As I was not there when all this happened, I decided to investigate and find out more about what it was like back then. I was surprised to find that the group of people who truly affected HN the most after this article was the old-timers and not the new "digg-like users"[1]. Users reacted as if this was the end of HN and immediately grouped all new users into one that many despised. If you want, you can look for yourself: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=133440
The new users probably did not create as much trouble as people had thought they would. Rather, the older users created the high tensions between the two groups. This all led to excessive discussions that has been prolonged for years. Unfortunately, this article has inspired many people to continue doing so (my bad!). All of this small-talk is what's really been hurting HN.
For those that want to compare HN before and after TechCrunch's article, here is what the homepage looked like:
A lot of people here on HN (pg included) agree that the site quality has gone down a little over the past few years. As this is probably the result of the number of users and we know that TechCrunch has contributed to that number, we can safely say that the two are somewhat correlated. However, the heated discussions and behavior that has come as a result are probably more worrisome than the new users themselves. Just something to think about.
I'm not sure the trouble is that new users would create "trouble" as originally foreseen, but that new users represent a wider area of the population. For a site which aims to a high standard of discussion, regression to the mean is just as dangerous as "trolling."
Why do so many people think that HN will be ruined if a few more people join? I've been reading HN a lot longer than my account's age implies and I don't think the quality has changed.
The only real problem if you ask me, is that with more people submitting stories, things will not stay long on the /newest page.
In my opinion it's better to have 100 stories with 20 comments each, rather than 10 stories with 200 comments and the usual huge thread under the top comment.
As a community grows in size it becomes more diverse. As it becomes more diverse it becomes a better representative of society in general. As a result websites that target a niche audience tend to shift to websites that target popular culture as they grow. HN is technology and startup oriented and is populated by many professionals in those fields. A popular HN will be populated by people who want broader topics and who are not experts in any of them. And less disciplined individuals tend to abuse the moderation system until it becomes nothing more than the voting system of a popularity contest. Reddit, for example, was a great place for discussing interesting topics a few years ago. Today it is a website for memes. And the technology topics are moderated not according to how interesting the submissions might be but according to how cool and popular they are. The eternal September is not a new phenomenon. And this isn't limited to websites. It happens to TV stations too. SciFi has wrestling, History has ancient aliens, and MTV stopped playing music videos a long time ago.
I think I've noticed three things. It's hard to say for sure, but I think these three are true -
1. Raw nastyness has gone up. Profanity, insults, and sarcasm in disagreement. HN was super civil 2-3 years ago. Now it's still far more civil than anywhere else, but gently declining.
2. Stupid arguments that agreed with the dominant view of a thread used to be left alone or even get downvoted. Now I see sometimes where a reasoned critique is at 1 point, but a response going, "How could you even think that? Everyone knows that isn't true" - proof by assertion type stuff - get voted up.
3. Also, very lately there's been a marked increase in the class warfare/social justice/inequality vibe filtering in. Whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on your views, but it was less like that a few years ago.
Historically it's happened on a couple of community driven sites, Digg being the best example. People submit stories, people vote stories, it's a very gameable system and it's ruined other communities. I loved Digg the first 6-12 months after it launched. The quality of the stories and community plummeted pretty quickly though.
I've been reading HN for just over a year now and I think the qualities always been top notch, which is why I'm still around; but's only natural to fear HN succumbing to the same fate that other sites in a similar domain have.
I'm sure someone has codified a law that basically says "thing is cool when I discover it, but it is uncool when the next 1000 newbies behind me discover it".
An important question for a retrospective posts is why has HN not degraded as quickly over time as other sites?
I think the key game mechanic increasing the longevity of Hacker News is the minimum karma threshold necessary to downvote comments. In effect, it requires new users to undergo a period of socialization to community norms. During this period they train in recognizing what the schema for comments containing negative informational value looks like. First out of fear, then out of mandate as an acquired power.
If you ever want to keep a community alive, implement similar withheld powers of negative punishment and adjust the level of input work required to earn them.
Ironically, solipsist, the user who posted this, has an account less than a month old with 2120 karma. Based on my casual observation of the new stories page over the last month this user submits a lot of stuff. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that. But submitting a lot of stories is a good way to get lots of karma quickly, since stories are voted up more highly and it takes almost no time to do.
I agree that the downvote karma threshold has been instrumental in maintaining the quality of discussion here on HN, but it seems like it's too easy to get around by submitting lots of stories. And that drastically reduces the socialization period.
