
Ask HN: How are online communities established? - jayshua
HN, Reddit, Stack Overflow, etc. are all established communities with users. How do you start a community when you don&#x27;t have any users?
======
nostrademons
Usually they splinter off an existing online community or fanbase of a
prominent writer/net-celebrity. Hacker News was initially populated by
refugees from Reddit. Imgur also got started off Reddit. Reddit's initial
userbase largely came from readers of comp.lang.lisp and Paul Graham's essays
(PG funded it, and posted announcements there when it launched, 3 weeks after
it started). StackOverflow largely came from the readers of the blogs of its
two founders, Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood. Github's users were recruited from
people the founders met at meetups.

(I was an initial user of both Hacker News and Reddit, checking both out the
first day they opened. Also was an admin at FictionAlley.org, which grew from
1881 to 100,000+ users while I was there. That one was largely founded by
refugees from Fanfiction.net, along with the readers of two mailing lists
devoted to prominent HP fanfiction authors, Cassandra Claire and AngieJ. Same
pattern: refugees from an existing community, + followers of a local Internet
celebrity.)

~~~
larrykubin
I thought I was here on the first day, but your HN join date is one day before
mine. Time flies!

~~~
bemmu
Sure does, I have the same day as you. But wasn’t it pg’s blog and not Reddit
that sent the initial users? Starting to get hazy on the details.

~~~
nostrademons
I think it was both - not unusual to post an announcement for a new forum in
multiple places, and PG's blog and Reddit very much had overlapping
readerships (and authors) at the time. I found it through Reddit.

BTW, there are some YC founders that have join dates several months before us
- HN was open to internal YC batches about a half-year before it went public.

------
jaredwiener
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 with
your own team, even if you never look at others.

Why do people want to join first?

~~~
jbob2000
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 allowed you to curate bookmarks and such, but reddit had the
people who made interesting comments on those bookmarks.

~~~
lxe
Reddit's single player mode is "news reader." Doesn't matter if it's
aggregated by the community or curated. The reason why it blew up was because
people migrated from another news aggregator, Digg, in 2010.

~~~
jbob2000
Why did everyone leave digg? It wasn’t because they fucked up the news
aggregation, it’s because they fucked up the community - the ambitious and
passionate users couldn’t get their posts to the front page any more, it was
reserved for people who were paying digg.

Reddit is _awful_ at news aggregation, the front page is a hot mess of memes
and clickbait. You have to weed all that crap out to find the people you
actually want to listen to.

------
ratonofx
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 like to talk about
what we like with friends, not strangers, why? Because we know that we share
values, principles and a cosmovision with our friends, family, etc.

So if you want to build a community, build around 'principle and values' and
from this common ground you can set a main topic to be addressed by everyone.

Not always will be a single topic, but a niche, like the hacker news, our
discussed niche is "hacking things", our values? Defy the status-quo, think
out of the box, catch the black swan, see through the non-obvious, seek for
excellence, etc.

It wouldn't be so successful try to discuss how to "hack things" with a bunch
of douchebags ;D

Edit1: Also I saw people talking about the moderation drama but if you have
done the principles, values, rules... you are going to have your own community
policing who doesn't reach the cultural/behavioral fit.

Rules must be the very first thing to avoid a 'broken window' culture.

~~~
tchock23
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?

~~~
ratonofx
I believe We need to establish as soon as possible the main values and
principles addressing what can kill the community as you are envisioning.

Furtherly, You can be open to discuss and aggregate more and more if
necessary...

Rules can be more specific and based on your values and principles, the rules
are the way you make the principles and values be followed/respected. Rules
can change and adapt towards the behaviors but, on the other hand, I think
principles and values shape behaviors, indeed.

Thanks for asking that ;)

------
bredren
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 hibernate. But it did happen, and it worked.

I never outed my puppets and they were not used longer than necessary.

Puppets will not sustain a community, but they can help establish one.

~~~
andreygrehov
AFAIK, Reddit was created in a similar manner. According to Reddit cofounder
Steve Huffman, in the early days the Reddit crew just faked it ‘til they made
it – hundreds of fake profiles to boost popularity of the site.

