Are you even Micheal Arrington? This is your first post... You don't have any info on your profile... The writing style seems different... hmmm... Still an nteresting topic though.
Would this community prefer to be under the radar?
81–90 of 102 posts
Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?
#82It'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…
I like the idea of a karma hurdle to vote on articles, but not to post comments. Since fewer people tend to comment than visit, this will allow a small number of people to act as effective gatekeepers. I also like the idea of forcing people to solve a riddle or make a simple program in order to sign up. This can be gained, but your average Joe stupid person won’t bother.
I wouldn't like that one bit. I know a fair bit about technology, but when it comes to most here I probably know diddly squat when it comes to programming. I'm a reddit refugee who finds quite a bit of the articles here interesting and is excited to actually see good discussion. Besides, I'm willing to bet there are a fair number of people who could pass any kind of test you set up and still prove to be quite destructive.
Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?
#83If you stop promoting the site on techcrunch, then the folks here at Hacker News will have one less thing to complain about.
Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?
#84I'm one of the whiners on TechCrunch about exposure. Sorry! Basically, I think the community was excellent before you made a big deal of announcing it. It has continued to be excellent after, but the signal to noise ratio has worsened somewhat. I'm not a long-timer, but I have very much enjoyed this site and, for once, would be quite happy if the community didn't grow wildly. I think that publicity has worked out oka…
While I agree the signal to noise ratio has increased significantly since I first started frequenting YC News, I'm not sure I agree if its specifically the TechCrunch exposure that is the cause of this. My reason? I was actually reading this at school and I've had friends sign up who could really care less about anything about programming...and end up treating this site like its Slashdot. Perhaps similar episodes have occurred elsewhere?
Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?
#85I was a regular reddit reader(in fact at the time I was a digg-refugee) and found HN about 6 months ago while reading about YC. Reddit started to disappoint me more and more(e.g. Ron Paul) and I started to frequent HN more often. I am kind of disappointed about reddit and digg, that they weren't able to maintain the quality of their active members. I am not quite sure if PG succeeds in protecting the value of HN without making it to a closed community with an elite group of moderators. Let's hope he'll find a way to do this.
I think the most promising method would be in limiting the weight of new users. Not giving them any weight in the voting would prohibit them from posting stories that don't fit into the topic. If they stick around long enough eventually people will find out what the community likes and will submit similar stories.
Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?
#86I think that we don't mind being "underground" or extremely popular, as long as the quality of the site stays high. The fear is that publicity will bring the childish masses and turn hacker news into another spam playground.
Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?
#87Security 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…
When it comes to so-called "public knowledge," obscurity (and more largely, apathy) is the only kind of security there is. All websites eventually die (or, at least, all that I have observed); you can't "keep a community alive" so much as you can just let it die peacefully, leaving its children (perhaps under the same ownership!) to continue its legacy.
All websites eventually die
The sample size is small so far. I can't think of a lot of sites that have tried really hard to avoid becoming lame, even at the expense of growth. Most put growth first.
Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1, Even-Handed: for your willingness to compare your own suggestion to the antics of a crazy guy. ;)
I taught him how to program in Perl, and when I left he was working as a Perl coder for a public television station. He also got married to a very interesting and quirky woman, so don't count crazy antics out.
Perfect, that way he never has to use the same 4 symbols twice.
Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?
#89Funny how this showed up on reddit today: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25036088@N06/2362618676/sizes/o...
that picture forgot the viagra, and the botnet posts.
Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
When it comes to so-called "public knowledge," obscurity (and more largely, apathy) is the only kind of security there is. All websites eventually die (or, at least, all that I have observed); you can't "keep a community alive" so much as you can just let it die peacefully, leaving its children (perhaps under the same ownership!) to continue its legacy.
It is irrelevant whether or not obscurity is the only kind of protection available; obscurity is temporary and only needs to be defeated once. Furthermore, obscurity is not the only kind of security there is: Benevolent moderation is another form of protecting a community. And even if obscurity was the only kind of security available, we could simply invent a new kind of security. I am unaware of any websites that ha…
The only site that I used that and reminds me of HN is Perlmonks(.org). It never had any commercial ambitions and the quality has been maintained for a decade. There's tons of lessons to be learned from it. They use blind voting, have user levels, and the higher level users moderate. The community there is unbelievably awesome and it has a very similar feel to this site.