
"Traditional methods for protecting community from..scale..are now manifestly unfeasible" - Jebdm
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/12/33338/3000
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Alex3917
I love how K5 articles have their own writing style. It's a shame the
community is dead, because I genuinely miss the writing that came out of
there, with its own unique rhythm and set of tropes.

~~~
alecco
Indeed. It was like a writer's creativity oracle:

    
    
      * The masterful series: Tales of the Hive.
      * The insightful whistleblower: How IBM Conned My Execs Out Of Millions.
      * And even the (insane) writer's self-inflicting goatse-style: An Introduction to Anal Masturbation.
    

Hive series: Birth of a Package
<http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/18/203511/484> Blood, Sweat, and Honey
<http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/9/13/212244/867> Lions at the Gate
<http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/7/16/222933/069> (More at
<http://www.voiceofthehive.com/>)

IBM <http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/27/95759/4240> (Can't find the link
to the article about the writer's struggle to survive the legal attack from
IBM.)

 _The_ goatse <http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2007/7/23/204244/127>

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vtaeed
Counter intuitive principles and highly thought provoking ideas make it a
great, although long, read. The application of the conclusions in this article
would be interesting to behold and analyze.

Author, rightly or wrongly, holds some strong opinions against Clay Shirky's
ideas.

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nwinter
Meta-discussion blending with topical discussion here, I'd be interested to
know what the moderation burden on HN is. HN has maintained quality up to this
scale and may be able to prevent additional growth, but what's the cost?

~~~
brandnewlow
PG gives a lot of credit to the editors for keeping HN clean. But let's be
honest, people behave here because they don't want to burn their bridge with
PG. He's said himself that he created HN in part to get a taste of what
YCombinator applicants are like before they apply. This whole site is one big,
ongoing public job interview. That's a big part of what keeps people in line.

~~~
weaksauce
I don't think that that is quite accurate. I doubt that the majority of people
here are here for the ycombinator seed money. I come here because it is the
best aggregation of topics that are interesting to my tastes. Will I apply for
ycombinator seed money? Probably not.

~~~
unalone
Even if you're not applying to YC (though quite a lot of people here are), the
fact remains that PG is somebody who's fairly well-known in the hacker
community, and he's very active here (compare that to how the heads of some
other social sites don't directly get involved on their sites as much). People
will always be more wary of making an ass of themselves in front of somebody
with a reputation than they will be of doing the same in front of anonymous
strangers.

In fact, on Hacker News it's even _more_ so a matter of known people, since
there are a lot of well-known people who come on here and say stuff. I know
one of the big Delicious people do, because my first month here I got rebuked
by him for insulting Delicious. There are people from most of the major YC
companies, along with guys from 37signals, Joel Spolsky, Jason Calcanis, and
more - and when there's a site frequented by a lot of people who have
reputations, suddenly spouting stupid mouth noise seems a lot more foolhardy.

(I find that whenever somebody whose web site I use gets annoyed at something
that I say here, it absolutely makes me at least reconsider what I said. I
judge people by the awesome things they make, so this is a community that has
a _lot_ of people that I respect a ton, and it encourages me to remain civil
and reasonable here.)

~~~
chris11
Yeah, I agree with that. I had a well known entrepreneur respond to one of my
posts, and I was slightly shocked. While I don't think my original post was
rude or unreasonable, I really wasn't expecting it to be read by the person it
was talking about.

After that I was more impressed with HN. It seems like a very unusual social
news site, because the news is actually discussed with the people involved.
For example, recently there was an article on nytimes.com about somebody who
makes jellyfish tanks. Well, I find out in the comments that the person
actually is an user here.

That does help me think about what I say. I might be interested in working at
some startup or tech company after I graduate. And there's a good chance that
not only will my future employer find this account, but that I have actually
already said something about that company. I really don't want to write a
thoughtless comment and then find out that it was about some company I'm
interested in.

~~~
unalone
Partly it's that, yeah. But partly I think people stay nice and responsible
because there are people here worth being nice and responsible _to_. Some of
the people here are really fascinating and really stand-out. (I also love how
many people we get here who submit their own writings: this site produces a
lot of original stories.)

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jibiki
There's a lot to be said for this theory if you look at the real world, where
anonymous interactions play out well 90+% of the time (selon anecdotal
experience.)

~~~
teej
I disagree. The anchoring point of this article is rooted in the multiple-
identity problem in online communities. Shirky's idea is to limit scale and
embrace identities, while this article's counter is to deemphasize identities
and disincentivize secondary accounts.

In other words, this whole article is about tackling the ONE issue that real-
world interactions don't have.

------
fbailey
on a practical side what's happening at the moment with facebook and twitter
is destroying the classical online communities and replacing them with your
personal social recommendation network. That works quite well for people who
already have a wide network and a lot of people to follow, but I think it's a
bit sad for the kid who wants to learn and just starts...

