State of Online Communities

this absolutely still exists, it's just different than it used to be. go find a twitch streamer that averages 10-300 viewers and you'll find a community. join a slack/discord organization for some niche hobby and you'll find a community. start an instagram account chronicling your trips to craft breweries and you'll find a community

HN is more analogous to a town square than a community. People stop by to see what's new, do some window shopping, interact with others a little bit (maybe start a fight!) and then get on with their lives. Very few people get to know one another through HN, I would imagine fewer still end up forging friendships.It sounds like you are looking for something more like a club or at least an informal social group. The online equivalent to these are web forums and chat rooms. There are loads o

Find smaller communities, big forums are like that but if you lose the anonymity things get a lot better.

I've been thinking about this a little over the past few weeks, and one thing that seems to be missing these days is communities where there is even the slightest barrier to entry.In the old days (even 20-30 years ago), geography served that purpose, and after that, what seems to have been a golden age where vaguely like-minded people could congregate and get to know each other on amateur radio, CB radio, BBSs, usenet, IRC, etc.It seems like these days, all we have are massive communi

Communities are more like Facebook groups...they have their own discussion threads, membership/ACLs, etc.

Not sure what your experience is, for me forums still work great but they have transitioned from general social hangouts to very specialized niche communities. I don't mind that and still get a lot of value from e.g. music production forums like Mod Wiggler and Gearspace. However, other than HN I don't frequent any other small-ish communities where conversations can go outside of the stated purpose.

Exactly, the fact that there are more people (at "HN, slashdot, reddit, many IRC channels and many other places") means that you don't really know anyone.Remember back when you'd join a new forum, and they'd have a Welcome Thread just for you, asking you about your interests, etc.? When's the last time you've received a real personalized welcome to a web community? I think it's been at least 15 years for me.I'm not sure how many people on Hacker

For some people complaining about the state of the Internet seems to be an end in itself. We might have lost some hacker/open culture along the way, but there are still good bloggers, there are still good forums, there are even good Facebook groups for hobbies that simply weren't on the Internet back then.You have to look for them just like you would have to look for a good IRC/Forum/Blog back then. The bar of entry is discoverability and what your interests are. I highly

You just described the internet I've been using for almost 30 years, split across various online forums, including this one. Couldn't agree more. I've managed to find a good handful of very high signal to noise Reddit topics too. G+ was good while it lasted.The trick is to have specific interests you care about and track down that community. They're out there. The encouraging thing is my kinds have found their own communities online and among friends without my help. They

You mean like reddit? It's mostly used that way right now (afaict), but I'm missing the expertise and feel of community (I knew everyone I interacted with on the old BBS) that existed before.Like the article stated joining a community of like minded people brought a feeling and discourse that I don't really get on modern commercially hosted platforms that offer a "one size fits all" solution.