Prompt Letting Others Post

Goal: Open up the discussion to more people Evidence rating (PDN): Inference Civic signal: Welcome — Invite Participation When to use: Interactive

What it is

When a user writes the majority of an online conversation’s posts, they will receive a dialog on future attempts to contribute, which suggests that they step back and allow others to participate.For example, on the open-source forum, Discourse, when a user is composing a new reply, if they already wrote 80% or more of the posts in the thread, a just-in-time message appears to the side to inform them of that statistic and ask if they might want to let other folks contribute more before responding.

Intended impact

• Dominant poster becomes more contemplative about the role they play in a forum, and perhaps more conscientious about letting others speak

• May make less prolific users feel less intimidated by the idea of contributing to the discussion

• May build towards equity in prompting people of privilege who are used to having the spotlight to make room for others who are often without that privilege.

Evidence that it works

Evidence That It Works

Why it matters

Special Considerations

There should be an option to disable this notification in specific contexts where having one person be the focus is specifically encouraged: such as Reddit-style Ask Me Anything (AMA) discussions. In the case of Discourse, there were specific instances where implementing this intervention was found to be counterproductive.

The intervention should consider the engagement that the poster on the thread has received before being deployed. This could be reduced by using courteous, calm language to not shame the user for posting.

This intervention also makes the assumption that dominant voices taking a step back will naturally make others feel more welcome. That’s a pretty strong assumption, which warrants testing.

Citations

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From the Prosocial Design Network's Digital Intervention Library (https://www.prosocialdesign.org/library/prompt-suggesting-letting-others-post), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Reformatted for the RT Commons; text otherwise as published. Library citation: Prosocial Design Network (2024), Digital Intervention Library, https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/Q4RMB. Anything built from this pattern should credit the Prosocial Design Network and the researchers cited above.

Details

• goal: Open up the discussion to more people
• citations: [object Object]
• image alt: A commenter posts a lot of content, to which an authoritative finger is raised in objection to that commenter's not letting others contribute.
• image url: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/647f696dc653a97c26f42a0b/647f696dc653a97c26f42b96_220713_let%20others_talk_hero_PDN.png
• pdn rating: Inference
• when to use: Interactive
• civic signal: Welcome
• pdn library doi: 10.17605/OSF.IO/Q4RMB
• civic signal goal: Invite Participation