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Thank goodness we killed off all of those troublesome small forums and communities that weren't full of advertising or roaming psychopaths, in favor of the sple

Thank goodness we killed off all of those troublesome small forums and communities that weren't full of advertising or roaming psychopaths, in favor of the splendid experience offered by the likes of Twitter and Facebook. Toooootally worth it. /s I hope that people have learned a simple fact: megacommunities can't be effectively moderated, a place like HN probably represents the upper end of how many active users a site can tolerate and still be worth visiting. A place like Reddit is more or less just an open sewer by comparison, and it's hard to imagine a way to change that at scale. Small communities share aims and tastes, individuals can stand out and be dealt with if needed, and an affordable amount of human moderation can handle spam and bad actors. Twitter, FB, Reddit and all of those giants are too big to work, and that's why they're full of such miserable people shouting at each other.

crop_rotation 3y ago
Small communities are nice, yes, but how do you keep them small. A lot of subreddits start small, are very nice places, and then grow big and lose all that. HN is an exception, not just because of extremely good moderation, small size, text only, clear rules and strong encouragement of assuming good faith. There is no clear way to translate it to other communities. e.g Quora when it was very small was a very good website to visit. The more it grew the more it became useless to the point that I don't find anything on it worth visiting right now.
- EA-3167 3y ago
  I think the point is that being a "site for talking about everything" doesn't work. Ever. HN is restricted by what it is, even more than who runs it; a lot of the content here has no appeal to people outside of the tech world. The sort of people here tend to prefer rigor and statistics to emotional appeals and bloviating, and that creates a "house style" like old forums used to have. It's self-limiting, because there are only so many people who are, to be blunt, this nerdy in this particular way. To take the Reddit example a sub like r/Labrats is self-contained and self-sustaining in the same way! There are only so many people with the life experiences in labs, wet or dry, and so many people who will get the humor and struggles of those communities. By contrast a sub like r/Worldnews is so vague and broad that it attracts tens of millions of people to talk about just about anything at all. Quora falls into that latter category, "Ask me anything" in essence. I'm essentially calling for a return to niches based on limited shared interests or circumstances, because they come with their own ability to restrict growth and filter out "clots".

crop_rotation 3y ago

Small communities are nice, yes, but how do you keep them small. A lot of subreddits start small, are very nice places, and then grow big and lose all that. HN is an exception, not just because of extremely good moderation, small size, text only, clear rules and strong encouragement of assuming good faith. There is no clear way to translate it to other communities. e.g Quora when it was very small was a very good website to visit. The more it grew the more it became useless to the point that I don't find anything on it worth visiting right now.

EA-3167 3y ago
I think the point is that being a "site for talking about everything" doesn't work. Ever. HN is restricted by what it is, even more than who runs it; a lot of the content here has no appeal to people outside of the tech world. The sort of people here tend to prefer rigor and statistics to emotional appeals and bloviating, and that creates a "house style" like old forums used to have. It's self-limiting, because there are only so many people who are, to be blunt, this nerdy in this particular way. To take the Reddit example a sub like r/Labrats is self-contained and self-sustaining in the same way! There are only so many people with the life experiences in labs, wet or dry, and so many people who will get the humor and struggles of those communities. By contrast a sub like r/Worldnews is so vague and broad that it attracts tens of millions of people to talk about just about anything at all. Quora falls into that latter category, "Ask me anything" in essence. I'm essentially calling for a return to niches based on limited shared interests or circumstances, because they come with their own ability to restrict growth and filter out "clots".