4 ms·

"Traditional methods for protecting community from..scale..are now manifestly unfeasible"

68 points by Jebdm 18y ago

vtaeed 18y ago
Counter intuitive principles and highly thought provoking ideas make it a great, although long, read. The application of the conclusions in this article would be interesting to behold and analyze. Author, rightly or wrongly, holds some strong opinions against Clay Shirky's ideas.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
Alex3917 18y ago
I love how K5 articles have their own writing style. It's a shame the community is dead, because I genuinely miss the writing that came out of there, with its own unique rhythm and set of tropes.
- alecco 18y ago
  Indeed. It was like a writer's creativity oracle: * The masterful series: Tales of the Hive. * The insightful whistleblower: How IBM Conned My Execs Out Of Millions. * And even the (insane) writer's self-inflicting goatse-style: An Introduction to Anal Masturbation. Hive series: Birth of a Package http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/18/203511/484 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/18/203511/484 Blood, Sweat, and Honey http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/9/13/212244/867 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/9/13/212244/867 Lions at the Gate http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/7/16/222933/069 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/7/16/222933/069 (More at http://www.voiceofthehive.com/ http://www.voiceofthehive.com/) IBM http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/27/95759/4240 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/27/95759/4240 (Can't find the link to the article about the writer's struggle to survive the legal attack from IBM.) The goatse http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2007/7/23/204244/127 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2007/7/23/204244/127
- jwilliams 18y ago
  Yeah same - at one stage they were an anti-thesis (or counterpoint at least) to the seemingly unstoppable slashdot.
nwinter 18y ago
Meta-discussion blending with topical discussion here, I'd be interested to know what the moderation burden on HN is. HN has maintained quality up to this scale and may be able to prevent additional growth, but what's the cost?
- brandnewlow 18y ago
  PG gives a lot of credit to the editors for keeping HN clean. But let's be honest, people behave here because they don't want to burn their bridge with PG. He's said himself that he created HN in part to get a taste of what YCombinator applicants are like before they apply. This whole site is one big, ongoing public job interview. That's a big part of what keeps people in line.
  - alecco 18y ago
    I think it's growing past that. :)
  - buss 18y ago
    I've always felt the same about HN. I've behaved a particular way on HN, though not much different than I behave elsewhere. My suspicion is that most people on HN also severely limit what and how much they say because they're worried about pg getting a negative image of them. This does help keep the community on topic and very civil, so maybe that's ok.
  - weaksauce 18y ago
    I don't think that that is quite accurate. I doubt that the majority of people here are here for the ycombinator seed money. I come here because it is the best aggregation of topics that are interesting to my tastes. Will I apply for ycombinator seed money? Probably not.
    - brandnewlow 18y ago
      This is probably true, though it's impossible to prove without data. My point was that there's an extra incentive for good behavior here that you don't find at many other online communities. If you kick butt on HN, assemble a team that follows PG's rules and pitch him a great idea for a startup, he might give you $15k and open a lot of doors for you. That setup just doesn't exist on many other community sites, perhaps any, and I think it must be taken into account when we marvel at how great this place is.
taw 18y ago
They're wrong that 4chan's /b/ suffers from newfag infestation. /b/ suffers from having more traffic than the system can handle - a thread can only stay alive if it's bumped every minute, and this is only possible when it becomes a memefest, intelligent discussion threads just don't have this volume. Other boards have as many newfags, and none of them sucks as much as /b/.
jibiki 18y ago
There's a lot to be said for this theory if you look at the real world, where anonymous interactions play out well 90+% of the time (selon anecdotal experience.)
- teej 18y ago
  I disagree. The anchoring point of this article is rooted in the multiple-identity problem in online communities. Shirky's idea is to limit scale and embrace identities, while this article's counter is to deemphasize identities and disincentivize secondary accounts. In other words, this whole article is about tackling the ONE issue that real-world interactions don't have.
fbailey 18y ago
on a practical side what's happening at the moment with facebook and twitter is destroying the classical online communities and replacing them with your personal social recommendation network. That works quite well for people who already have a wide network and a lot of people to follow, but I think it's a bit sad for the kid who wants to learn and just starts...

