
Ask HN: Is HN a ‘healthy online community’? I’m doing a case study for a class - sankalpb
Hello HN! My name is Sankalp. I’m taking a class called Fixing Social Media at MIT (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fixingsocialmedia.mit.edu" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fixingsocialmedia.mit.edu</a>). We are examining problems with existing modes of social media and exploring affirmative visions for social media that are good for individuals and society.<p>At this point, the class is working on case studies of successful and healthy online communities, where we are seeking insights from online communities we are part of, inspired by, or find interesting. The goal of the assignment is to figure out whether an online community exemplifies or doesn’t exemplify ‘healthy’ behaviors, from the points of view of their own members, on their own terms. I’m here to understand HN from your perspectives and I’m interested in hearing from all of you.<p>What criteria do you use to determine &#x27;health&#x27; in online communities? How do these differ from those criteria you use to determine ‘health’ in offline communities you are in? How does HN exemplify or not exemplify &#x27;healthy&#x27; behaviors? What behaviors of your own would you acknowledge may or may not contribute to the overall ‘health’ of HN?<p>How did you get into HN? Who introduced you? What makes you stay?<p>I began using HN as a source for news, projects, ideas, etc. a couple years ago when a mentor referred me here, but I hadn’t made an account until this week for this Ask HN. I check HN once or twice daily and I actually stay for the discussion as much as the links shared by HN members.<p>In case this is helpful for our discussion, something that our class recently discussed is that communities with controversy aren&#x27;t necessarily &#x27;unhealthy&#x27; — as in, the ability of some communities to work through a controversy and maintain coherence, and to exist as multiple voices coming out of a controversy can be an indicator of being &#x27;healthy&#x27;.<p>I aim to share my findings as well. I hope these questions are interesting to you and that we can hear a variety of perspectives in the comments!
======
paxys
Yes and no.

I think it's better in terms of overall "health" (content, toxicity,
moderation, privacy, spam) than other, more popular forums (e.g. Reddit), but
that could just be directly because of its small size and relatively niche
appeal.

My biggest problem is that it stopped being a community for tech entrepreneurs
a long time ago. Everyone is now bearish on everything by default. Every idea
is pointless. Every new product is useless. Every company is evil. There's no
point building or launching anything. It's just people complaining about
everything rather than improving things and building the future.

~~~
NathanKP
I've been on HN for 11 years now, and each year its been more negative. At
some point the best way to get upvotes turned into "say something pedantic
that contradicts the parent post or criticizes it."

This is a big part of the reason why I dialed my contributions way back, and
I've heard the same from many other great people in the IRL tech community
that I respect. Unfortunately each time a positive person stops contributing
on HN it just leads to the site becoming more negative. It is a vicious cycle.

~~~
paulmd
Title whining, while not the worst way that manifests, is kind of emblematic
of the problem. Nothing I love more than loading up a comment thread and
seeing... the only replies are 5 people whining about the title.

The moderators here humor and even encourage it, despite it nominally being a
rule not to editorialize titles they'll humor the people and edit it up 2 or 3
times.

It's the shallowest of content that contributes nothing to the larger
discussion. I'm not sure if it's a weird way to farm karma or if people just
tend to be a little bit on the spectrum, but some people just can't resist
arguing about it.

~~~
OJFord
> The moderators here humor and even encourage it, despite it nominally being
> a rule not to editorialize titles they'll humor the people and edit it up 2
> or 3 times.

For what it's worth, a few times recently (as well as on other occasions) I've
submitted a title as-is very reluctantly, and knowing it will certainly be
changed if the submission gets any traction.

I think the one that got the most traction was 'The NHS is looking for up to
250k volunteers' [0], original title:

> ‘Your NHS Needs You’ – NHS call for volunteer army

 _Of course_ that was going to get changed, and I mostly support that change,
with only slight hesitation since the aspect I found most interesting (and
provoked me to submit it) was the language; the article went on to talk about
'rallying the troops'.

My point is, yes it's in the guidelines not to editorialise titles, but it
also says not to include numbers like '{6 }things you never knew about X' or
superfluous adjectives like 'Show HN: {My amazing }whitespace to rust
transpiler'.

It also qualifies not editorialising with 'unless misleading or linkbait',
which I suppose I could arguably have used as a reason to change [0], and
perhaps that's the basis on which they're all edited.

I and probably others generally submit the original thinking if it's popular
as-is then there may be some discussion and collective (or moderated) decision
on the title; who am I the submitter to make that call.

[0] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22677209](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22677209)

~~~
dang
Yes, the site guidelines call for changing a title when it's misleading or
baity. That one was baity, so it's fine to change it. If you do, it's best to
use language from elsewhere in the article, if possible. Usually there's
something suitable in a subtitle, or the doc title, or the url, or a
representative phrase from the text.

