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Even if I accepted the left side of your first graph, the right side tells me that intelligence continues to fall monotonically during the final burnout of the
by Vivtek 16y ago
Even if I accepted the left side of your first graph, the right side tells me that intelligence continues to fall monotonically during the final burnout of the community. It's just as likely that average intelligence would start to rise again (especially given the basic quality of the archives of the community) and so you'd see a damped oscillation finding some equilibrium.
And in fact, I'd argue that equilibrium has been reached, and is high, here at HNN, as well as at other fora here and there (Making Light being a great example, or PerlMonks.org). There are, in fact, smart communities that don't get overwhelmed.
- mquander 16y agoI disagree; by the poster's definition, HN failed. It started out discussing technical items and startups, lasted for a while, and the topic has been completely diluted to "anything at all which is either new or interesting." In the words of the post, it has "pivoted to an off-topic focus." PerlMonks is a good example, though. I agree that the presumed link in the post between topicality and "intelligence" is a strained one.
- jasonkester 16y agoAh, but the smart people are the ones who leave first. Go check out reddit.com/r/programming these days and see if you can find any of the smart people who were around back when it was still programming.reddit.com. It'll happen here, if it hasn't already. People are starting spinoffs every few weeks, and it's only a matter of time before one of them gets some traction. One of them might have already, for all we know, since they certainly won't tell us about it here.