~~~
bredren
I have a very early account. I remember being chastised by another user for
posting links to my own blog over weeks. That’s how few posts there were.

I wonder if it was them trying to shape content.

------
bserge
You get users. The most important part imo is the regulars who stick around
and talk to everyone, answer everything. They make the core of a community and
help turn others into regulars.

I used to have 2 small niche forums and there were always 2-5 people that
created the bulk of the content ( _along with myself - I had to post a lot to
start and keep it going, I was the first user!_ ). Always making threads,
checking in, answering questions, posting updates and pictures.

New visitors would read all that and either never return, lurk or join in.
They were passionate about the topics. Giving them special/higher privileges
helped retain them for longer, as well, but eventually they just visit less
(or leave completely) and someone else takes their place.

~~~
deedub
I think you really nailed this! I've built a couple forums, one which just hit
15 years and has around 6000 registered users. It is member funded, hosted,
moderated etc. I have no part in it anymore really and it has a great culture.
I've actually just launched a new forum for my current employer and our
community members.

Like you said, it takes effort from the person starting it to create activity
and get people coming back / building a habit of checking for new content.
Then you must empower the people that are passionate about what you're doing
and treat them more like an equal / admin / mod vs a simple user.

This ted talk explains how I feel about building a community really well:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_moveme...](https://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement?language=en)

~~~
prox
How do you jump from the initial tens, to hundred to thousands of users? How
does the popularity scale in your experience?

------
larrykubin
I think the best way is to pick a niche interest and start there. When I first
joined Reddit, it was mostly just LISP programmers and there were no
subreddits. They served that niche well, then grew from there. Facebook
started out serving Harvard students, then all college students, then
everyone.

I started a YouTube channel
([https://youtube.com/parttimelarry](https://youtube.com/parttimelarry)) last
year and was wondering if anyone would find me. I had zero subscribers for my
general programming channel, then decided to focus on something I was
interested in learning myself. I narrowed my focus to Python for Finance /
Automated Trading and documented what I was learning in public, and turns out
there are plenty of people looking for information in this niche and they are
happy to find a place to discuss it.

Now I am on track to reach 10,000 subscribers this year and have an audience
that is very engaged and gives a lot of feedback. So start small, get the
first 100 users. Once you have 100 users, you know you can get 1000. And once
you get 1000, you feel like you can get 10,000. And then more people start
noticing.

I also used to run a message board to discuss the band Tool. It's just one
band, but people like discussing their music and lyrics. At the beginning, I
needed to be the lead content creator and give people a reason to stick
around. They wanted some discussion of lyrics, photos, show reviews, links to
news articles etc. Eventually, certain members started posting more than
others, like thousands of posts. I made some of them moderators, and they
became leaders of the community, and it grew from there. The hardest part is
getting the initial 100 or so people who are engaged, are passionate about the
topic, and are willing to contribute.

~~~
stets
YT Channel looks awesome. Just subbed. Side question -- is algo trading worth
it? Is there any edge that can be obtained? I'd guess that you'd be rich and
on a beach if it did...but maybe I'm wrong

------
shredprez
Online communities are basically just discussion boards, so you need something
for people to talk about, people who want to talk about it, and functionality
allowing them to talk to one another.

The structure of a discussion board is usually a chronological feed of
discussion topics, so you’ll want a pipeline of topics to keep the discussions
fresh(ish).

And of course you’ll be competing with a saturated “discuss things online”
space, so there are strategic questions you’ll need to answer. Are you going
to provide a place to discuss things people can’t discuss elsewhere? Are you
going to provide a stream of topics people want but can’t find elsewhere? Are
you going to provide a uniquely engaging discussion format? Etc etc etc.

I don’t know that anyone really starts communities, honestly. We’re already in
a global one and it just breaks down into smaller ones depending on geography,
beliefs, interest, etc. The thing you might provide isn’t a community, it’s a
platform. Give a community that already exists a refreshing new way to connect
and you’ll be in business (scale tbd).

------
jasonhong
Here is a very good book that summarizes a lot of the scientific research
about creating and fostering online communities.

Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design

Here are the chapters:

    
    
      * Encouraging Contribution to Online Communities
      * Encouraging Commitment to Online Communities
      * Regulating Behavior in Online Communities
      * The Challenges of Dealing with Newcomers
      * Starting New Online Communities

