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i mostly lurk HN, and don't post unless i feel like my contribution is useful in some way. from my perspective, it's relieving to see that the number of users

i mostly lurk HN, and don't post unless i feel like my contribution is useful in some way. from my perspective, it's relieving to see that the number of users has remained mostly constant in recent years. of course it's selfish to think in this way, but almost no "social media" or UGC-based platform that i've used has actually become better or more useful to me as it became (much) larger. this kind of fast growth in users (beyond some size) often leads to a shift in the culture that made preexisting users participate in the first place, leading to a loss in overall quality of the platform as a whole. if the growth is gradual enough, then new users eventually figure out how to fit into the culture or leave. i guess i've said nothing that isn't obvious to people who have used a computer before, basically "yay no eternal september for HN yet", but i digress.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
Interesting point. I was watching The Synanon Fix on HBO, this weekend, and towards the end of the first episode, we see the original addicts, being replaced by the more lucrative "lifestylers," and I suspect that the next episodes will be downhill, from here. The app I just wrote and released, is picking up steam, but slowly. That's deliberate. We're not doing any promotion, and it's giving us a chance to make course corrections. By the time people start piling in (and they will, but it will never be more than a rounding error to many social media apps), I think it will be in extremely good shape.
Karrot_Kream 2y ago
Growth assumes that older posters continue to post, which both according to TFA and my own analysis isn't true. In my own analysis, comments in a thread have a recent-user bias and roughly 30-40% of an article's comments will come from the last 3-4 years of users. I found this to hold true for many large threads over the past 5 years, though I haven't yet exhaustively demonstrated this yet simply because I don't do HN analysis that often. What that means practically is that the folks who post on this site are constantly changing. I also, generally, find that the most contentious threads on this site tend to have a relatively stronger recency bias among its posters. By that regard, eternal September is ever present: the posts on this site weigh toward recent posters. I'd be curious to see if that effect can be explained by throwaways and sock puppet posters but I'm not sure of any reliable way to identify those especially as historic karma counts aren't kept for users. While I have more robust models that work a lot better, a very simple method I've found is that the more recent the upper percentiles of posters are on a thread, the less I will like it: to me Eternal September is here. Of course my user here is ancient from 2009. The numbers just quantify that there's been a change in audience since I joined, a wholly unsurprising fact.
- username923409 2y ago
  i did read the article but didn't come to the conclusion that "Eternal September" is here. although i don't argue that the quality of posts has gone up recently, i do believe that many of the new users of 2022/2023 have become - or will become - the high quality posters that attracted them here initially. as i said in the first post, i think this is true because there hasn't been an unprecedented spike in new users. basically, quality(new user + time) = quality(old user), as long as the proportion of new users/old users remains small. of course it's subjective as to where you put this value though. i just think it hasn't been reached yet here.
  - Karrot_Kream 2y ago
    What "Eternal September" means to anyone is different. What I assert based on data (simply map the comments in to the join date of their authors and make a distribution) is that most large threads with a lot of discussion on this site have a recency bias: newly joined users post a disproportionate amount on the website. At any given time, any given thread will be more heavily commented on by newer users. Given that observation, Eternal September is largely personal: do you still value the content on the site given that recent posters create more of it. For me the answer, as borne our in data, is no. I find from ~ 2016 a change in the types of discussions on the site and find that the newer the poster distribution skews from that time period onward the less interesting the discussion becomes to me. That's really all. I'm glad that you still find value in the site but that makes sense: you're a newer user. Of course this may be your second or even nth account in which case I'm obviously wrong, but what I can be certain about is myself and my own preferences, and even those change over time.
    - username923409 2y ago
      this is my first account, and i understand your perspective. i did sometimes come to HN from 2015 onwards, but not enough to really get a feel for the level of content and conversation that happened. 2015 is still much later than you first started using it, so i can see how your older first impressions of this site led you to the conclusion that present-day HN is a shadow of its former self. so i think we agree on everything, except that you're comparing pre-2016 to now, vs. me comparing 2020 to now, which leads to the opposite conclusions. excuse me for being a part of the less interesting era of posters ;-)

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

Interesting point. I was watching The Synanon Fix on HBO, this weekend, and towards the end of the first episode, we see the original addicts, being replaced by the more lucrative "lifestylers," and I suspect that the next episodes will be downhill, from here. The app I just wrote and released, is picking up steam, but slowly. That's deliberate. We're not doing any promotion, and it's giving us a chance to make course corrections. By the time people start piling in (and they will, but it will never be more than a rounding error to many social media apps), I think it will be in extremely good shape.

Karrot_Kream 2y ago

Growth assumes that older posters continue to post, which both according to TFA and my own analysis isn't true. In my own analysis, comments in a thread have a recent-user bias and roughly 30-40% of an article's comments will come from the last 3-4 years of users. I found this to hold true for many large threads over the past 5 years, though I haven't yet exhaustively demonstrated this yet simply because I don't do HN analysis that often. What that means practically is that the folks who post on this site are constantly changing. I also, generally, find that the most contentious threads on this site tend to have a relatively stronger recency bias among its posters. By that regard, eternal September is ever present: the posts on this site weigh toward recent posters. I'd be curious to see if that effect can be explained by throwaways and sock puppet posters but I'm not sure of any reliable way to identify those especially as historic karma counts aren't kept for users. While I have more robust models that work a lot better, a very simple method I've found is that the more recent the upper percentiles of posters are on a thread, the less I will like it: to me Eternal September is here. Of course my user here is ancient from 2009. The numbers just quantify that there's been a change in audience since I joined, a wholly unsurprising fact.

username923409 2y ago
i did read the article but didn't come to the conclusion that "Eternal September" is here. although i don't argue that the quality of posts has gone up recently, i do believe that many of the new users of 2022/2023 have become - or will become - the high quality posters that attracted them here initially. as i said in the first post, i think this is true because there hasn't been an unprecedented spike in new users. basically, quality(new user + time) = quality(old user), as long as the proportion of new users/old users remains small. of course it's subjective as to where you put this value though. i just think it hasn't been reached yet here.
- Karrot_Kream 2y ago
  What "Eternal September" means to anyone is different. What I assert based on data (simply map the comments in to the join date of their authors and make a distribution) is that most large threads with a lot of discussion on this site have a recency bias: newly joined users post a disproportionate amount on the website. At any given time, any given thread will be more heavily commented on by newer users. Given that observation, Eternal September is largely personal: do you still value the content on the site given that recent posters create more of it. For me the answer, as borne our in data, is no. I find from ~ 2016 a change in the types of discussions on the site and find that the newer the poster distribution skews from that time period onward the less interesting the discussion becomes to me. That's really all. I'm glad that you still find value in the site but that makes sense: you're a newer user. Of course this may be your second or even nth account in which case I'm obviously wrong, but what I can be certain about is myself and my own preferences, and even those change over time.
  - username923409 2y ago
    this is my first account, and i understand your perspective. i did sometimes come to HN from 2015 onwards, but not enough to really get a feel for the level of content and conversation that happened. 2015 is still much later than you first started using it, so i can see how your older first impressions of this site led you to the conclusion that present-day HN is a shadow of its former self. so i think we agree on everything, except that you're comparing pre-2016 to now, vs. me comparing 2020 to now, which leads to the opposite conclusions. excuse me for being a part of the less interesting era of posters ;-)