

Hacker News Google+ Community - jasonkolb
https://plus.google.com/communities/104388679763490357266

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webwanderings
G+ community doesn't appear to be solving any of the old online community
problems. The first question I would ask here is: Who's Hacker News Community
is this? Each and every member of the HN can create his or her own HN
community on Google+ and that's exactly what Google+ is allowing so far.

You are calling it Official, and that is another set of problem, because then
I would ask (assuming you run HN which appears not to be the case): why? Why
is there a need for a Google+ community for HN when HN is already a community
here?

Is anyone following the issues?

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thetabyte
I find community proliferation like this very entertaining. People learn to
identify so well with one community or its content, that they replicate it
inside other communities. For example, I was bemused recently to learn that
Reddit has an r/4chan. I asked, "Wouldn't you just go to 4chan?" But they
found it more moderate, more suited to a Reddit user's taste.

To each their own, eh?

~~~
ANTSANTS
The existence of r/4chan is met with scorn every time I've seen it mentioned
on 4chan. People seem to either completely hate Reddit itself, or meekly admit
that they follow a few tiny subreddits. Given that (and the response you
received to your question), it would seem that r/4chan is composed entirely of
people who don't actually browse 4chan! One has to wonder what proportion of
these members of the "Hacker News Google+" community actually participate on
HN.

The more I think about it, the more strange the existence of these offshoots
seems: The average 4chan user hates Reddit, and the average HN user seems to
not care much for Google+, either (though I'm not sure if that has more to do
with its community or the way Google is currently shoving it into everyone's
faces).

~~~
noibl
> Given that [the existence of r/4chan is met with scorn on 4chan], it would
> seem that r/4chan is composed entirely of people who don't actually browse
> 4chan!

Non-sequitur (really a classic syllogistic fallacy if you consider who does
the scorning). Peer pressure exists ('meekly admit'). One could even imagine
that the kind of 4chan user who might prefer to sometimes express themselves
in a more 'moderate' environment such as on Reddit would be the kind least
likely to provoke a visceral response by outing themselves as a user of
r/4chan.

It's very difficult to know anything about the 'average' member of an online
community, especially without surveys.

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Osiris
Looks like there's a few different HN communities on G+. Maybe someone should
reach out and try to consolidate into a single group to avoid confusion.

~~~
JeremyKolb
I think it will be a fight for numbers today. Consolidation will happen around
the biggest community.

~~~
raldi
I think you've already won, considering the position of this post on the HN
front page.

Congratulations!

~~~
jayzalowitz
[https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/11403730774446099672...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/114037307744460996720)
is more focused on HN Content and is a closer representation of the
community...

~~~
raldi
Sorry Jay, but this sort of thing is always a land rush, and it looks like
this particular one is over.

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vpdn
You should add the intend of the g+ community somewhere. Also I wouldn't name
it "The Official Hacker Community" unless it's started by pg.

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dgudkov
I've joined but I'm afraid signal/noise ratio will be much lower than desired.

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rrbrambley
I think this is probably a good opportunity to remove my Hacker News G+ Circle
with thousands of people in it.

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tankbot
It seems natural that these sorts of things would appear, especially around a
community like HN. But what's the point? HN is already a community because of
HN.

Isn't this like the programmer who wanted to create a standard to unify the n
variations only to end up with n+1 variations?

~~~
robryan
There has been many attempts to produce something to compliment the hacker
news site and allow for more unstructured chat. Not sure anything has really
stuck though.

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linker3000
It was once said that the great thing about standards is that there are so
many to choose from. It seems the same goes for targetted online communities.

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salimmadjd
This is probably an internal strategy by google to try increase g+ engagement.
Create these social groups on g+ that already have strong community behind
them. The thinking is that on g+ things like photography, and geek related
could become a beachhead community for them and they can use that as the
foundation to build up additional communities to drive up engagement.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Ya think? :-) Actually while its clearly an attempt to get more people using
G+ on a deeper level, as a replacement for Groups its showing possibilities. I
wish the editor in G+ was a bit more full featured. Maybe not full on Buzz but
would love to be able to do better hyper links with it.

It is interesting to contrast the feel of that to the feel of this site.

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jcfrei
this seems like a bigger version of the HN community:
[https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/10438867976349035726...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/104388679763490357266)

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JeremyKolb
Yeah, there are tons of Hacker News communities popping up, we took out the
"official" bit.

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dreadsword
Nice! Like a lobby for HN in which mingling and informal chit chat can take
place.

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antidoh
Why?