~~~
skmurphy
This is a $150 textbook ($75 used $25 Kindle): have you read it and actually
gotten value out of it? [https://www.amazon.com/Building-Successful-Online-
Communitie...](https://www.amazon.com/Building-Successful-Online-Communities-
Evidence-Based-dp-B0140DGJAC/dp/B0140DGJAC/)

~~~
jasonhong
The book shows for me as $35 on Amazon (paperback) and $150 for hardback, so
I'd suggest getting the Kindle or paperback version.

I've used parts of the book in a class I taught on the Social Web, and yes, I
did find it really useful and I think the students did too. This book really
is the best one out there summarizing a lot of the experimental scientific
research by the research community.

It presents a series of Design Claims, and then backs up those claims by
synthesizing the results of previous studies and analyses done by the research
community. If you're less interested in the scientific literature, you can
just read the Design Claims and still get a lot out of it.

Here is one example Design Claim from the book (you can see it on p29 in
Amazon Look Inside feature): Compared to broadcasting requirements for
contribution to all community members, asking specific people to make
contributions increases the likelihood they will do so.

(Or to operationalize things more: if you want people to do something, don't
send a mass email, send the request individually. I've personally found this
to be a more effective way to get things done. Remember to only use this power
for good, though.)

Also, let me clarify my conflict of interest: I'm a professor at Carnegie
Mellon University in the same department as one of the authors (Kraut), who
I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people doing scientific research on
online communities would say is a clear leader in the field.

~~~
skmurphy
Thanks for clarifying, I had run across this book last year and put it in my
Amazon cart and then decided it was too academic. I will give it more
consideration.

------
justhw
Lots has been written about this. There are several ways.

1\. You start small ( pick a topic and be the best place to discuss that
topic)

2\. You can fake engagements with multiple accounts to get the ball rolling (
reddit did it, indiehackers did it etc...)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=indiehackers+how+to+start+co...](https://www.google.com/search?q=indiehackers+how+to+start+community&cad=h)

~~~
tsumnia
> You can fake engagements with multiple accounts to get the ball rolling (
> reddit did it, indiehackers did it etc...)

As Steve Huffman described it in his old Udacity course (no longer available),
no one wants to visit a ghost town. So when they were making Reddit, they'd
create multiple accounts to post from so it "seemed" like a thriving community
already existed. It does bring up interesting questions on where it sits in on
the ethics spectrum, but the cold start problem is still very difficult with
no one solution.

------
tomhoward
The Reddit founders talk about this in their episode of "How I Built This":

[https://www.npr.org/2017/10/03/545635014/live-episode-
reddit...](https://www.npr.org/2017/10/03/545635014/live-episode-reddit-
alexis-ohanian-steve-huffman)

At about 19:40 is where they talk about seeding the community.

------
dawg-
I was very involved in the Center for Humane Tech community back when they
first started and was a volunteer mod for a little while. CHT is still a thing
but I believe the forum no longer exists. I saw the press release about the
organization being formed and it was something I really cared about so I found
the forum on their website where a lot of people were joining and very excited
to actually get something done about these issues. The people joining had
impressive bios, connections in every corner of the tech industry, as well as
educators, psychologists, researchers, etcetera. The energy was very real and
very exciting at first. It went stale after a few months because everybody was
just there spinning their wheels, not accomplishing any action. It began to
feel more like talk therapy for people who hate dark patterns and manipulative
app design. The leadership of CHT had an amazing start to a real national
grassroots network that they could have engaged to push for policy change in
states across the country. There could have been organized film screenings,
letters to representatives, pushes for legislation, all the usual stuff. But I
think they weren't ready or able to take advantage of something like that, and
the momentum died.

So based on that experience if I had to outline a simple 2 step process, I
would say: 1. Rally people around something they are passionate about, and 2.
Give them something to do besides talk. My experience was disappointing
because #1 happened in a really big way, but #2 did not.

