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If you ever write an essay on making online community scale, I'll certainly be an enthusiastic reader! Quite a bit has been written on the subject, but I've fo

If you ever write an essay on making online community scale, I'll certainly be an enthusiastic reader! Quite a bit has been written on the subject, but I've found surprisingly little that seems really good, despite the importance of the topic. Two useful links on the subject are http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/006036.html http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/006036.html and http://www.meatballwiki.org/wiki/ http://www.meatballwiki.org/wiki/

pg 17y ago
One reason I don't is that it would attract attention to HN, and one of my strategies for staving off disaster has been to keep a low profile, so that most new users are people who hear about the site from friends.
- blasdel 17y ago
  You can't "write an essay on making online community scale" because community doesn't scale
  - fbailey 17y ago
    Absolutely true. Social Networks can scale but communities can't. You can scale a site with community functions, that looks like a community (youtube) but there will be no sense of community.
  - Perceval 17y ago
    I wrote a long article on the subject of online community and the problems of scale: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/12/33338/3000 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/12/33338/3000
blasdel 17y ago
Don't take a drop of advice from Teresa Nielsen Hayden -- it's all either blatantly obvious or outrageously poisonous. She is absolutely the least-moderate moderator on the entire English-language internet, and has proven herself adept at training subordinates to follow in her footsteps. pg is already more than capricious enough already, I shudder to think of how ridiculous things would get around here if he started taking lessons from the dark master.
- blasdel 17y ago
  A nice example would be this enormous thread (2mb of HTML), that drags on documenting the incendiary results of her 'moderation' on BoingBoing. Search for "TNH": http://www.metafilter.com/72928/Boing-Boing-Finds-21st-Century-Trotsky http://www.metafilter.com/72928/Boing-Boing-Finds-21st-Centu... A choice summary quote: "i would never never ever hire tnh as a mod ever -- an inquisitor, maybe, a chief of secret police, certainly, but a mod, no!"
  - jrockway 17y ago
    Metafilter also deletes too many comments.
    - blasdel 17y ago
      You'd be surprised how little comment deletion there is outside of Ask Metafilter (where all comments have to answer the damn question). Pretty much the only comments deleted from the main site are personal attacks. There's an active backchannel for discussing such things where almost nothing is deleted. They take great pains to avoid banning people (excepting spammers, who get their signup fee refunded!), though sometimes they dole out timeouts. The community policing means that the shitty users tend to disable their own accounts. pg takes the opposite approach, applying a single assholish technical approach to all problems: hellbanning for everyone!
      - jrockway 17y ago
        FWIW, I only read AskMe. But I agree that Metafilter handles moderation better than HN. The way voting is here, it seems like it mostly depends on the time of day as to whether a comment of mine gets -4 or +30. (Usually this works out for me pretty well... but I can't help feeling dirty when I write something that gets upmodded that high.)
        chrischen 17y ago
        Well I also feel like a system which allows mob punishment tends to select "regulars" who are more homogenous in opinions, since they will fit into the thinking which defines the community. But if you want a like-minded small community it's a tradeoff that's necessary. Why do you feel dirty though?

pg 17y ago

One reason I don't is that it would attract attention to HN, and one of my strategies for staving off disaster has been to keep a low profile, so that most new users are people who hear about the site from friends.

blasdel 17y ago
You can't "write an essay on making online community scale" because community doesn't scale
- fbailey 17y ago
  Absolutely true. Social Networks can scale but communities can't. You can scale a site with community functions, that looks like a community (youtube) but there will be no sense of community.
- Perceval 17y ago
  I wrote a long article on the subject of online community and the problems of scale: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/12/33338/3000 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/12/33338/3000

blasdel 17y ago

Don't take a drop of advice from Teresa Nielsen Hayden -- it's all either blatantly obvious or outrageously poisonous. She is absolutely the least-moderate moderator on the entire English-language internet, and has proven herself adept at training subordinates to follow in her footsteps. pg is already more than capricious enough already, I shudder to think of how ridiculous things would get around here if he started taking lessons from the dark master.

blasdel 17y ago
A nice example would be this enormous thread (2mb of HTML), that drags on documenting the incendiary results of her 'moderation' on BoingBoing. Search for "TNH": http://www.metafilter.com/72928/Boing-Boing-Finds-21st-Century-Trotsky http://www.metafilter.com/72928/Boing-Boing-Finds-21st-Centu... A choice summary quote: "i would never never ever hire tnh as a mod ever -- an inquisitor, maybe, a chief of secret police, certainly, but a mod, no!"
- jrockway 17y ago
  Metafilter also deletes too many comments.
  - blasdel 17y ago
    You'd be surprised how little comment deletion there is outside of Ask Metafilter (where all comments have to answer the damn question). Pretty much the only comments deleted from the main site are personal attacks. There's an active backchannel for discussing such things where almost nothing is deleted. They take great pains to avoid banning people (excepting spammers, who get their signup fee refunded!), though sometimes they dole out timeouts. The community policing means that the shitty users tend to disable their own accounts. pg takes the opposite approach, applying a single assholish technical approach to all problems: hellbanning for everyone!
    - jrockway 17y ago
      FWIW, I only read AskMe. But I agree that Metafilter handles moderation better than HN. The way voting is here, it seems like it mostly depends on the time of day as to whether a comment of mine gets -4 or +30. (Usually this works out for me pretty well... but I can't help feeling dirty when I write something that gets upmodded that high.)
      - chrischen 17y ago
        Well I also feel like a system which allows mob punishment tends to select "regulars" who are more homogenous in opinions, since they will fit into the thinking which defines the community. But if you want a like-minded small community it's a tradeoff that's necessary. Why do you feel dirty though?