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The best niche communities on the internet would get worse if attention was drawn to them. They're good because they're hard to find and membership is self sele

by awirth 8y ago

The best niche communities on the internet would get worse if attention was drawn to them. They're good because they're hard to find and membership is self selecting and/or invite-only. This is true, as far as I can tell, for communities on nearly any topic/subject matter.

Torwald 8y ago
The idea behind HN is to prove your assertions wrong. I would say at least until now it is working well.
- awirth 8y ago
  If you're suggesting hacker news is a "niche" community, then we're likely talking about different scales of niche-ness. HN has a few orders of magnitude higher traffic and larger target audience than the types of communities I had in mind.
foobarchu 8y ago
I disagree. The best niche communities are good because they are niche, not because they're hard to find. It's the focus and passion of the members that makes them what they are, and the ultra-niche nature of those communities is what ensures that people who aren't actually interested will stay away. If it's impossible to find outside of word of mouth with acquantainces, then the purpose of the internet has been defeated. Why have the ability to connect all of these people with a common interest if you're going to refuse to let serendipity happen?
- awirth 8y ago
  I said "hard to find" not "impossible to find". Start with being in the subreddit or relevant other high-traffic high-SEO community for the subject, and see what other places the good members are discussing (often a discord, IRC channel, Slack, forum or similar). Recurse a few times, and each time you do you'll get a higher signal-to-noise ratio, higher expertise, lower abuse/garbage behavior, etc If you just link random people directly, you'll inevitably get some folks that can't read the atmosphere and just generally walk all over the flowerbeds without realizing what they're doing. AKA they need to "lurk moar"
  - lostdog 8y ago
    Following the SEO gradient downwards is a great way to find the best parts of the internet.

by awirth 8y ago

Torwald 8y ago

The idea behind HN is to prove your assertions wrong. I would say at least until now it is working well.

awirth 8y ago
If you're suggesting hacker news is a "niche" community, then we're likely talking about different scales of niche-ness. HN has a few orders of magnitude higher traffic and larger target audience than the types of communities I had in mind.

foobarchu 8y ago

I disagree. The best niche communities are good because they are niche, not because they're hard to find. It's the focus and passion of the members that makes them what they are, and the ultra-niche nature of those communities is what ensures that people who aren't actually interested will stay away. If it's impossible to find outside of word of mouth with acquantainces, then the purpose of the internet has been defeated. Why have the ability to connect all of these people with a common interest if you're going to refuse to let serendipity happen?

awirth 8y ago
I said "hard to find" not "impossible to find". Start with being in the subreddit or relevant other high-traffic high-SEO community for the subject, and see what other places the good members are discussing (often a discord, IRC channel, Slack, forum or similar). Recurse a few times, and each time you do you'll get a higher signal-to-noise ratio, higher expertise, lower abuse/garbage behavior, etc If you just link random people directly, you'll inevitably get some folks that can't read the atmosphere and just generally walk all over the flowerbeds without realizing what they're doing. AKA they need to "lurk moar"
- lostdog 8y ago
  Following the SEO gradient downwards is a great way to find the best parts of the internet.