Both sides of that rule are important: when to not change the title and when
to do so.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
jackcosgrove
I think HN is one of the better communities I've participated in.

A few reasons I can see:

1) It's text- and hyperlink-based. Multimedia forums become meme recycling
centers.

2) It centers discussions around submitted links. This avoids endless,
pointless discussions about the forum participants themselves.

3) The submitted links focus on technology and business issues, which attract
more serious participants. There is no random board.

4) Moderation is professional rather than community based. Voting has an
effect but can be overridden.

~~~
JohnL4
Your comment about professional moderation led me to Google up this article:

[https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-
valley/th...](https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/the-
lonely-work-of-moderating-hacker-news)

Wow! Great article.

(Also: as of 2019, TWO, count 'em, TWO human moderators.)

------
rossdavidh
My method of determining if a community is "healthy" (online or otherwise) is
to evaluate it after I've (temporarily) left (e.g. for the day). Do I feel
angry, upset, sad? Do I feel wiser? If somebody says something I disagree
with, but afterwards I find that it has brought up lots of interesting
insights in my own mind, then regardless of whether I agreed with them or not,
I consider it healthy.

Conversely, even if I agree a lot with what is said, if afterwards I'm angry,
sad, etc. then it wasn't healthy. When younger, I used to think that more
anger at what was wrong in the world, would help to fix it. Experience has
taught me that actions taken out of anger, even if well-intentioned, are
almost always unskillful. I want more insight, more understanding, and HN aids
me in getting that far more often than, say, Facebook, which I now use only on
Sundays, and not every Sunday, as a way of making sure I don't let its toxic
stew of opinions infect my emotions.

I cannot honestly remember how I discovered HN, but I return because, even
when I disagree with most of what is said on a topic, it is typically the case
that I find my own thinking to be more nuanced or more interesting afterwards.

~~~
M5x7wI3CmbEem10
is anger useless?

~~~
mixmastamyk
No, but constant anger is unhealthy.

------
microtherion
It's healthier than many other online communities, but that's not a terribly
high bar to clear.

The moderation is reasonably effective against the most extremely toxic
content, but IMHO has a tendency to privilege toxic opinions stated in
measured tones against the pushback they create.

As for member downvotes, I can often predict which comments of mine will
attract downvotes: humor will tend to get downvoted as irrelevant, while the
relevancy of replies complaining about said humor is rarely questioned.

Certain subjects are downvote magnets: Criticism of Elon Musk, scepticism
about nuclear power, support for intellectual property rights (especially in
the case of music), support for ethnic and gender inclusiveness. It's
possible, though, that these are just hot button issues, and the opposite
opinions also attract downvotes.

The technology backing HN is still massively inferior in every respect to what
Usenet was 30 years ago. I tend to read each thread only once, and then only
follow up discussions of my own comments. Following a thread over several days
is a near hopeless endeavor. Why doesn't anybody combine the light touch
moderation of HN, combined with the tools that a decent newsreader like nn or
GNUS could provide?

~~~
dang
What are say the top 3 things from Usenet that would make HN better if we
added them?

~~~
microtherion
A big one is marking comments as read, so one could resume reading a thread
the next day and not see previous comments anymore. But I don't know how one
would integrate that with a tree view, which, as such, also has some
advantages.

Encouraging selective quoting with interspersed comments, but having seen the
triumph of top quoting in e-mail discussions, this might be a lost art anyway.

Also, personal kill files. Bring back the _PLONK_! Thanks to the thread
organization of HN, subject kill files are no longer really necessary, but
being able to mute people for 30 days or permanently may still be useful (And
it might contribute to downvotes being used less for subjective differences of
opinion).

I also used to like the ability to easily take discussions to email, but
Usenet was a smaller place back then and this may no longer scale.

~~~
tptacek
I used to think HN would benefit from more state-keeping, to make it easier to
follow threads over longer time periods. I'm now convinced the opposite is
true: that HN pushes threads towards being more ephemeral is something that
makes it better as a community, not worse. I spent _a lot_ of time on Usenet,
and I don't think month-long threads (and their attendant personality
factions) would make this place better.

~~~
kick
Months-long? Let's not kid ourselves: years-long.

A modern example of this is lambda-the-ultimate.org, which has so many threads
that have been running for years without any clear purpose that it's almost
impossible to find a thread that hasn't.

Of course, that could be a matter of scale; with less posts to keep track of,
I guess it would be easier to continue things eternally.

