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Ask HN: How are online communities established?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?

#31

Post by hoorayimhelping »

reddit and HN were very focused when they started out. Reddit was like 70% talk about lisp when it started. HN was very much about building business with VC money (which wasn't talked about all that much when it started). They were also completely intolerant of the nonsense you see in comments today. Inane jokes and poorly thought out statements would be downvoted to hell. The idea that dumb comments would be mocked is what made it so attractive in the beginning.

Stack Overflow offered a better alternative to expertsexchange, which was fighting with google over how to show content (remember the scroll to the bottom of expert sexchange to see the non paywalled answers hack?)

Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?

#32

Post by gitgud »

jodrellblank wrote: post #6

Why do you want to? So you can extract money from them? Don't. So you can have someone to control and moderate and exercise power over? Don't. So you can have the prestige and status of a community owner and/or high traffic website owner and/or successful person? Don't. Have you noticed that HN was originally a small group of smart industry knowledgable people, and gradually they trended towards disengaging as it got…

> "HN is a marketing machine for YCombinator, not a real community."

I disagree, a large percentage of people that are here for the interesting articles and curious discussion, but have no interest in YCombinator at all...

Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?

#33

Post by jaredwiener »

I think there's also a very important step which is that often these successful communities have value even if others don't join -- what I've heard previously described as "Single Player Mode".

Instagram had filters and photo editing -- and could then also post to Facebook. Even if you knew no one else on Instagram, there was a reason to use it.

Github is still a great UX for Git. You can host your own repos and work with your own team, even if you never look at others.

Why do people want to join first?

Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?

#34

Post by monkeydust »

wenc wrote: post #28

Thoughts about maintaining quality of community: 1. Stream of new content 2. Preserving a (possibly revolving) core group of contributors (20% of the userbase generates 80% of the activity) 3. Quality control/moderation (we know what happened to Quora) An online community has to be aspirational (as in participants want to be part of an exalted peer group, e.g. SV founders) or serve a need for knowledge somehow.

> Preserving a (possibly revolving) core group of people (20% of the userbase generates 80% of the activity)

very true but 100% of the userbase will consume 100% of the activity, extreme numbers but point being that whilst only 20% are creating content a greater share, assume everyone, will consume it.

In the UK there is a community called mumsnet - I know so many people (including me) who consume from it but do not generate back.

Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?

#35

Post by newbie578 »

jaredwiener wrote: post #33

I think there's also a very important step which is that often these successful communities have value even if others don't join -- what I've heard previously described as "Single Player Mode". Instagram had filters and photo editing -- and could then also post to Facebook. Even if you knew no one else on Instagram, there was a reason to use it. Github is still a great UX for Git. You can host your own repos and work…

I had no idea about "Single Player Mode". This is very interesting and makes sense. Knowledge like this is game-changing. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?

#36

Post by gitgud »

There has to be a reason for people to go to the community:

- HN: discussions and news

- Reddit: niche topics and conversations

- StackOverflow: ask questions and find answers

All these reasons are different for the target demographics. Hopefully you can get people to come to the site to read, then participate and generate more content for others to discover and read ad-nauseum.

Sites which make it fun/useful for people either consuming or generating content, are the ones with thriving and growing communities....

Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?

#37

Post by t0mmyb0y »

lattice_epochs wrote: post #3

I remember reading that the Reddit founders created fake users and posted links / conversation starters in order to make the site feel like it had some level of critical mass.

Almost every large online service started by using fake accounts or little to no rules. That is how you build a community. Get everyone to show up then slowly change the rules/playing field. Anyone remember that linkedin launched as a scam service?

Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?

#38

Post by jbob2000 »

jaredwiener wrote: post #33

I think there's also a very important step which is that often these successful communities have value even if others don't join -- what I've heard previously described as "Single Player Mode". Instagram had filters and photo editing -- and could then also post to Facebook. Even if you knew no one else on Instagram, there was a reason to use it. Github is still a great UX for Git. You can host your own repos and work…

This isn't helpful in the context of an app where its purpose is the community, so you haven't really answered OP's question. I can't play reddit on single player mode.

Communities start around passionate, interesting individuals. Reddit initially got popular because it was chuffed full of technologists who were openly sharing juicy details about their work. There were hundreds of other websites at the time that allowed you to curate bookmarks and such, but reddit had the people who made interesting comments on those bookmarks.

Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?

#39

Post by bredren »

I built a 30k+ member vbulletin community in the 2000s.

I used sock puppets with different personalities and views that created threads, replied to each other and encouraged real users to reply and made them feel welcome.

I also moderated as myself and was welcoming to real new users, (and the puppets :)

This did not last more than two months, as there were enough real users that the puppets were able to largely hibernate. But it did happen, and it worked.

I never outed my puppets and they were not used longer than necessary.

Puppets will not sustain a community, but they can help establish one.

Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?

#40

Post by xenocyon »

I think that's not quite the correct question to ask. The question to ask is: what purpose will your new community website/app serve that is not already being met by existing ones?

Here's one anecdote: personally, I haven't yet found anything that captures the feel or social vibe of early/mid-2000s LiveJournal. I think what another commenter referred to as "Single Player Mode" actually had quite a lot to do with what drew me to LJ in the first place - at least initially a lot of what it was about for me was personal blogging just for me, and I gradually explored other personal blogs and communities while I was doing it, eventually forming real friendships/relationships with other LJers.

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