~~~
soneca
Well, they just launched a very good documentary that might have an impact, so
at least now they are doing something:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/movies/the-social-
dilemma...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/movies/the-social-dilemma-
review.html)

~~~
dawg-
I definitely still believe in their work. But they wasted a whole lot of
grassroots momentum at the beginning.

A film is cool, but 5,000+ people who are willing to go evangelize to their
family, friends, and elected representatives is a whole different story as far
as actually changing things.

------
marikio
You should read the book People Powered by Jono Bacon. Has some really good
insights and is a 101 course on exactly this.

~~~
westurner
Seconded. "People Powered: How Communities Can Supercharge Your Business,
Brand, and Teams" (2019) [https://g.co/kgs/CF5TEk](https://g.co/kgs/CF5TEk)

"The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation" (2012)
[https://g.co/kgs/P2V1kn](https://g.co/kgs/P2V1kn)

"Tribes: We need you to lead us" (2011)
[https://g.co/kgs/T8jaFS](https://g.co/kgs/T8jaFS)

The 1% 'rule'
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_\(Internet_culture\))
:

> _In Internet culture, the 1% rule is a rule of thumb pertaining to
> participation in an internet community, stating that only 1% of the users of
> a website add content, while the other 99% of the participants only lurk.
> Variants include the 1–9–90 rule (sometimes 90–9–1 principle or the 89:10:1
> ratio),[1] which states that in a collaborative website such as a wiki, 90%
> of the participants of a community only consume content, 9% of the
> participants change or update content, and 1% of the participants add
> content._

... Relevant metrics:

\- Marginal cost of service
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_cost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_cost)

\- Customer acquisition cost:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_acquisition_cost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_acquisition_cost)

\- [Quantifiable and non-quantifiable] Customer Lifetime Value:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_lifetime_value](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_lifetime_value)

Last words of the almost-cliche community organizer surrounded by dormant
accounts: "Network effects will result in sufficient (grant) funding"

Business model examples that may be useful for building and supporting
sustainable communities with clear Missions, Objectives, and Criteria for
Success:
[https://gist.github.com/ndarville/4295324](https://gist.github.com/ndarville/4295324)

------
johnchristopher
Question is: what's an online community ?

I don't think HN is one. At the very least I don't have a sense of being a
member of an HN community.

~~~
notatoad
you've got 6000+ karma. whether you feel like you're a member or not, you
obviously participate on a continual basis.

i think a reasonable definition for online community is a group of people who
regularly and continually participate in the same online platform.

~~~
johnchristopher
Somewhere on this site there's a comment from me stating that HN is
pseudonymous and has a faux small niche appearance due to its UX and its lack
of emphasis on interpersonal connections or any expected features of social
networks. To me, everyone is more or less the same person (or really there are
a billion of different people but since I can't keep tracks of what they said
before they all just exist in a vacuum). I just know about dang, percival and
another one I forget but recognize when I see it (alathorn ?).

That doesn't feel like a community to me. Every new submissions/feed is filled
with new people with new advices, there is no continuity on HN.

Not saying it's bad or a good thing though. That's just how I feel.

------
lattice_epochs
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.

~~~
t0mmyb0y
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?

~~~
faeyanpiraat
Could you please link some reference to the linkedin stuff? Cannot find
anything on google

------
mcbetz
Here is a summary of what I read on community building.

\- Shared struggles are stronger and last longer than shared interests (That
is why a forum for solopreneurs (struggling with so much…) might have a more
supportive vibe than a photo community.).

\- Be an active and bold moderator: Answer questions quickly and be a role
model

\- Create clear guidelines for posts (What is allowed? What not?)

\- Delete everything that violates the guidelines

\- Let users flag posts

\- Hunt and ban spammers

\- Use captchas for newbie posts

------
wenc
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.

~~~
monkeydust
> 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 generate back.

~~~
wenc
Oops I meant to say contributors -- you're right of course.

------
xenocyon
I think that's not quite the correct question to ask. The question to ask is:
what purpose will your new community website/app serve that is not already
being met by existing ones?