~~~
JohnL4
Long-lived thread as emergent community? :-)

------
lukifer
One interesting datapoint that I think distinguishes HN from even well-curated
subreddits: the culture actively discourages humor-only comments. Making a
thoughtful post that happens to contain a pun or a comic exaggeration is fine;
but cluttering up comments with one-line jokes, off-topic cheap shots, etc,
that contain no real information, tends to be aggressively downvoted.

~~~
raphlinus
For what it's worth, /r/rust has a similar rule ("no memes"), and I think it
is helpful. I love humor and think it's great in smaller, more informal
communities, but just doesn't work at HN scale.

------
pembrook
HN is a unique outlier for being highly informative and _somewhat_ rational
while being designed around an inherently toxic and emotionally charged format
(the popularity/upvote system).

I believe this is entirely due to the strict rules in place here and the great
moderation.

However, there's obviously a couple filter bubbles at play. For example, if I
write a post claiming that [insert tech company] is doing [insert thing] to
abuse privacy, it will reach the front page and be accepted as fact regardless
of whether I made it up. This applies for numerous themes/topics, ie. VC is
evil, Marketing is evil, etc. HN tends to be cynical about _everything._

Don't get me wrong, I've probably learned more from this community than any
other place on the internet. It is my preferred portal through which to
explore the internet. But I also wish we could improve on the undercurrent of
frustrated cynicism here.

------
deltaveedaddy
I'm anticipating a lot of downvotes, but I couldn't think of a less healthy
online platform except for maybe Reddit or Facebook.

Really, the best way to use HN is to keep a list of the interesting blogs that
get posted here. I check in every now and then and add the blogs to my RSS
list and away I go.

Year after year, HN gets worse and worse. It's constant complaining and
whining, the discussions are INCREDIBLY trivial and just vapor-y. Show HN, for
example. In Show HN, someone is presenting the community something they
designed, created, implemented, polished, there's weeks or months or years of
effort involved. Most of the time, the comments of these posts are "Oh, well
the text-margin is 1px off" or some stupid detail that nobody using the
product actually cares about, and then the rest are complaining about those
comments, like what I'm guilty of doing right now.

I don't really know what could be done to fix it. Finally, let me add this: If
you want the most pleasant HN experience, click the LINK, and stay far away
from the comments.

------
tracker1
It's all relative... Having participated in many online communities starting
from back in dial-up BBSes and message networks, it's as healthy as any I've
experienced.

I don't remember how I got into HN... I stay because I happen to appreciate
the comments, often I get more from the comment system than the actual
articles. There are a lot of people with diverse technical knowledge and
insight.

It's far from perfect, but it's still healthier in that you get a relatively
diverse set of topics and opinions on those topics in a mostly rational
discussion. There are some subjects that will see an unbalanced level of
moderation based more on opinion than hard fact, that said it's still better
than most.

I think the only area that tends to really flow emotional is when the topic of
politics comes up. People are very tribal in terms of what they believe and
support and will up/down-vote instinctively, regardless of merit. It tends to
cut in every direction. I would love to see counts of up and down votes on a
given post, as I'm sure there are many that while they are -2 to +2 have seen
many votes in both directions...

All in all, I think the moderators are relatively fair in their disposition of
the rules such that they are, and in general fosters discussion in good faith.
I've seen many opposing views discussed at length, and don't recall anything
that went over the line (calls for violence or personal assault), with minimal
ad hominem.

------
loopz
_Is HN a healthy online community?_

Yes

The moderation scheme makes it harder to troll, so you actually have to come
up with some clever insights in order to troll effectively. Though, when
people need to back up their comments, the quality improves. Articles/links
that are voted up are often interesting or insightful.

On the other hand, participants are still somewhat married to preconcieved
ideas, so moderations and comments are sometimes shallow and predictable. It's
still hard to come through, though better grounds for free-thinking than many
other forums. Humour is often lost here.

------
mathgenius
I believe that not being able to see the "upvotes" on each comment is a good
thing, and really cools down a lot of the intense vibes. People place way to
much emphasis on this number, and I'm glad we don't have them here. Also good:
submissions cannot be downvoted. Flagging appears to be a kind of pseudo-
downvoting in that it causes submissions to fall in rank, but does not effect
the upvote score. Compare with other sites like reddit or the stackoverflows,
it really sucks submitting stuff there and then having it be downvoted to
oblivion. Once you attach a number to something, it heavily biases your
opinion of that thing, be it number of followers, or dollars, or upvotes, or
whatever. There's probably some psychology experiment I should be citing
here...

