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I find this idea of trying to maintain a certain "elite" quality quite silly. This sort of growth is a natural phenomenon that happens to valuable sites like HN
by eoghan 14y ago
I find this idea of trying to maintain a certain "elite" quality quite silly. This sort of growth is a natural phenomenon that happens to valuable sites like HN.
Trying to prevent growth in a certain area (i.e. the less awesome people who you like here) will prevent growth in all areas—e.g. HN buttons could also promote HN to great but new hackers. If you stop these guys from getting involved, you'll cut off the lifeblood of a community whose participants are moving very quickly past the phase where they're excited to be involved in such a community—people get successful, busy, jaded, etc. and not forever passionate enough to bother doing the things that HN needs: reading, commenting, voting. You need new guys to replace the old guys, and both can learn from each other.
If HN is locked down to a degree that its natural growth is stunted, it will die, and probably deservedly so.
- tptacek 14y agoThe lifeblood of this community depends on... embedded "like" buttons?
- Killswitch 14y agoNo, but the lifeblood of this community depends on new hackers who'd fit in but aren't here. It'll be a huge circlejerk if no new users are coming down the pipe to bring freshness to the community.
- eoghan 14y agoRead my comment again.
- sycr 14y ago> You'll cut off the lifeblood of a community whose participants are moving very quickly past the phase where they're excited to be involved in such a community—people get successful, busy, jaded, etc. I was about to respond to this with something to the effect of: "What have you observed that suggests in any way that the community is moving on?" Then I looked at your credentials. It seems as though the kind of person you're describing as having moved on/become far too busy/etc is, well, you. So it's possible that you might be conflating your own experience with the group's as a whole. Hacker News appears to me to be growing at quite a pace - independently of any such buttons or notions of elitism. In fact, I think the notion that it's growing precisely because of the elitism of quality, is worth considering. (P.S. Love your work by the way - it's got such a superb sense of design.)
- eoghan 14y agoThanks for your kind words. I don't consider myself one of these people. I love reading the content I find through HN and participating in the discussions from time to time. I really don't want to see it die due to the misplaced efforts to prevent the same.