Here's one anecdote: personally, I haven't yet found anything that captures
the feel or social vibe of early/mid-2000s LiveJournal. I think what another
commenter referred to as "Single Player Mode" actually had quite a lot to do
with what drew me to LJ in the first place - at least initially a lot of what
it was about for me was personal blogging just for me, and I gradually
explored other personal blogs and communities while I was doing it, eventually
forming real friendships/relationships with other LJers.

------
dredmorbius
An estabshed community migrating to their own platform is an option. Five-
thirty-eight more or less started this way.

Existing groups or constituencies (software users, professionals, academic
community, sport club or fans, entertainment/music, etc.) are other options.
Artificially-induced growth is another option --- several subreddits have
grown from nothing to 100k+ members in a few months

Starting a generic commuity these days would likely be difficult (though see;
Snapchat, WhatsApp, etc0.) Even well-capitalised firms fare poorly at this
(e.g., Google+).

Likely better to have a specific community in mind. Or some idea as to what
you hope to achieve.

Otherwise: good content, consistent posting, cross-promotion, and time.

------
spike021
Shared common interest. If you're building it for one community segment, odds
are that you have connections that would find use in engaging with that
community. So I'd start sharing with the ones who don't mind starting the
community from nothing.

Like if it's a community about a type of car, you'll want some initial owners
or prospective owners (if it hasn't released yet). Maybe some DIY guides for
basic maintenance, news section for OEM and aftermarket releases, etc.

This way newer visitors find already-established and useful content and stick
around to discuss and add to it.

------
brudgers
In the case of StackOverflow, Spolsky and Atwood made podcasts from the
beginning. There is a record of the whole process. It's worth noting that
StackOverflow built a very narrow channel for community activity relative to
typical online communities.

StackOverflow Podcast #1 [https://soundcloud.com/stack-exchange/stack-
overflow-podcast...](https://soundcloud.com/stack-exchange/stack-overflow-
podcast-77)

------
gitgud
There has to be a reason for people to go to the community:

\- HN: discussions and news

\- Reddit: niche topics and conversations

\- StackOverflow: ask questions and find answers

All these reasons are different for the target demographics. Hopefully you can
get people to come to the site to read, then participate and generate more
content for others to discover and read _ad-nauseum_.

Sites which make it fun/useful for people either consuming or generating
content, are the ones with thriving and growing communities....

------
zerkten
I'd recommend listening the early episodes of the Stack Overflow podcast for
some insights. There are a lot of nuggets buried there.

------
cblconfederate
HN/reddit/SO came there first, or at least during the boom times when the
pieces are still up in the air. After the pieces fell, making a new community
without a lot of $$$ is difficult, if the purpose is solely community. If
however the service provides an additional valuable service , a community can
form and grow as more and more users use the service.

------
mcint
You have to get people there, and you have to get them to want to bother
coming back.

1\. raise awareness. e.g. though word-of-mouth recommendations, or advertising
(online, TV, events, IRL?)

2\. it has to have something to keep attention,

3\. it has to be worth coming back to

It happens through phased growth, sometimes explicitly planned, always
interactively managed. A marketing and sales pipeline provides a google-able
articulated view of a similar process. Or go as far "Manufacturing Consent"

They're built on positive feedback cycles, where contributions spur further
engagement of viewing, and prompting others to engage. These are called
virtuous cycles, when it's going in a desired direction (e.g. more
contributions drive more views drive more contributions), and vicious cycles
when they're not (bad drives out the good, e.g. toleration of off-topic /
inappropriate content, deters helpful contributors from returning, while
encouraging more detrimental contributions).

I would recommend reading Peter Hintjen's "Social Architecture"[1]. He
addresses a question worded exactly the same as yours. He built a more
narrowly scoped community as an integral part of building the ZeroMQ messaging
library and tools, and ensuring that it was useful to as many people as
possible.

Also, check out his other books [2]. Though, note that gitbook.com broke the
links, and e.g.