~~~
oefrha
Actually, submissions for certain controversial topics/opinions are often
quickly flagged to death, not unlike downvoted to oblivion. To be fair, those
topics tend to invite predictable “discussions” that aren’t very interesting.

~~~
krapp
To be even more fair, however, plenty of technical discussions here fall into
well-trodden paths of predictability as well.

You can almost guarantee that any mention of WASM will include a comment
writing it off as just another retread of Java or Flash, and another
predicting it will lead to the death of the web. Lisp threads will include
tedious discussions about parentheses. Anything to do with web dev will
probably have a tangent about how the web was ruined by javascript and
advertising. Go? No generics, lame. PHP? The memes about how bad PHP is are
endless, and most are still a decade or so out of date.

~~~
Multicomp
I agree with your points.

I will add two more 'HN tropes' in the forms of factions that are out there
and tend to show up pretty often.

The Rust Evangelism Strike Force and its close cousin (of which I admit to
being a card-carrying member who tries not to be too pedantic / indiscriminate
with my strikes) the F# Evangelism Strike Force.

PS: I wonder if there is a recent listicle for Top 50 most common Hacker News
comments / memes / tropes ? DDG says not much about it, just surfacing the
nGate.com Hacker News weekly stuff.

~~~
krapp
I've sometimes thought it would be funny if someone wrote some kind of
machine-learning algorithm that studied Hacker News comments and auto-
completed threads when certain comments appeared. It would if nothing else
make things more efficient.

Also - paywalls. If a site has a paywalls it's all but guaranteed that most of
the thread will be consumed by complaints about it.

~~~
satvikpendem
[https://web.archive.org/web/20150928214855/http://news.ycomb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150928214855/http://news.ycombniator.com/comments/comments_296.html)

I found this Hacker News simulator in the archive. You could also look into
/r/subredditsimulator for related stuff.

------
abnry
Here's my thoughts on what a healthy community is: People are basically
dysfunctional, though to varying degrees, and so any congregation of people in
the flesh or online will also be dysfunctional, to varying degrees.

So there is no way to assign the label "healthy" to an online community, only
a way to compare it as more or less healthy.

For any social media site, there are two things to separate out: The
aggregation aspect (information distribution) and the community conversation.
A site that disseminates low quality articles, slanted articles, or a limited
varied of articles is not as healthy in terms of the aggregation aspect as one
that is rich in variety and quality. For my own opinion, HN has made me aware
of a lot of great resources, so I think it is very "healthy" in this regard.
Typically the political posts are significantly less quality.

In terms of community engagement, one thing I personally pay attention to is
how often my buttons are being pushed. Sometimes that's due to a flaw in my
own biases and opinions where I can't take any alternative views. However,
usually conflict of opinion that is highly emotional, imprecise in statement,
and poorly thought out are the types of comments that work me up.

Generally, on HN, I don't get worked up on anything except for the political
posts. Flame wars about writing documentation in markdown or not are actually
kind of entertaining to me. Those kinds of posts don't push my buttons, and I
suspect most other people's, to the same degree.

~~~
tracker1
I think political discussion is one of the few areas where things get really
off-balance in terms of merit of an idea vs moderation in general. Just
guessing that the users are likely around 60% left leaning with about half of
those hard left, less liberal.. and the other 40% split with libertarian-right
and center-right republican.

Conservative opinions will usually see a -1 to -2 down out of course...
likewise the opposite for left-leaning opinions. I can only speculate as to
total votes in either direction though.

Being classically liberal/libertarian, I can only speak to my own opinions on
this as where I stand is often in contrast to established left/right tribes.

\-- edit

I've seen this comment go up/down several times already, kind of making the
point.

~~~
kbenson
HN is the first place I realized the political spectrum is less of a line with
end points (or more commonly represented as going infinitely in each
direction), and more of a circle. Go far enough towards one extreme, and you
start approaching the other side. I didn't come to thing because people here
are horrible, but because the community allowed different people enough of
voice that their could explain their views usefully right along side people
with very different views.

I'll note this idea itself is a poor approximation for what is really going
on, which is that there are multiple aspects being mapped and they don't all
match the traditional political spectrum line. That said, it's still a useful
way to think. E.g. there are are two paths to fascism, but people usually only
see the one their opponents are on, not their own.

~~~
dublinben
This is known as Horseshoe Theory, and it's a pretty lame model of political
ideology.¹ In reality, most people can't be placed on a single dimension that
accurately captures their political identity. Most political scientists prefer
at least a biaxial spectrum, comprising of the left/right axis and another
major axis like libertarian/authoritarian.²

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum)

~~~
kbenson
> it's a pretty lame model of political ideology.

