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Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

#31

Post by pageman »

samwise wrote: post #30
pg wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the real TechCrunch. I don't mind. Traffic had been growing pretty constantly at about 5x per year anway, so we'd have had to deal with this problem eventually.

I find it odd that you even consider it's a problem. It's odd to hear a founder consider a site growing a problem. The metrics to handle the "problem" should have been addressed during the conception stage of the site. I would be surprised if simple administration could fix the trend.

exactly.

of course Hacker News will break news EARLIER than TechCrunch so it would be better for "techcrunch" for this site to go underground - then "techcrunch" can break the news :P

Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

#33

Post by stcredzero »

murrayh wrote: post #12

Security by obscurity is not really security at all. Perhaps the TechCrunch exposure has hurt the site in the short term, but if Hacker News can get through these growing pains it will be presumably better off in the long run. The problem as I see it is not the size of the community but the concentration of thinkers. It doesn't really matter what articles make it to the front page; if the comments start filling up wi…

Someone should implement Randall Munroe's proposal, so that repetitive and cliche phrases are automatically "demoted" -- which would mean that they appear on the bottom -- with the penalty getting exponentially worse, so it starts out as a mild chiding at first, then escalates.

EDIT: Come to think of it, I knew this crazy guy about 10 years ago. He was so gung-ho about being "truly alive" that he tried his damnedest to never say the same 4 words twice. This made it impossible for him to give driving directions!

Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

#34

Post by stcredzero »

SwellJoe wrote: post #8

It'll grow regardless. And, the kind of people that will actually stick around tend to be the kind of people we want to be here. The rest will wander off...back to digg, over to reddit, whatever. Thanks for asking, though. Now it's pg's job to figure out how to programmatically maintain the high quality of results. I still want one down-vote per week for stories...sometimes a story shows up that makes me feel ill to…

Down voting is too easy to abuse. Reddit was being gamed in this way -- certain users were down-voting everything, which made being a new poster starting out an almost automatic karma penalty of a few points. They've made the down-vote penalty milder because of this.

Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

#36

Post by e03179 »

The REDDIT.com community is saying the same thing now. They claim that their website is now polluted and that the quality has gone down.

BTW: I found this community via TechCrunch last week and like what I see. Still unsure that I'll fit in with you guys although I like the content.

Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

#37

Post by petercooper »

When communities get too big, even if they spoil, it's not a bad thing. It's a good thing because people are encouraged to then start their own communities.

Digg -> Reddit -> Hacker News -> .. next thing ..

It's this progression that keeps new and interesting sites coming along. If it hadn't happened, we'd all still be using Digg.

Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

#38

Post by chengmi »

samwise wrote: post #30
pg wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the real TechCrunch. I don't mind. Traffic had been growing pretty constantly at about 5x per year anway, so we'd have had to deal with this problem eventually.

I find it odd that you even consider it's a problem. It's odd to hear a founder consider a site growing a problem. The metrics to handle the "problem" should have been addressed during the conception stage of the site. I would be surprised if simple administration could fix the trend.

I think of social websites as country clubs. The club is fun and good when you know everyone's name and you're able to form deeper relationships with people. Country clubs are not fun when it's filled with tourists who aren't interested in contributing to the club.

Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

#39

Post by greyman »

>> Do you guys think I'm hurting the site, not helping?

No, I don't think so. The community pollution is a separate peril, which should be continuously taken care of by improving the moderation system and/or using some form of editorial control. If this site will continue to improve, the increased traffic is inevitable.

Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

#40

Post by mflinsch »

The question seems to center around the universal problem of mediocrity through popularity. It's not unique to the 'net. In the early 80s a flood of frat boys and party hounds invaded Dead tour and pretty much destroyed a truly beautiful thing. There's a similar trend happening at Burning Man. Pop culture visibility tends to dilute unique subcultures to the point of obscuring the original flavor.

Active mentoring of appropriate behavior and a willingness to exclude offending users seems to be the only way to preserve the culture. But if you take that approach too far you run the risk of becoming elitist and self-righteous.

Openness has a real value and very real risks. I like the "benevolent moderation" idea suggested by murrayh the best...

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