[https://www.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/social-
architecture/de...](https://www.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/social-
architecture/details)

becomes

[https://hintjens.gitbooks.io/social-
architecture/content/](https://hintjens.gitbooks.io/social-
architecture/content/)

[1]: [https://hintjens.gitbooks.io/social-
architecture/content/](https://hintjens.gitbooks.io/social-
architecture/content/)

[2]: [http://hintjens.com/books](http://hintjens.com/books)

I'm planning to grow a group chat (matrix self-hosted) with friends, into a
dev.to-forked blogging community, that I can share with other tech friends,
non-tech friends, co-workers, and use to explain work successes to family.

------
webwanderings
Before thinking about creating, or participating in an "online" community,
think about the same without the online.

A community is first formed by humans. The online piece is just a platform, or
a place of logistics.

This may throw you back in time but read Scott Peck's The Different Drum, to
get a real feel of what a community is.

------
iKevinShah
The key (for any product), from what I have learned and have no experience of
it, seems to be finding a `beachhead market`, a startup term for finding a
smallest possible subset of a niche, where you can dominate (establish a
community in this case) and then grow from there one step at a time.

------
MattGaiser
You fake it until you make it. Reddit just created users until they had a
critical mass of engagement.

------
ghufran_syed
I’m trying to do this right now at conferacity.com, and it’s _really hard_.
But I hope people will continue to try to experiment with new discussion
communities online, not just based on the topic, but also on the governing
rules and structure. It seems unlikely that 50 years from now, we’ll look back
and say that the existing formats for online discussion were the best we could
do, even though the existing formats are all clearly providing value to users
in their current form.

An area I’m particularly interested in is, given that anonymous forums require
moderation, but “moderation doesn’t scale”, what would happen if you _only_
allowed moderators to contribute to the discussion. Or rather, what if you
only allowed people who have the required attitudes, ability and emotional
intelligence to be an effective moderator to contribute to the discussion?

You’d obviously grow _much_ slower if you’re restricting contributor growth to
a small subset of users. And maybe that constraint on growth would mean you
_never_ become a viable online community. But if you _could_ get to some
threshold size, you might find that the quality of discussion is sufficiently
different that a lot of people might want to _read_ such discussions without
necessarily taking part directly.

Ideally, the contributor community would make decisions about what those
required qualities are, and how to assess new applicants. But we _already_
have communities like this offline - this is exactly how academic communities
behave. Existing “contributors” (professors with phd’s in the subject) decide
who they accept to their community, based on evolving standards decided by
that community. It’s also interesting that this, at least from my outsider
perspective, is also how YC operates - they have a particular ethos, norms of
behavior etc, they admit people who they think are consistent with those
norms, and then enforce those norms:
[https://www.ycombinator.com/ethics/](https://www.ycombinator.com/ethics/)

I think there’s an interesting analogy with professional sports. Baseball is a
super accessible game, all you need is a stick, a ball and a field, so almost
_anyone_ in the world can play. But the way to get high quality baseball that
people want to pay to watch is _not_ by allowing _anyone_ onto the field, but
by _restricting_ the players on the field to those with the required skills.

Regardless of how my particular “experiment” works out, I think it would be
great to see more innovation in this area.

------
blondin
i gave up on hn.

i became passive a few months ago. sorry dang, but no matter how you wanna
look at it or defend it, hn is now, for me, a hivemind. but i just logged in
for the first time in a while because i truly love this question.

a community is a place where people go to and talk about things they like. it
is a place they can escape to.

i have been part of far too many. i have seen communities started by 12yo and
50yo. some are still there while i moved on. some are dear and near to my
heart. i left some for personal reasons. people were getting far too close and
personal and you get scared. but you keep in touch with those people you truly
love to talk to.

great communities don't die, they just take up a new name.

------
noteanddata
I am curious how does these online communities do content review to make sure
it's not filled with all spams, porn or even illegal content? besides
algorithm, how many human resources are spent on these things?

------
password4321
_The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation_ by Jono Bacon

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008224FMC](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008224FMC)

------
skee0083
Here's a list of wonderful communities:
[https://www.2board.net/boardlist.html](https://www.2board.net/boardlist.html)

------
tubularhells
You generate fake traffic until you get real traffic. That's how Reddit did
it, at least.

------
maxk42
I have built a couple communities over the years and currently run a community
with more than 20 million monthly users.