Well, I did say it's a poor approximation. The usefulness I alluded to is to
understand that all these approximations are flawed in various ways, firstly
because they are _approximations_ , but more-so because they are all hopeless
simplistic representations for what is being modeled. Biaxial is better than a
single axis, but that doesn't make it _better_. The thing the horseshoe theory
represents is something that the biaxial representation doesn't represent at
all, a similarity of some aspects of though in the common extremes we see in
reality.

There's often a difference between diagrams that allow everything to be
represented clearly and diagrams that help steer you into associations that
are useful. Both have their place.

------
at_a_remove
This is a topic of great interest to me. Somewhere around the late eighties or
early nineties I began a somewhat morbid hobby of watching online communities
die.

I will try to keep my personal conclusions out of it and allow you to form
your own, but will at least hint at my methodology. First, you say "healthy"
and I say "not dead." Having seen a lot of communities declare themselves
healthy and vibrant, doing all the right things, and so forth, only for them
to wither and die, _statements_ of health are meaningless.

Look for multiple measures. You know it is dead when they pull the plug, but
what about the withering before that? What does that look like? Identifying
that is going to be key to determine what health looks like, because it looks
like "not dying."

User turnover. _Moderator_ turnover. Account creation. Account retention. Rate
of comments per user. Is the "old guard" still present? (This sound subjective
but can be worked on)

Less objective are incidents of "purity spirals." These are a _great_ way for
a community to die. Find incidents and examine them. Look for commonalities
that can be abstracted into numerics.

------
mekoka
I lurked around HN for a long time before making my first comment. It's the
first community that made me realize the potential and extent of massive
misinformation on the Internet. It also raised my awareness about my own
biases and common fallacies. But I personally have never had a sense of
"community" from these parts. I value the information and discussions because
it's rare on the Internet to come across a group of people that are so focused
on keeping each other in check when it comes to facts. It's full of
contrarians. It's like an automatic mental mechanism for many here. Articles
and comments are challenged sometimes seemingly as a simple intellectual
exercise. It does force you, the spectator to realize that the coin truly has
two sides (sometimes more). The bs filter on HN is also relatively high, when
compared to other places on the Internet. As you can expect, that leaves
little room for the warm and fuzzy _tolerance_ that one has to display in a
friendly community where people's beliefs are _respected_. The "well,
actually" is strong in HN.

~~~
jonahx
My experience agrees with this.

Another positive trait of the community (imo) is that -- unlike, say, reddit
-- it explicitly opposes, and downvotes into oblivion, silly jokes, puns, and
even polite or enthusiastic agreement that fails to contribute anything of
value.

Substance is king. Or, if you're less generous, the appearance of substance
masking all the typical biases is king. Either way, it's a community norm I
appreciate, and is what keeps me coming back here.

------
mindcrime
I'd say HN is fairly healthy. As others have pointed out, it's relative, but
HN is definitely healthier than, say, Slashdot, or many Reddit subs. That
said, there _are_ subs on Reddit that I consider healthy, but that's a
separate issue.

What makes a forum "healthy" to me? I'd say a few things stand out to me (this
list is not comprehensive, mind you).

1\. The question "do I learn something from interacting here?" In the case of
HN the answer is very often "yes". Now, by "learning" I don't mean "mastering"
anything. I just mean "I learned about some person, topic, resource, book,
article, field, etc., in a way that deserves further exploration and may be of
benefit to me." That happens quite often here, both from the submitted links
and the ensuing discussion.

2\. Do I take away anything actionable? Again, quite often yes. The action may
be "bought this book based on a recommendation", or "downloaded this new
framework to start experimenting with it", or whatever, but I definitely find
actionable, valuable information here.

3\. Is there an absence of most racist / misogynistic / jingoistic /
xenophobic / bigoted rhetoric, conspiracy theories, complete snake oil, etc?
Mostly I find the answer to be "yes". You will see accusations of misogyny
here from time to time in certain threads, and you may see little flare ups of
nationalistic sentiment or whatever ever now and then, but _on balance_ I find
HN to be pretty good in that regard.

------
scarejunba
HN is not a healthy community for me to participate in, but it's got high
variance output to a greater degree than anything except my Twitter follow
group and my Slack private groups - i.e. it's the highest quality uncurated
source I have.

The reason I say that it is not healthy is that it is full of misinformation
and sensationalism. I get upset at reading things I know are lies or errors
perpetuated through confident ignorance and end up attempting to even it out
by sensationalizing the other side (and perhaps in my anger doing some of the
things that annoy me). I've noticed this weird behaviour in my parents arguing
with their friends about politics and for the most part I'd removed myself
from that but HN brings it forth.

What is valuable about HN is that you get some real experts talking about
stuff they know well and startup entrepreneurs engage here in a way that's
often closer than just posting on ProductHunt, and I like talking to other
people like that.

Actually, thank you for asking this question, I think it's pretty obvious at
this point that I should just stop using this website. But I needed the
question to be asked. Should just use that time building and spend it on my
private groups.

