191–200 of 280 posts
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I don't understand how people constantly miss the most obvious solution to keeping a community grounded: charge an entry fee.
Could you point to some examples where this has worked? It seems that the entry fee would either 1. limit the community's growth severely (not necessarily a bad thing), or 2. filter out good candidates.
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I agree- I stopped going back after I realized it was a homogeneous group (read: white dudes connected to VCs) patting each other on the back for releasing half-baked MVPs. I was really turned-off by that. That said, I think it's slowly changing for the better (rigging allegations aside) since I last took a look a year or so ago. I received a small amount of traction after submitting a stupid iMessage sticker pack I…
"white dudes connected to VCs" It's not about race. It's about class. The "connected" part is what matters, not the "white dude" part. Your average 99%er white dude does not get funded in Silicon Valley. He gets asked where he "summers" and then walks out confused. What matters in Silicon Valley is being wealthy and having attended the right school. Being connected matters more than anything. The only thing that make…
I don't know what it takes to get into the Silicon Valley upper class, but hard, quality work isn't it.
My best guess is that you have to be great at kissing ass. SV hates jerks, but loves hypocrites.
It's not about what you are, it's about how you come across (in a very primitive, superficial way).
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The tough thing about running a maker community is makers don't want to sit around all day to browse products and comment. But you know who does? Growth Hackers. I say this coming from my own experience growing a community of hardware hackers who have even less of an inclination to chat since they aren't always in front of a computer.
You just hit on one of the fundamental reasons why all online communities tend towards toxicity – the people who have the most time and energy to invest in discussions (which eventually snowball into flame wars) are the people who aren't actually doing the actual work. These things then feed off of themselves – in a sociopolitical 'guardian' type community (/r/atheism, /r/childfree, etc etc) it ends up becoming highl…
Very little challenge of ideas takes place - either from within communities or from outside. The whole thing has become a Wittgensteinian language game where people compete to praise or denounce the latest political trend in the most caustic or verbose way. It's tiresome and offputting to people unwilling to subjugate their entire online persona to their identity.
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You just hit on one of the fundamental reasons why all online communities tend towards toxicity – the people who have the most time and energy to invest in discussions (which eventually snowball into flame wars) are the people who aren't actually doing the actual work. These things then feed off of themselves – in a sociopolitical 'guardian' type community (/r/atheism, /r/childfree, etc etc) it ends up becoming highl…
A very interesting point of view, what do you think can be done to counter this outcome.
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I assume you're asking for an explanation of what "summers" or "summering" means. The basics of it are those with wealth can afford to spend weeks/months away from the place they call "home". They can also afford to drop their work commitments, or otherwise force those around them to conform to their wishes. With that in mind, wealthy people from New York are known to "summer" in the Hamptons. Well off retirees will…
Never really been a thing around here from my experience, and I grew up in Alamo, surrounded by the type of people who would happily flaunt a summer home. Second properties are usually in Tahoe or southern California somewhere, maybe Hawaii. I know a few people who have done the whole Napa thing and started their own labels of varying quality, but that's less common.
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I'm not happy with your detaching this comment. Thanks for noting that you did it, and why, but other inflammatory comments in this thread have been tempered by well-reasoned child responses. That's reasonable dialogue. Detaching an on-topic comment for taking the wrong tone doesn't feel like fair discussion.
"Tone" is a word people use to trivialize what they're referring to, which means you're assuming your conclusion. This is a matter not of tone but of content, and the toxic effects of such content. If only we could rely on well-reasoned user responses to neutralize those effects. But internet forums don't work that way, nor large groups of humans in general. For HN to have civil, substantive discussion, moderation is…
Regardless, I see what you mean with the state-changing here. It uses this topic as fodder to rekindle an ongoing internet fight. Something to be avoided. Fair enough.
Perhaps if you do this frequently enough your moderation tools can append the parent link + explanation to the comment body and save yourself some work - but then I guess that'd technically be editing user comments : )
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Never really been a thing around here from my experience, and I grew up in Alamo, surrounded by the type of people who would happily flaunt a summer home. Second properties are usually in Tahoe or southern California somewhere, maybe Hawaii. I know a few people who have done the whole Napa thing and started their own labels of varying quality, but that's less common.
Summering/Wintering is more of an East Coast thing where there is crappy weather during those seasons. Northern California has never had to have that tradition for itself, where people are more likely to have a "cabin," or vacation house.
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I don't understand how people constantly miss the most obvious solution to keeping a community grounded: charge an entry fee.
Could you point to some examples where this has worked? It seems that the entry fee would either 1. limit the community's growth severely (not necessarily a bad thing), or 2. filter out good candidates.
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I recall a podcast interview Ryan Hoover gave some time ago, where he said (if I'm recalling this correctly) that he wouldn't consider offers to sell under $100M, and his goal was 1B or greater. At the time it sounded perfectly reasonable, though he since took the company in a direction that lead to today. The writing on the wall has been evident since at least a year ago. > ProductHunt had no hope of ever becoming a…
I'm really curious to know what strategy you believe could've landed them at 1 billion.