I should have mentioned: yes, the community is key. However the technology and the community together create the system. If the technology fails to support the

I should have mentioned: yes, the community is key. However the technology and the community together create the system. If the technology fails to support the community norms then the makeup of the community itself will shift. Once the elves start leaving middle-earth, it's difficult to recover. Twitter is a little different because of its scale and the nature of its social graph. HN is a big room where everyone hears everyone else, Twitter is a giant switchboard where you plug in to choose your own mix. Reddit seems to be something else, but I don't participate there so I don't know much. Absolutely you are right that HN has a more mature mix of participants, but how does that situation continue? It cannot be solely by the direct efforts of the admins, however heroic, because the site is already too big for that. The technical Magic has to complement the characteristics of the community.