A community's norms cannot survive a permanent influx of newcomers too large to acculturate.
Named for the annual September influx of students onto Usenet, which the community absorbed each year until AOL opened access in 1993 and the influx never stopped.
In practice
- A moderated forum with careful norms is linked from a large site and is unrecognisable within six weeks.
- A neighbourhood pub with a regular crowd is reviewed in a national paper and loses the crowd within a season.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Networks & Collective Behavior
- Essay
- How connections shape what crowds do