~~~
sankalpb
thanks for the reply, I think the point you make about having noticed yourself
'doing some of the things that annoy' you is helpful to see be brought up, and
I'm wondering if you can say more about 'confident ignorance', as well as
'weird behavior' you have made an effort to 'remove' yourself from but that HN
'brings...forth'?

------
olalonde
Despite its flaws, I honestly can't think of a community that comes close to
HN in terms of size/healthiness. I mainly attribute its success to:

1) Strong moderation.

2) Being apolitical: ideological/political/religious debates are generally
off-topic.

3) Meta comments being discouraged: insinuations of shilling, soliciting down
votes, complaining that a submission is off-topic, etc.

~~~
sankalpb
hey there, thanks for this list - do you see these attributes applying equally
to both 'online' and 'offline' communities?

~~~
olalonde
Not really. In fact, I doubt one could draw useful parallels between online
and offline communities, they are two quite different beasts.

------
Havoc
Miles better than anything else I've seen. Most of the times my comments are
downvoted I can see in hindsight "ok fair that wasn't a great comment".

Other communities that's not always clear

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Impolite comments do get down-voted pretty consistently but I also see a
disturbing number of very gray comments that are more or less facts.

~~~
ativzzz
A lot of posts that are "more or less facts" are spoken with a certain
connotation, which the posters sometimes are not even aware of. I see a ton of
"why is this post downvoted?" edits when someone just says facts, but the way
they say it is often snarky or condescending.

Displaying intent online is difficult through text, especially when correcting
someone, and a lot of people come off as rude when they're not trying to be.

------
stewbrew
You must not forget that is the news aggregator for ycombinator. Thus it's
rather biased at times.

That said, I disagree with other commenters who describe HN as people
discussing about things they know nothing about. Some people may lean out of
the window too far, what I find interesting though is the amount of expertise
assembled here. No matter how exotic a topic is, somebody will show up who has
first hand experience and actually is an expert.

~~~
Silhouette
_No matter how exotic a topic is, somebody will show up who has first hand
experience and actually is an expert._

And one of the nice things about HN is that usually when that happens, others
do acknowledge the expert status and those contributions get moderated up to
higher visibility fairly quickly. Interesting discussions often result,
sometimes on quite surprising topics that might not be among the usual "core
topics" for this forum yet still interest a lot of the same people.

------
kelvin0
I've been visiting HN (many years) and mostly enjoy it. The difficult thing
for me is how hard it is to post anything and have it stay in the headlines
long enough to have anyone give you feedback.

Very easy to add comments though. So guess what? You end up with a lot of
'noise' in the comments and very little 'signal' elsewhere.

I don't have a proper 'solution' and maybe HN is just perfect the way it is,
flaws and all.

------
jonplackett
I'll just say I'm usually as interested or more interested to read the
comments on a link as in the link itself.

I now find it annoying when looking at other links that I don't have the usual
skeptical/thoughtful HN take on it.

~~~
O_H_E
This. Often, I look up links-that-I-find-elsewhere here to read comments. If I
couldn't find it, and it sounds worth it, I post it.

~~~
jonplackett
Good methodology! I'm going to adopt it.

------
sharemywin
I feel like this site can be a little negative sometimes. or worse crickets.

One thing I like is a lot of people back up their statements with links or
examples. or other reasoning.

~~~
sankalpb
I also like when there are links or examples to support the reasoning behind a
statement, though I don't mind if statements don't have them. Can you say more
about what makes 'crickets' worse?

~~~
sharemywin
just when you post something. Like a question or an idea. and nobody answers.

------
mdorazio
Absolutely not. HN is far too insular and full of self-assured personalities
who think themselves experts on topics far outside their expertise to be
considered healthy. It is also filled to the brim with groupthink, reality
denial, and often a complete lack of both empathy and perspective. A
significant chunk of this is likely due to the demographic skew of commenters
here combined with the negative aspects of being technically-minded enough to
want to participate in HN in the first place. That being said, it's still
superior to most online communities due to its focus specifically on technical
topics (you get a lot of focused content and actual experts chiming in) and
the moderation (both from the HN org and self-policing to prevent inane meme
comments typical of communities like reddit).

Here's what a healthy online community has: respect for other members,
maturity, empathy, self-awareness, strong moderation, and a diverse enough set
of views from participants to make conversations well-rounded and thought
provoking.

How and why I arrived here: the subreddits I frequented degraded in quality to
the point where I wanted a less-mainstream tech news aggregator, and several
redditors recommended HN. I actually had no interest in commenting here until
I got far enough along in my career to have actual insight to share on
relevant topics. I suspect I'm quite a bit older than most HN participants
these days.

