3 ms·

> If you took away the community entirely, would it be any less useful? My suspicion is that the answer is yes. You'd have to have actual data to be sure, but

> If you took away the community entirely, would it be any less useful? My suspicion is that the answer is yes. You'd have to have actual data to be sure, but based on my experience with internet communities, there are probably a small number of people who bring in the vast majority of the value (i.e. answer the most questions, clean up/flag/categorize questions and answers). Those people spend a lot of time on the site and the community aspect (relationships, reputation, etc) is a big part of what motivates them to consistently return and add value.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
I concur. You can see the same thing on HN, if you look closely. For a new or infrequent user, all comment threads are randos talking to other randos. For a frequent commenter who's been here for a while now, it's a community with a lot of transient commenters, but also a lot of regulars, who recognize each other's handles and sometimes carry discussions across time and multiple comment threads - and it's a big part of the value of this place. If HN was to suddenly replace all usernames with their SHA-1 hashes, being here would get much less interesting.
- scarface74 7y ago
  I’ve been here for four or five years, and I only recognize two or three people by their username. I don’t pay attention to the people - only the comments.
  - solidasparagus 7y ago
    Compared to other communities, HN is particularly minimalistic when it comes to associating posts with authors.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    I pay attention to comments first, too, but I can't help but remember the handles - especially if I had a back-and-forth with someone over the course of a day, and had to verify that I'm still replying to the same commenter. Like, I recognize your handle, I think we've been replying to each other on some thread some weeks ago. (Then again, maybe I'm projecting, assuming more community in this place than there really is. I'm a HN addict after all.)
  - LocalH 7y ago
    I've been here for just under three years, and I'm in the same boat, except I don't really even have but one username that I'm specifically familiar with due to HN (and that'd be dang). I've recognized familiar usernames from other places (such as when byuu occasionally shows up to talk shop about emulation), but that's a bit different. I honestly think that's one of HN's strengths. Too often, in general discourse, who is talking becomes as important, if not more important, than what is being said. I feel that the lack of prominence of a poster/commenter's name is a plus - it invites the reader to focus on the message being written, rather than the source.
- drusepth 7y ago
  I'd actually argue that that that context-heavy communication (carrying discussions across time and multiple comment threads) often makes the conversation worse from the point of view of those transient commenters (which, I'd guess, is a majority of HN? You probably know better than me on that, though). I'd classify myself as a transient commenter here since I don't recognize names even though I've been on HN since 2011. I admit it probably makes the site more enjoyable for those regulars, though, and can sometimes also generate "good" conversation that wouldn't otherwise exist that is beneficial to transient commenters also. I actually spent a long time lobbying Quora to make content anonymous by default for exactly this reason. It's really frustrating when I come into a comment thread and don't understand some context outside of what's actually being said. This isn't nearly as much of a problem on HN than it is on Quora (or even SE), but if I ask an intentionally-generic question I don't want people looking at who asked it and needlessly scoping their answers to the kind of answers they think I want. I also understand there are some psychological benefits to the opposite though (people wanting to know more about who asked a question to put a face to who they think they're helping), but IMO what little benefit it offers the OP dwarfs potentially unfortunate specificity for anyone else with that question in the future that might put them in a weird mix of "duplicate question" and "oh, but this one little thing is different for me".
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    To my experience, "context-heavy communication" is rather subtle on HN, more of an inside joke if anything. I can't think of a case where a comment would seem off-topic if read by a transient commenter; it's just that over time, you start recognizing other regulars and their views on some topics, and sometimes you may remark on it. Like, I recall participating in comment threads that branched off into "I recall you saying X on a related thread some time ago; could you elaborate on that?" somewhere deep in the discussion. Or, I know to not reply about topic Y to a particular commenter, because we've been through a long discussion about it some time ago, and essentially agreed to disagree. Or, someone will joke that it's time to submit and upvote some Erlang stuff to HN, and the joke mysteriously stays upvoted because, well, it's an inside joke.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

I concur. You can see the same thing on HN, if you look closely. For a new or infrequent user, all comment threads are randos talking to other randos. For a frequent commenter who's been here for a while now, it's a community with a lot of transient commenters, but also a lot of regulars, who recognize each other's handles and sometimes carry discussions across time and multiple comment threads - and it's a big part of the value of this place. If HN was to suddenly replace all usernames with their SHA-1 hashes, being here would get much less interesting.

scarface74 7y ago
I’ve been here for four or five years, and I only recognize two or three people by their username. I don’t pay attention to the people - only the comments.
- solidasparagus 7y ago
  Compared to other communities, HN is particularly minimalistic when it comes to associating posts with authors.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  I pay attention to comments first, too, but I can't help but remember the handles - especially if I had a back-and-forth with someone over the course of a day, and had to verify that I'm still replying to the same commenter. Like, I recognize your handle, I think we've been replying to each other on some thread some weeks ago. (Then again, maybe I'm projecting, assuming more community in this place than there really is. I'm a HN addict after all.)
- LocalH 7y ago
  I've been here for just under three years, and I'm in the same boat, except I don't really even have but one username that I'm specifically familiar with due to HN (and that'd be dang). I've recognized familiar usernames from other places (such as when byuu occasionally shows up to talk shop about emulation), but that's a bit different. I honestly think that's one of HN's strengths. Too often, in general discourse, who is talking becomes as important, if not more important, than what is being said. I feel that the lack of prominence of a poster/commenter's name is a plus - it invites the reader to focus on the message being written, rather than the source.
drusepth 7y ago
I'd actually argue that that that context-heavy communication (carrying discussions across time and multiple comment threads) often makes the conversation worse from the point of view of those transient commenters (which, I'd guess, is a majority of HN? You probably know better than me on that, though). I'd classify myself as a transient commenter here since I don't recognize names even though I've been on HN since 2011. I admit it probably makes the site more enjoyable for those regulars, though, and can sometimes also generate "good" conversation that wouldn't otherwise exist that is beneficial to transient commenters also. I actually spent a long time lobbying Quora to make content anonymous by default for exactly this reason. It's really frustrating when I come into a comment thread and don't understand some context outside of what's actually being said. This isn't nearly as much of a problem on HN than it is on Quora (or even SE), but if I ask an intentionally-generic question I don't want people looking at who asked it and needlessly scoping their answers to the kind of answers they think I want. I also understand there are some psychological benefits to the opposite though (people wanting to know more about who asked a question to put a face to who they think they're helping), but IMO what little benefit it offers the OP dwarfs potentially unfortunate specificity for anyone else with that question in the future that might put them in a weird mix of "duplicate question" and "oh, but this one little thing is different for me".
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  To my experience, "context-heavy communication" is rather subtle on HN, more of an inside joke if anything. I can't think of a case where a comment would seem off-topic if read by a transient commenter; it's just that over time, you start recognizing other regulars and their views on some topics, and sometimes you may remark on it. Like, I recall participating in comment threads that branched off into "I recall you saying X on a related thread some time ago; could you elaborate on that?" somewhere deep in the discussion. Or, I know to not reply about topic Y to a particular commenter, because we've been through a long discussion about it some time ago, and essentially agreed to disagree. Or, someone will joke that it's time to submit and upvote some Erlang stuff to HN, and the joke mysteriously stays upvoted because, well, it's an inside joke.