Was this the time that everyone posted Erlang stuff to make the site look more boring? I never learned so much about an obscure programming language in a single weekend.
One thing that's interesting to me: check out those point totals: 26 points, 30 points, 35 points. Compare that to the homepage right now: 23, 181, 74, etc.
Possibly a consequence of there being more people. I don't generally think to myself "this needs exactly 5 karma points", I think "I'm going to upvote this."
A more accurate comparison would be the percentage of people that read the article that upvoted it, and even that wouldn't be a perfect comparison.
[+] [-] solipsist|15 years ago|reply
The new users probably did not create as much trouble as people had thought they would. Rather, the older users created the high tensions between the two groups. This all led to excessive discussions that has been prolonged for years. Unfortunately, this article has inspired many people to continue doing so (my bad!). All of this small-talk is what's really been hurting HN.
For those that want to compare HN before and after TechCrunch's article, here is what the homepage looked like:
Before: http://web.archive.org/web/20080308054301/http://news.ycombi...
After: http://web.archive.org/web/20080312014516/http://news.ycombi...
A lot of people here on HN (pg included) agree that the site quality has gone down a little over the past few years. As this is probably the result of the number of users and we know that TechCrunch has contributed to that number, we can safely say that the two are somewhat correlated. However, the heated discussions and behavior that has come as a result are probably more worrisome than the new users themselves. Just something to think about.
[1] - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=133446
[+] [-] Locke1689|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bobds|15 years ago|reply
Why do so many people think that HN will be ruined if a few more people join? I've been reading HN a lot longer than my account's age implies and I don't think the quality has changed.
The only real problem if you ask me, is that with more people submitting stories, things will not stay long on the /newest page.
In my opinion it's better to have 100 stories with 20 comments each, rather than 10 stories with 200 comments and the usual huge thread under the top comment.
[+] [-] adolfojp|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lionhearted|15 years ago|reply
1. Raw nastyness has gone up. Profanity, insults, and sarcasm in disagreement. HN was super civil 2-3 years ago. Now it's still far more civil than anywhere else, but gently declining.
2. Stupid arguments that agreed with the dominant view of a thread used to be left alone or even get downvoted. Now I see sometimes where a reasoned critique is at 1 point, but a response going, "How could you even think that? Everyone knows that isn't true" - proof by assertion type stuff - get voted up.
3. Also, very lately there's been a marked increase in the class warfare/social justice/inequality vibe filtering in. Whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on your views, but it was less like that a few years ago.
[+] [-] stanmancan|15 years ago|reply
I've been reading HN for just over a year now and I think the qualities always been top notch, which is why I'm still around; but's only natural to fear HN succumbing to the same fate that other sites in a similar domain have.
[+] [-] protomyth|15 years ago|reply
A really good example of this is this blog post: http://scobleizer.com/2010/12/22/an-industry-challenge-build...
translation: it was cool when I started going, but now that all you "little people" are coming, it sucks.
[+] [-] rbanffy|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidhollander|15 years ago|reply
I think the key game mechanic increasing the longevity of Hacker News is the minimum karma threshold necessary to downvote comments. In effect, it requires new users to undergo a period of socialization to community norms. During this period they train in recognizing what the schema for comments containing negative informational value looks like. First out of fear, then out of mandate as an acquired power.
If you ever want to keep a community alive, implement similar withheld powers of negative punishment and adjust the level of input work required to earn them.
[+] [-] stanleydrew|15 years ago|reply
I agree that the downvote karma threshold has been instrumental in maintaining the quality of discussion here on HN, but it seems like it's too easy to get around by submitting lots of stories. And that drastically reduces the socialization period.
[+] [-] _b8r0|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryanwaggoner|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] btipling|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yan|15 years ago|reply
Also, feeling a bit nostalgic seeing nickb post in that screenshot..
[+] [-] sant0sk1|15 years ago|reply
I think Gruber must have linked to the TC post or something, because I don't read TC myself.
[+] [-] steveklabnik|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomjen3|15 years ago|reply
It got me more than 200 karma. Today most of those who post have ten times that number.
[+] [-] sukuriant|15 years ago|reply
A more accurate comparison would be the percentage of people that read the article that upvoted it, and even that wouldn't be a perfect comparison.
[+] [-] gohat|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abraham|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TimothyBurgess|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
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