I can't help but agree that the communities seem to be disintegrating around the edges - but only in the feeling of community from the way the old generalized c

I can't help but agree that the communities seem to be disintegrating around the edges - but only in the feeling of community from the way the old generalized communities used to be. On the other hand, its hard to find something in real life that doesn't have an internet forum or 3 devoted entirely to it. I feel like a huge portion of my interests can fit neatly into existing forums that form their own specialized communities. Of course, there is no semblance of real anonymity there, I can use a pseudonym, but it would certainly not hold up to a determined investigator - public or private. Of course, another trend here which really pushes things away from the anonymity/community is that the rise of Social profiles being tied to true identity has become a common denominator across a lot of the content sources on the net. Mobile access has also pushed us toward sole points of access to many of those communities. Sure, you can still log into many sites with a username and password from any old computer, but as more and more sites become personalized it becomes inconvenient to manage the multiplicity of web presences on a phone without resorting to using apps that are permanently logged in and tied to your single point of access. Finally, the burden of defeating spambots has become nearly impossible without some strong anti-spam membership requirements. defeating spam has become a huge driver for anti-anonymity. The problem is, that even if you defeat bots, the giant number of people participating in discussions virtually guarantees that someone will post something in need of moderation under a pseudonym. A friend of mine at the NYT said they had to implant special filters to moderate the amazing amount of hate speech that would end up as non-sequitur comments on nearly every article. They are not alone in that experience. Its not so bad, all in all, but the internet is a big place now. Some part of my thinks that when communities are small, they self-manage much more easily since there is a kind of group-accountability. On the broader internet, this isn't true anymore. on large public websites, it isn't true. But thats why we self-organize into smaller communities like Hacker News. As they get bigger, the rules necessarily become more strict because the feeling of accountability for the community's well-being on an individual basis goes down. </rationalization>