicated on a culture of success. They primarily explore this phenomenon using descriptions of EVE corporate alliances. 'These are the two forces at work in [an] alliance's failure cascade: the individual and the guild ... This happens because the failure cascade is the inverse of a network effect. Websites like MySpace define their value by the people that use the service just as guilds define their quality by their members. As bad events cause players to leave or become inactive, the quality drop leads others to do the same in a spiral that rarely stabilizes, until no one is left.'"

Comments

Microsoft's Failure Cascade

[DECS]

I feel so topical and current! I just wrote the same thing about Microsoft, detailing the spiral pattern affecting the company's entire consumer product lineup, from Zune to Windows to Office to Xbox to WinCE/Windows Mobile. Will the last person left please turn off the lights?

Soviet Microsoft: How Resistance to Free Markets and Open Ideas Will the Unravel the Software Superpower

Somewhat ironically, one of the most financially successful capitalist companies of the 90s has positioned itself as a modern counterpart to the old communist Soviet Union. Microsoft's ideological contempt for and resistance to free markets and the open expression and propagation of fresh ideas and technologies is not only a close parallel of the old USSR, but also a clear reflection of why Microsoft is currently failing and why its troubles have only just begun. Here's a comprehensive look at why this is the case.

Wikipedia?

[CowardX10]

I think Wikipedia is a prominent example of this. Assholes(deletionists) are driving away the people who made it great in the first place(content creators) with their elitism and petty power grabs. And now, Wikimedia is only able to achieve 1/4 of their fundraising goal because a lot of the content creators were probably money contributors as well.

Congratulations asshole deletionists. You may finally achieve the ultimate deletion-the entire encyclopedia.

Re:Political Parties

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I'd say that 2006 was a combination of the dislike for the republicans as a party and as individuals. Many of the incumbants that lost were voted in during the 94 republican revolution when they all said they wanted smaller government, less pork,more accountability and term limits. In 2006 these idiots record was one of bridges to nowhere, huge deficits, major ethical lapses, and never left office when they said they would. Also, people didn't much care for the Iraq war. Politicians are like diapers, you really should change them often. I wish they would have been able to get some term limits written into the law books. We'd be a better country without the 50 years of strom thrumand or 30+ of Ted Kennedy.