Ask HN: How are online communities established?

Post by ratonofx » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

tchock23 wrote: post #30

ratonofx wrote: post #25

Build a community goes beyond "rally people around something they are passionate about". 1 - Not all people who have same preferences or like the same things are willing to discuss or share ideas about that. 2 - I like to think people gathering around some topic is a secondary move, the primary thing that make people gather around is 'VALUES' and 'Principles'. 3 - We like to discuss ideas with people who we value, we…

Interesting perspective. Do you think those “values” and “principles” should be explicitly stated somewhere, or should they emerge from the early users and the dialogue happening around a topic?

Post by wenc » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

monkeydust wrote: post #34

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…

Post by srndh » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

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…

Post by lxe » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

jbob2000 wrote: post #38

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 all…

Post by faeyanpiraat » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

t0mmyb0y wrote: post #37

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?