I'm going to assume the kind of community you're referring to is one where the
primary focus is social networking / discussion in the vein of Hacker News,
Reddit, etc.

The way you build a community is to start with an existing community.

What I mean by that is you have to find an existing pool of users who are
interested in what you offer and bring many of them in at once. From there you
can focus on slower organic growth. Examples: YouTube and MySpace both began
as dating sites. YouTube focused on getting people to upload introduction
videos of themselves. Once they had accumulated a number of people who were
willing to film themselves they pivoted over to content creation. Similarly,
MySpace was a very crude dating site that allowed people to customize their
page. Brad Greenspan was a serial investor who bought up a large number of
tiny dating sites. He cannibalized all the revenue from those sites to promote
MySpace as a "free" dating site. They had millions of users coming from other
sites.

reddit was promoted heavily on Hacker News and focused on a tech crowd at
first. Paul Graham threw his endorsement behind the platform a few times and
that also helped interest people in checking it out.

For my successful community sites, I'll just mention one experience - I had
built a Q&A site from scratch. It was finally done one Sunday night and I
decided to go to bed. There were eleven posts on the site, mostly from myself,
but also a couple from friends I'd asked to test the site for me. It was
obvious there was no community there. I bought a single ad - for $10 - at
$0.01 CPC on a Quiz site, then went to bed. My intention was not to launch the
site, but to throw a little real traffic at it and see if any bugs cropped up
that neither I nor my friends had found. When I got to work in the morning and
had finished catching up on my emails I decided to check the site and see if
anyone had posted. There were over 100 posts and people were using the site
exactly as intended. Not only that but there was about $0.50 in ad revenue
already, meaning my monthly run rate was net-positive from day one. I had hit
upon a great fit between people who were already interested in asking and
answering questions (the quiz site I advertised on) and my product.

In each case I'm familiar with, the formula was to find an existing audience
that had an interest in the product in question and bring them on-board ASAP.
If the internet were brand-new and no community websites yet existed I would
build one by building a non-community website that provided a useful service,
and building a community around that once I have captive eyeballs. In other
words, to belabor the point: I would start with an existing community.

------
PaulHoule
YCombinator was a successful startup accelerator, then built HN.

The folks behind Stack Overflow ran a popular blog (Coding Horror)

In those cases they had a smarter-than-average population that had some shared
interest (e.g. "COMM-unity".)

When those sites came around, Google was recognizable as what it is today, but
Facebook was not. Hyperlinking wasn't seen as a crime back then, and Google
didn't see organic search results as competition for paid advertising.

Circa 2000 I helped someone build an online community of 400,000 in Brazil --
the start of that was sending 10,000 spam emails, which got us 2,000 sign ups
(as incredible as that sounds today.)

Pay attention to retention. If you think it is a hard to get people, then it
is all the more important to retain people and to think about the path of
getting them to contribute.

I think a lot of people who want to try marketing don't understand how much
work it takes. If I wanted to advertise a concert at a college campus I'd
expect to put up a (8.5x11) poster for every 10 students or so. I see a lot of
people print 1 poster per 1000 students and call it a day.

Some people don't want to make extra designs and wait for the printer, other
people don't want to spend the $, other people don't want to walk to every
building on campus.

You will hear stories of someone who got an exceptional break (that 20%
effective e-mail blast is one) and wish you could get one. Don't let that
wishing get in the way of doing the hard work, in fact often it seems you get
the "break" by accident when you are doing the "average" work.

Avoid the Girardian ("mimetic") traps that are popular in many places. In
particular, do not be "part of a herd" without a well-examined understanding
of why your actions benefit you (incl. 'your brain thinks that cocaine raises
your utility function but it doesn't)

Specifically, those "Like us on Facebook" buttons feed data and traffic back
to Facebook from hundreds of sites. The ratio of engagement the world gets
from those buttons is vastly less than the engagement that the world gets.

If I was talking to customers on the phone and trying to get them to buy into
a bad deal like that I'd have a hard time, but when people see that "everybody
else is doing it", it's hard to get people to think the consequences through.

