Technology does not create or kill communities, the people do. If you replace dang, you have a different website than hacker news.
Ask HN: Should we plan for a life after HN?
31–40 of 75 posts
Re: Ask HN: Should we plan for a life after HN?
#32Should we plan for a life after HN? There is no need to wait for such an event. In my opinion what makes this site unique is how it is run rather than the tech. One could make note(s) of how Daniel manages this site and try their hand at mimicking the patterns on existing sites. People could attempt to replicate something close to his methodology, guidelines and levels of engagement on their own self hosted Postmill,…
Calling up Dang actually points out the one major weakness of this site from the outside. I don't know what his succession plan looks like, but if he gets hit by a bus, this site could change dramatically (for the worse) and almost immediately. When one person is your linchpin, you have one major, and guaranteed source of failures unless you take steps to mitigate. So it would be interesting to know what kind of succ…
Calling up Dang actually points out the one major weakness of this site
Semi-related fun side note: In my former workplace a coworker coined the term "Single point of success" after management said he was being negative by calling things a single point of failure. Such bottlenecks can't be solved by one person. It takes a village.
That's why I suggest everyone here could take notes and at least try to do the same things on their own sites. We can't change the big platforms but those here that tinker offering up their own time and discipline to host small communities could try to make the internet a slightly better place. I've tried my hand at this and burnt out after a decade. That's why I appreciate this site as I can just be a participant.
[Edit] Based on dang's comment there are other moderators and that makes sense given he would have to sleep at some point, otherwise people would be saying "Mods are asleep" and the chaos would ensue.
Re: Ask HN: Should we plan for a life after HN?
#33I worry about this myself. I feel like HN is the last refuge of what the old Internet was supposed to be like. I'm not sure it can be replicated. The future of the Internet seems to me to be small private "hidden" communities and mega platforms filled with garbage. No room for a middle Maybe a paid platform?
> The future of the Internet seems to me to be small private "hidden" communities and mega platforms filled with garbage.
What you're describing are two attractor-points in community design space, for communities that don't put any effort into fixing their position elsewhere in the design space.
• Managed-membership communities don't grow by default, because by default they don't advertise / recruit members. So they have strong cultures, but they're "hidden."
• Unmanaged-membership communities start off small and nice, sort of like closed-membership communities; but then they grow "by adsorption" — diluting the original spirit of the community with greater and greater numbers of people who are less and less committed to the premise of the community. Until the community is a generalized nothing, a random sampling of all of humanity.
A managed-membership community that advertises / actively recruits could be nice, but it would have to first also avoid the third natural attractor-pole in community design: becoming a cult-of-personality-driven money-making scheme.
Re: Ask HN: Should we plan for a life after HN?
#34If HN goes away it's because it's replaced by something else. Something that meets users needs better. What's there to plan for, except if you intend to make that new thing to supplant HN?
> If HN goes away it's because it's replaced by something else
Why are you so sure of this? The internet is chock full of counterexamples to the idea.
Re: Ask HN: Should we plan for a life after HN?
#35> I understand that a huge part of why HN works is dang. I'm unsure how we mirror him though.
dang possibly has the most prolific and easily accessible structured data on his moderation decisions and replies we can have for modeling the domain specific behavior of a single person... surely we can train classifiers and language models for him
Re: Ask HN: Should we plan for a life after HN?
#36"ChatGPT42, generate a working copy of the old Hacker News site for me to read based on today's news and the probable reactions to it. Have it respond to my posts accordingly."
Now, sort by controversial.
Re: Ask HN: Should we plan for a life after HN?
#37Should we plan for a life after HN? There is no need to wait for such an event. In my opinion what makes this site unique is how it is run rather than the tech. One could make note(s) of how Daniel manages this site and try their hand at mimicking the patterns on existing sites. People could attempt to replicate something close to his methodology, guidelines and levels of engagement on their own self hosted Postmill,…
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Re: Ask HN: Should we plan for a life after HN?
#38> it made me realise that HN, like any other online forum, has a finite lifespan Everything we touch has a finite lifespan, and I don't think that's the important thing to think about. I would further comment, but the guidelines[0] last point says not to. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Everything we touch has a finite lifespan
Indeed. Nothing is permanent. The only constant is change.
Re: Ask HN: Should we plan for a life after HN?
#39I suspect that enough of the y combinator crowd gets enough value out of it (and y combinator itself) that it is in no immediate danger - either financially or from yc deciding to shut it down
Besides - it runs on a single box last I checked
Re: Ask HN: Should we plan for a life after HN?
#40Should we plan for a life after HN? There is no need to wait for such an event. In my opinion what makes this site unique is how it is run rather than the tech. One could make note(s) of how Daniel manages this site and try their hand at mimicking the patterns on existing sites. People could attempt to replicate something close to his methodology, guidelines and levels of engagement on their own self hosted Postmill,…
Calling up Dang actually points out the one major weakness of this site from the outside. I don't know what his succession plan looks like, but if he gets hit by a bus, this site could change dramatically (for the worse) and almost immediately. When one person is your linchpin, you have one major, and guaranteed source of failures unless you take steps to mitigate. So it would be interesting to know what kind of succ…
I'm not the only moderator who knows how HN works. Just the only one who posts publicly these days.