Online Community Decline

the community discussions and support might be a bigger deal than the signups. like HN.

It's a stopgap at best and more likely a no-op. The fundamental problem is that the 'community' is unbounded and prone to instability by growth. This is not the case with just HN but almost any online forum, be it USENET, slashdot, reddit, etc. The initial and early populations tend to have a lot in common, are significantly self-selecting, etc, etc. This produces 'interesting' content, which in turn fuels growth which fuels further growth and the eventual dilution of the 'community' and the qua

Unfortunately that's something of the lifecycle of online communities. Once they reach a critical mass people that probably shouldn't belong start congregating, sooner or later there seems to be a tipping point where things start racing down to the LCD of humor and insight. People start leaving and form another community.HackerNews is surprising for the length of time it's managed to exist without turning into that. I have noticed that the quality of submissions has decreased over the past

That was a very interesting read, thanks! It's more focused on a "scene" and monetizing than I was thinking of, so it gives a different take on the same basic problem.My general thought was influenced by various communities (RPGs, IF, Usenet, coding, etc) I've been part of or witnessed, and how they were unable to survive the swarm of slightly-interested. A few interested are good and healthy: You need the fresh blood to both replace those that leave and keep old-timers

Every single community driven website on earth have being thru this kind of cycle the only way to stop this is to start a new one that will end getting into this cycle again. It's a matter of the amount of people using it, on the beginning only very early adopters and people passionated about that specific topic (here tech startups)are in, as years go by more people that have more interests start to join and post things they think is good, and then the topic changes to a more general subject.

The key seems to be heavy moderation and relatively small community size.I wish there was a site like Reddit/HN but on an invite/application basis only to consistently provide good content.

This was a long thread, and I have no idea whether my response will be noticed. But I've been around a lot of online communities, for a lot of years, and there is one thing that I have noticed. The key to sustaining quality seems to be barriers to entry.It doesn't much matter what the barrier is. A commenting system that crashes and destroys conversations occasionally, driving away people who are not sufficiently invested. A focused remit that drives away most people who see the site. A

More like:1. Group #1 joins who care about site2. Group #1 improves site. Sense of "community" keeps things in check.3. Site grows in popularity and group #2 joins4. Site loses sense of community and ability to moderate itself effectively.5. Group #1 leaves

Thoughts about maintaining quality of community:1. Stream of new content2. 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.

good news is we still have reddit & hn.a good community is hard to maintain.