Those sites you mention all predate the Facebook age. To linear order, "new
communities are not being created". If you look closer, new communities are
being created but they are smaller and separated from the social media
lamestream.

------
hoorayimhelping
reddit and HN were very focused when they started out. Reddit was like 70%
talk about lisp when it started. HN was very much about building business with
VC money (which wasn't talked about all that much when it started). They were
also completely intolerant of the nonsense you see in comments today. Inane
jokes and poorly thought out statements would be downvoted to hell. The idea
that dumb comments would be mocked is what made it so attractive in the
beginning.

Stack Overflow offered a better alternative to expertsexchange, which was
fighting with google over how to show content (remember the scroll to the
bottom of expert sexchange to see the non paywalled answers hack?)

------
blueboo
Reddit was seeded by sockpuppets.

------
jodrellblank
Why do you want to? So you can extract money from them? Don't. So you can have
someone to control and moderate and exercise power over? Don't. So you can
have the prestige and status of a community owner and/or high traffic website
owner and/or successful person? Don't.

Have you noticed that HN was originally a small group of smart industry
knowledgable people, and gradually they trended towards disengaging as it got
too big and busy and it became a crowd of jeering Redditor plebs like me? HN
is a marketing machine for YCombinator, not a real community. If what you want
is really "to build a big site with lots of users", the word "community"
doesn't really apply, ask what you want "how do I build a site which tempts
large numbers of casual users?".

Communities stay small. If your reason is you want a place where people who
like X can discuss X then become a good place for those people to do that, be
present, engage all the time, invite appropriate people to it and make it
interesting enough that they have reason to come back, make it about what they
want (could be a mailing list) instead of what you want ("my new forum written
in React with a mobile app backed by an IRC channel!"). That will likely stay
small - people probably already have a place to discuss X, there's probably a
Reddit about X, and the real thing they'll be interested in is who else goes
there (and who is excluded), not where it is or what software it uses. There's
way more community in 50 people discussing a thing than in some mega-site
built for ad revenue. Not much prestige or excitement in that, though.

~~~
djmobley
Don’t know why you’re being downvoted.

I’d add that it’s a lot of work moderating and dealing with the drama that
online communities tend to create.

Nowadays there are also legal implications, with certain jurisdictions making
you liable for user-submitted content.

Unless you’re really passionate about creating a community of like-minded
individuals, I wouldn’t bother.

~~~
jodrellblank
Even if OP is really passionate about, say, stamp collecting - I'm asking why
people who collect stamps should care that OP wants to rule a large community
of them, why should they submit to it?

There has to be more in it for them than "OP wants to be in charge, so we will
go to OP's place and submit to OP's rules". And OP won't find out what that is
as long as OP is asking a general place like HN "how do I collect all the
stamp collectors on my site??" like they were collectible things, instead of
going to a stamp collecting group and joining and contributing and observing
what they might be missing that they don't know they are missing because they
aren't technical enough to be aware of all the options, which OP could maybe
build or contribute towards.

but that's not at all as exciting as being in charge, which I'm cynically
suggesting might be OP's motivation.

~~~
jayshua
For what it's worth I think that's way more exciting than being in charge. I
was recently involved (not as a moderator) in a community that burned itself
to the ground due almost entirely to poor communication and lack of discussion
between the moderators and the members themselves. This lead directly from, I
think, the moderators having exactly the opinion you criticize - they viewed
themselves as leading and ruling the users rather than supporting them. I've
been thinking a lot about how that could have been prevented. Maybe the
community could have survived if the system was structured in a way that gave
users themselves enough power to hold moderators to account. Or maybe there's
some other way the issues could have been mitigated.

That's exactly why people who collect stamps should care. The community I
mentioned is gone specifically because the very invested members couldn't do
anything about the self-destruction. And we knew we were powerless as it was
all falling apart. At this point many would be happy to move to a new platform
simply if it provided some type of guarantees against a repeat. (Which I think
could be accomplished by giving the moderators less power without compromising
their ability to moderate. Somehow.)

As to your final point about joining and contributing, I've done that. I'm
here asking about the general guidelines because there are people here who
have walked the path of fostering a community, or know people who have.