Why I stay: a larger portion of content here aligns with my interests and
career than elsewhere online and the overall experience has not yet degraded
to reddit levels of picking through trash to find gems.

~~~
rankam
> Here's what a healthy online community has: respect for other members,
> maturity, empathy, self-awareness, strong moderation, and a diverse enough
> set of views from participants to make conversations well-rounded and
> thought provoking.

How do you know this? What data verifies that this is what a healthy online
community looks like? Why is strong moderation part of a healthy online
community, where strong moderation in a real life would be a signal of
unhealthiness (it's censorship)? If an online community is mature, empathetic,
and self-aware - why would it require strong moderation?

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
Strong moderation in real life occurs all the time, but because the feedback
is immediate, behavior modification of the individual generally occurs much
faster than online. For example, if someone calls you a derogatory name to
your face, you will either disengage or get mad back, both of which providing
negative reenforcement for that behavior. Such negative feedback loops exist
everywhere in our social communications.

~~~
shadowbanthrow
Those are not the sole two options one has available when called a derogatory
name. A fun third option is to completely ignore it and demonstrate in that
ignorance that you've already won the conversation, which breaks the negative
reinforcement you're discussing.

Seriously, next time someone goes after you, try it. Laugh and move on. It's
really, really fun to watch what people do in response, because their anger at
not landing the desired effect often manifests in physical twitches. Don't
give people what they want until it benefits you.

~~~
thewebcount
> you will ... disengage

Isn't that what the GP said?

------
dgrin91
I don't think there is a single definition for the health of a community. The
leaders of the community define what their goals are, and based on that health
can be assessed. For HN that is things like high quality, technically oriented
links & discussions, as well as minimization of things like noise, spam,
clickbait, trolling or flaming.

I think on those metrics HN does pretty well. Obviously not perfect, things
fall through the cracks all the time, but way better than other communities
that strive for the same thing.

I don't remember how I originally got into HN, but what drives me to stay is
alignment in goals. I _want_ the things HN is optimizing for.

~~~
sankalpb
Thanks, I'm interested by your sense that health is assessed after 'leaders of
the community define what their goals are' and not, for instance, that
'members of the community' define their goals collectively, could you say more
about this?

------
danso
I think it's still pretty good, and I still learn a lot from the submitted
articles and their discussions, more than any other social network/discussion
site I can currently think of. For a site that constantly has discussions on
topics that typically trigger egos, while also giving a lot of leeway to
anonymous account posting, it's about as civil as I can imagine any Internet
site being these days.

~~~
sankalpb
thanks, would you say that 'learning a lot' is an indicator, for you, of
'health' in an online community, such as HN? in what ways does being 'about as
civil' shape your sense of HN 'health'?

~~~
danso
Sure, a place that continues to adapt and engage with in a rapidly changing
world (not just tech, but in general) is a great thing, and difficult to do
depending on the userbase. For a general forum (i.e. not split into specific
subreddits), HN does a really good job of providing both "classic" and
new/current discussion topics. I never doubt that there won't be at least one
or two every interesting things on the front page on any day, and that's an
obvious incentive to (habitually) visit and participate in discussions.

As for HN's civility, relative to many other places (twitter, reddit, news
sites comment sections), I think that's a credit to the moderation policy and
not something that would happen on its own. I see the effort in moderation as
being cause+correlation of the community civility. And if civility were to
noticeably decline, I'd take that as a sign that YC was less invested in
maintaining and growing HN as a community and discussion forum.

------
prostheticvamp
Your question presupposes HN is a community. To the extent that community is
“a group of people with shared interests,” I don’t know how you would define
that as healthy or not - health refers to fitness for function, and there’s no
inherent function in “common interests.” The bar there is essentially, “does
the community impede bullshitting and sharing links of interest?” No, it
doesn’t, cool, it must be healthy.

But I think most anthropologists define community as traditionally involving
shared resources and problems. Traditionally this entailed a geographic
proximity, but it didn’t have to (e.g., the HIV activist community in the 80s
and 90s). Given that geography isn’t actually a requirement, you might ask a
fair question: what proportion of online “communities” are communities at all,
and does that relate to their “health”, however you define it. In that
instance, you might refer to health as the ability to marshal resources to
effectively manage those problems. By that definition, HN isn’t a community at
all - it marshals no resources, tackles no problems, and has no common set of
either. Health is orthogonal.

~~~
sankalpb
Thanks for raising this point on whether or not 'community' can be reasonably
used here, as it's an important one. Admittedly, I did not push deeper on the
term 'community' at first, though I notice that the HN Welcome tab refers to
this space as a 'community site'. That may well just be a descriptor for the
site, but that doesn't adequately address your point. I haven't trained as an
anthropologist, so the aspect about 'shared resources and problems' is helpful
for me see here. Would you say, 'community' can be multiple in its definition
by different members of a group? Would you say that any or all all members of
a group must collectively agree on the status of their group as a 'community'
to in fact be considered a community?

