As humans, we are uniquely competent at incorporating ourselves into groups that scale up from a few members to millions of individuals to engage in joint activities in social circles of varying sizes. Yet, the question of how a group's survival depends on its social structure is not well understood. In an analysis of more than 10 122 real-life online communities (with a total of 134 147 members) hosted by a leading platform over periods of more than a decade, we observe a prominent structural difference between stable and unstable communities, enabling the prediction of sustainability up to a decade ahead. We find that communities that fail to maintain a typical hierarchical social structure that preserves cohesiveness across size scales do not survive, while communities that exhibit such balance prevail. This difference is observable in as early as the first 30 days of a community's lifetime, enabling prediction of community sustainability up to 10 years in the future. We theorize that communities comprising distinct social structures that balance global and local factors across scales of sizes are more likely to maintain sustainability.

中文翻译：

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可持续的在线社区在规模上表现出不同的层次结构

作为人类，我们具有独特的能力，能够将自己纳入从少数成员到数百万人的群体中，从而在不同规模的社交圈中参与联合活动。然而，一个群体的生存如何取决于其社会结构的问题还没有得到很好的理解。在对领先平台十多年来托管的超过 10 122 个真实在线社区（共有 134 147 名成员）的分析中，我们观察到稳定和不稳定社区之间的显着结构差异，使得预测成为可能未来十年的可持续性。我们发现，无法维持典型的等级社会结构以保持跨规模的凝聚力的社区无法生存，而表现出这种平衡的社区则占上风。这种差异早在社区生命周期的前 30 天就可以观察到，从而能够预测未来 10 年的社区可持续性。我们的理论是，由不同社会结构组成的社区在不同规模的规模上平衡全球和地方因素，更有可能保持可持续性。