Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

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'm excited to see TechCrunch here--you're helping. I read TechCrunch, which convinces me there are TC'ers who will add value. HN has to deal with idiots. If there's going to be an influx, let it be TechCrunch's influx. TechCrunch also has hacker, angel, and VC readers who might give real-world insight into startup financing or business questions--we should welcome them and learn to deal with TC's idiots (really, idiots in general) with the right control measures, in preparation for the day HN tops Digg.

I'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 okay, though, probably just showing the resiliency of the community.

I imagine "Hacker News" as a shy, but talented hacker. It can live with a few minutes in the spotlight, shaking hands, and taking awards, but it's going to do its best work when it can quietly focus and get the work done with its team. The more time spent in front of the press, the less time it has to improve the world behind the scenes. It understands how the fanfare is important at times, but certainly doesn't seek it when there's clever coding to be done.

Just out of curiosity: Why did you post about it? Was it to grow the site? To help your readers find a good source? Or did you want other founders to know about it to grow the number of startups that hang out here?

I have told about 10 people about hacker news. they are all in the "tech" field and then when I checked with them a week later - all of them but one actually read the site or found it interesting...

Not everyone wants to look at a text based site with very "geeky" information - unless of course you are a geek... So the site will grow no matter what but in my opinion, i think it will stay occult - at least I hope so...

Actually, I just wrote a post about hacker news that is scheduled to publish this friday - but again I don't have TechCrunch's traffic, so my post should not help/hurt HN :)

> All websites eventually die (or, at least, all that I have observed); you can't "keep a community alive"

All this makes me think that maybe community forum software should be taking reddit's recommended page to the next level and only showing me posts/discussion from people who have similar voting habits to me or even based on some social networking style "proximity".

Having all submissions in one pot and giving everyone an equal vote averages everything out so the only way to maintain whatever niche the site caters for (in this case thoughtful and interesting posts/discussion) is to maintain the niche of users.

I bet Gnome-theme-designer forums have it easier because not everyone wants to be a part of that niche, but forums based around interesting and intelligent discussion are going to continue to slide gradually towards digg no matter how well they start because (a) everyone thinks they're more interesting and intelligent than they really are, and (b) lots of people want to join an online community filled with people "just like them".

If only I had the time to develop a prototype.