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> Interesting that even at the time he was completely wrong. No, I agree with Malda in general that people don't scale. A population larger that Dunbar's Numbe

> Interesting that even at the time he was completely wrong. No, I agree with Malda in general that people don't scale. A population larger that Dunbar's Number[1] acquires too much management scaffolding to retain Edenic charm. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number

layer8 3y ago
Didn’t Edenic charm already prove to fail at three (counting the snake)? ;)
HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
I think the problem is that when a user base is small it tends to attract specialists who have sought out that content, and who's contributions make it useful/interesting to others. If the site becomes successful and more mainstream, then it will attract more and more non-specialists - the peanut gallery who have an opinion on everything and expertise on nothing. I have a 5-digit slashdot user id, and saw this play out over there. In the early days it was great, and (believe it nor not) highly technical - lots of subject matter experts in the comments. If you look at slashdot today it has become entirely useless. The same thing played out at Reddit on /r/machinelearning - it used to be frequented by researchers and experts, but as ML/AI became popular the crowds moved in and now that too is useless. I joined Hacker News in 2017, so have no idea how it was before then, but it doesn't seem to have changed much in that timespan, still attracting a mostly technical and intelligent crowd, at least if one ignores the lower rated comments.
- Karrot_Kream 3y ago
  You can look at older HN threads since they're all still up. There's definitely been a "mean reversion" here as well, but it seems to vary per topic. I think the threads that have suffered the most are the ones about #dramaoftheweek which as you say tends to attract folks with opinions on everything and experience in nothing.

layer8 3y ago

Didn’t Edenic charm already prove to fail at three (counting the snake)? ;)

HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago

I think the problem is that when a user base is small it tends to attract specialists who have sought out that content, and who's contributions make it useful/interesting to others. If the site becomes successful and more mainstream, then it will attract more and more non-specialists - the peanut gallery who have an opinion on everything and expertise on nothing. I have a 5-digit slashdot user id, and saw this play out over there. In the early days it was great, and (believe it nor not) highly technical - lots of subject matter experts in the comments. If you look at slashdot today it has become entirely useless. The same thing played out at Reddit on /r/machinelearning - it used to be frequented by researchers and experts, but as ML/AI became popular the crowds moved in and now that too is useless. I joined Hacker News in 2017, so have no idea how it was before then, but it doesn't seem to have changed much in that timespan, still attracting a mostly technical and intelligent crowd, at least if one ignores the lower rated comments.

Karrot_Kream 3y ago
You can look at older HN threads since they're all still up. There's definitely been a "mean reversion" here as well, but it seems to vary per topic. I think the threads that have suffered the most are the ones about #dramaoftheweek which as you say tends to attract folks with opinions on everything and experience in nothing.