68 points by Jebdm 18y ago

Counter intuitive principles and highly thought provoking ideas make it a great, although long, read. The application of the conclusions in this article would be interesting to behold and analyze. Author, rightly or wrongly, holds some strong opinions against Clay Shirky's ideas.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]

Alex3917 18y ago

I love how K5 articles have their own writing style. It's a shame the community is dead, because I genuinely miss the writing that came out of there, with its own unique rhythm and set of tropes.

alecco 18y ago
Indeed. It was like a writer's creativity oracle: * The masterful series: Tales of the Hive. * The insightful whistleblower: How IBM Conned My Execs Out Of Millions. * And even the (insane) writer's self-inflicting goatse-style: An Introduction to Anal Masturbation. Hive series: Birth of a Package http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/18/203511/484 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/18/203511/484 Blood, Sweat, and Honey http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/9/13/212244/867 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/9/13/212244/867 Lions at the Gate http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/7/16/222933/069 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/7/16/222933/069 (More at http://www.voiceofthehive.com/ http://www.voiceofthehive.com/) IBM http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/27/95759/4240 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/27/95759/4240 (Can't find the link to the article about the writer's struggle to survive the legal attack from IBM.) The goatse http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2007/7/23/204244/127 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2007/7/23/204244/127
jwilliams 18y ago
Yeah same - at one stage they were an anti-thesis (or counterpoint at least) to the seemingly unstoppable slashdot.

nwinter 18y ago

Meta-discussion blending with topical discussion here, I'd be interested to know what the moderation burden on HN is. HN has maintained quality up to this scale and may be able to prevent additional growth, but what's the cost?

brandnewlow 18y ago
PG gives a lot of credit to the editors for keeping HN clean. But let's be honest, people behave here because they don't want to burn their bridge with PG. He's said himself that he created HN in part to get a taste of what YCombinator applicants are like before they apply. This whole site is one big, ongoing public job interview. That's a big part of what keeps people in line.
- alecco 18y ago
  I think it's growing past that. :)
- buss 18y ago
  I've always felt the same about HN. I've behaved a particular way on HN, though not much different than I behave elsewhere. My suspicion is that most people on HN also severely limit what and how much they say because they're worried about pg getting a negative image of them. This does help keep the community on topic and very civil, so maybe that's ok.
- weaksauce 18y ago
  I don't think that that is quite accurate. I doubt that the majority of people here are here for the ycombinator seed money. I come here because it is the best aggregation of topics that are interesting to my tastes. Will I apply for ycombinator seed money? Probably not.
  - brandnewlow 18y ago
    This is probably true, though it's impossible to prove without data. My point was that there's an extra incentive for good behavior here that you don't find at many other online communities. If you kick butt on HN, assemble a team that follows PG's rules and pitch him a great idea for a startup, he might give you $15k and open a lot of doors for you. That setup just doesn't exist on many other community sites, perhaps any, and I think it must be taken into account when we marvel at how great this place is.

taw 18y ago

They're wrong that 4chan's /b/ suffers from newfag infestation. /b/ suffers from having more traffic than the system can handle - a thread can only stay alive if it's bumped every minute, and this is only possible when it becomes a memefest, intelligent discussion threads just don't have this volume. Other boards have as many newfags, and none of them sucks as much as /b/.

jibiki 18y ago

There's a lot to be said for this theory if you look at the real world, where anonymous interactions play out well 90+% of the time (selon anecdotal experience.)

teej 18y ago
I disagree. The anchoring point of this article is rooted in the multiple-identity problem in online communities. Shirky's idea is to limit scale and embrace identities, while this article's counter is to deemphasize identities and disincentivize secondary accounts. In other words, this whole article is about tackling the ONE issue that real-world interactions don't have.

fbailey 18y ago

on a practical side what's happening at the moment with facebook and twitter is destroying the classical online communities and replacing them with your personal social recommendation network. That works quite well for people who already have a wide network and a lot of people to follow, but I think it's a bit sad for the kid who wants to learn and just starts...