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FYI: it's possible to use HN without being a member.
by adnam 17y ago
FYI: it's possible to use HN without being a member.
- blasdel 17y agoBut it's not possible to contribute to HN without being a member. If you haven't done so and gotten feedback via voting and replies you aren't a member of the community qua community.
- thibaut_barrere 17y agoIt's possible to contribute to HN without being a member. For instance, you can talk about it around you, share links with people outside of HN, either via mail, twitter etc. I've been doing this for months before being more active, submission/commenting-wise.
- blasdel 17y agoSure you can contribute tertially in the same way that happy users of open source projects contribute by attracting more happy users — except for the fact that more happy users is not an unqualified improvement — which happens to be the subject of petewailes' complaint! My main point is that if you're not posting and getting feedback, your conception of the community is completely untested conjecture.
- mdg 17y agooh cool, so I can tell my friends about OSS and suddenly I am a contributer to OSS!
- zaphar 17y agoI know your probably being sarcastic but I would argue that evangelizing OSS is one way of contributing.
- dkimball 17y agoI think the counterpart to telling your friends about a news service would be getting them to change operating systems and start contributing patches to the new one: both the "userbase" and the "development" of a submission-driven news site are functions of the number (and activity level, and, certainly, quality) of its users.
- branden 17y agoYou don't need to contribute to HN in order to appreciate what makes it special - the focus of submissions and quality of comments. Petewailes seems to understand this, so I see no reason to raise some silly "rule" (a general guideline, really) as an excuse to ignore the point he's trying to make. If you disagree with something he said, how about you say so and explain why. Pretend I said it, if that'll help.
- robg 17y agoThe point he's trying to make is almost as old as HN itself. That's why the guideline is stated the way it is (from the founder no less). Instead of these metadiscussions it's much more valuable (but difficult) to show exactly how the community is changing, not simply claiming (or fearing) that it is. An analysis of those supposed changes would be informative and interesting.
- eru 17y agoIf you can underline it with data, I'd read it.