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Ask HN: How are online communities established?

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Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?

#71

Post by nostrademons »

prox wrote: post #59
nostrademons wrote: post #13

Usually they splinter off an existing online community or fanbase of a prominent writer/net-celebrity. Hacker News was initially populated by refugees from Reddit. Imgur also got started off Reddit. Reddit's initial userbase largely came from readers of comp.lang.lisp and Paul Graham's essays (PG funded it, and posted announcements there when it launched, 3 weeks after it started). StackOverflow largely came from the…

Has HN changed a lot since it inception? Or has it stayed mostly he same?

It goes in waves. The tech industry (and the world) has changed significantly in the last 13 years. I'd say at the core the culture has been largely the same, but it's a bit less tech-focused, less startup-focused, fewer people with personal experience in the topics being discussed, with more discussions on politics (despite the general ban on political discussions) and social phenomena.

Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?

#72

Post by ma2rten »

nostrademons wrote: post #13

Usually they splinter off an existing online community or fanbase of a prominent writer/net-celebrity. Hacker News was initially populated by refugees from Reddit. Imgur also got started off Reddit. Reddit's initial userbase largely came from readers of comp.lang.lisp and Paul Graham's essays (PG funded it, and posted announcements there when it launched, 3 weeks after it started). StackOverflow largely came from the…

This is true, but they can also splinter off or be online versions of of real world communities. For example Facebook started from collages.

Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?

#73

Post by GFischer »

bredren wrote: post #39

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 hibe…

That was actually the same thing Reddit did, IIRC. Have a bunch of different accounts and post interesting stuff.

Nobody wants to join a barren community.

That's also why clubs and other social gathering places entice people with free drinks, VIP passes and get some cliques to be in early, to generate movement.

Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?

#74

Post by jodrellblank »

djmobley wrote: post #11
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…

Don’t know why you’re being downvoted. I’d add that it’s a lot of work moderating and dealing with the drama that online communities tend to create. Nowadays there are also legal implications, with certain jurisdictions making you liable for user-submitted content. Unless you’re really passionate about creating a community of like-minded individuals, I wouldn’t bother.

Even if OP is really passionate about, say, stamp collecting - I'm asking why people who collect stamps should care that OP wants to rule a large community of them, why should they submit to it?

There has to be more in it for them than "OP wants to be in charge, so we will go to OP's place and submit to OP's rules". And OP won't find out what that is as long as OP is asking a general place like HN "how do I collect all the stamp collectors on my site??" like they were collectible things, instead of going to a stamp collecting group and joining and contributing and observing what they might be missing that they don't know they are missing because they aren't technical enough to be aware of all the options, which OP could maybe build or contribute towards.

but that's not at all as exciting as being in charge, which I'm cynically suggesting might be OP's motivation.

Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?

#75

Post by ceilingcorner »

ma2rten wrote: post #72
nostrademons wrote: post #13

Usually they splinter off an existing online community or fanbase of a prominent writer/net-celebrity. Hacker News was initially populated by refugees from Reddit. Imgur also got started off Reddit. Reddit's initial userbase largely came from readers of comp.lang.lisp and Paul Graham's essays (PG funded it, and posted announcements there when it launched, 3 weeks after it started). StackOverflow largely came from the…

This is true, but they can also splinter off or be online versions of of real world communities. For example Facebook started from collages.

Indeed, from collages of college students.

Sorry, but I had to make that joke.

Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?

#76

Post by jasonhong »

skmurphy wrote: post #65
jasonhong wrote: post #27

Here is a very good book that summarizes a lot of the scientific research about creating and fostering online communities. Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design Here are the chapters: * Encouraging Contribution to Online Communities * Encouraging Commitment to Online Communities * Regulating Behavior in Online Communities * The Challenges of Dealing with Newcomers * Starting New Online…

This is a $150 textbook ($75 used $25 Kindle): have you read it and actually gotten value out of it? https://www.amazon.com/Building-Successful-Online-Communitie...

The book shows for me as $35 on Amazon (paperback) and $150 for hardback, so I'd suggest getting the Kindle or paperback version.

I've used parts of the book in a class I taught on the Social Web, and yes, I did find it really useful and I think the students did too. This book really is the best one out there summarizing a lot of the experimental scientific research by the research community.

It presents a series of Design Claims, and then backs up those claims by synthesizing the results of previous studies and analyses done by the research community. If you're less interested in the scientific literature, you can just read the Design Claims and still get a lot out of it.

Here is one example Design Claim from the book (you can see it on p29 in Amazon Look Inside feature): Compared to broadcasting requirements for contribution to all community members, asking specific people to make contributions increases the likelihood they will do so.

(Or to operationalize things more: if you want people to do something, don't send a mass email, send the request individually. I've personally found this to be a more effective way to get things done. Remember to only use this power for good, though.)

Also, let me clarify my conflict of interest: I'm a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the same department as one of the authors (Kraut), who I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people doing scientific research on online communities would say is a clear leader in the field.

Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?

#77

Post by prox »

nostrademons wrote: post #71
prox wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has HN changed a lot since it inception? Or has it stayed mostly he same?

It goes in waves. The tech industry (and the world) has changed significantly in the last 13 years. I'd say at the core the culture has been largely the same, but it's a bit less tech-focused, less startup-focused, fewer people with personal experience in the topics being discussed, with more discussions on politics (despite the general ban on political discussions) and social phenomena.

Thank you for responding! The technical topics are the main draw for me. I hope the core of HN stays.

Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?

#78

Post by cblconfederate »

HN/reddit/SO came there first, or at least during the boom times when the pieces are still up in the air. After the pieces fell, making a new community without a lot of $$$ is difficult, if the purpose is solely community. If however the service provides an additional valuable service , a community can form and grow as more and more users use the service.

Re: Ask HN: How are online communities established?

#80

Post by baud147258 »

nostrademons wrote: post #70
baud147258 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did people leave Fanfiction.net? I spend quite some time there, but I never follow the meta discussions

The immediate reason was the whole "PLAGURISM!" kerfuffle - Cassandra Claire's work (which was immensely popular within the HP fandom) was booted off of it for having a few too many Buffy quotes. Discontent about FF.net had been growing for a while, though - since they let anyone upload with no moderation, many of the fics there were low quality or unfinished, many of the reviews were one-liners or abusive, etc.

Thank you for the answer. It seems that it dates back from before I started reading fanfiction, so I wasn't even there then.

It's true that sorting through the low quality fics on ff.net is complicated. Though I appreciate being able to leave a positive one-liner as a review (when it's negative, I usually try to elaborate a little more).

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