~~~
joveian
The word community can be used in a huge variety of ways. The aiksaurus
headings are simulation, town meeting, sharing, society, body. In many uses it
just means place.

In some sense pushing back against any particular usage of a word with such a
range of meanings is not a particularly useful task. On the other hand,
community is often used as a positive term and it is useful to unpack it in
more detail in that circumstance since it is often abused in its generality
for marketing or political purposes. One aspect to consider is why the word
community is used in a particular situation rather than some other word. I
think it is more useful when looking deeper to consider to what extent
particular aspects of community could be applied in a particular case and how
different people might use the term rather than "community? yes or no".

Often the word community can relate to how people relate to each other in
terms of providing daily needs. From that perspective the term is including
the regular and excluding the occasional. Many people do interact with HN
regularly over extended periods.

In another sense it can relate to personal rather than professional or
impersonal contact with others. Personally I find it a bit jarring in the
context of HN being described as a community to see people talking about how
it would be healthier if people didn't try to have personal conversations. But
it is a feature of HN to generally discourage personal conversations and at
the same time many commenters do know each other outside HN for various
reasons. Additionally, most topics get very limited attention after the first
12 hours or so so it is common for later comments to be more personal.

In another sense it can refer to more vital connections, at least in a wider
sense of long term importance and not just necessary to survive but also not
including any casual connections. I think this would vary quite a bit among
readers and participants on HN.

It can also imply a bidirectional influence even if not a balanced influence.
I think the term would generally exclude anyone without some form of presence
in the community, even if very minor.

Anyway, the word community can be used to start any length of writing so I'll
stop there. How does your class define community?

------
probdist
Hacker News has incredibly good long term retention of active users
(commenters/submitters). I just published a blog post on the subject
([https://probdist.com/2020/03/28/the-graying-of-hacker-
news-u...](https://probdist.com/2020/03/28/the-graying-of-hacker-news-
users/)).

Lots of users on HN are actively contributing for years after sign up. This to
me is a good sign of health. The counter point is of course, the rapid drop
off in engagement after the initial month. Where a large number of users each
month never return to the site.

The average comment on Hacker News last month was written by a user with 5
years of tenure on the site. Depending on your perspective you could argue
this is a good or a bad thing (new users aren't contributing as much as old
users, or old users are continuing to contribute!).

------
yamrzou
A healthy online community is one that I can learn from, where I can find
insightful discussions. That's what attracts me the most to HN. I've learned a
ton since discovering it, some things had a direct positive impact on my life.

This doesn't come without a cost : HN is highly addictive, like every other
social media website.

This is not necessarily the criteria I use to determine 'health' in offline
communities. There is a "human" side that is more important offline.

What I miss the most about HN : the ability to have discussions around
political and controversial topics. I can't understand why a community like HN
isn't able to have thoughtful, well reasoned discussions around political and
controcersial issues. When those don't get flagged or hidden by moderators, I
enjoy them a lot.

------
threatofrain
I feel like people are just listing generically good ideas for social
atmosphere, but to me an entire collection of those things does not amount to
health -- things like warmth, empathy, forgiveness, etc.

One of the things I notice about Hacker News is that it wants things. It wants
all sorts of things. There's clash but there's also recognizable consensus on
want. What I also see is that HN won't get what they want, and I don't believe
they're any closer to effectively organizing to get what they want, whether
it's unions or racially fair hiring or a different scheme in how money works.

HN is not effective, and that is why I view them as unhealthy. HN wants things
and it shall not have them. You can put warmth and love in that package, but
it's still impotent.

~~~
sankalpb
Hi, can you say more about how you have come to view HN as a 'them' \- do you
see the HN community as separate and apart from you as a member?

~~~
threatofrain
It's just textual flavor and not HN specific.

------
LifeIsBio
What are some examples of communities that are significantly "healthier" than
HN?

I'm particularly curious about communities that are "similar" to HN. Use
whatever definitions of "healthier" and "similar" you think are appropriate.

------
timwaagh
Look I don't think it's the medium really. HN is quite similar to Reddit.
Reddit I wouldn't consider to be that healthy as it's really driven by strong
politics and it's sometimes impossible to express an opinion reasonably
without getting into trouble. The big difference: the people. I think HN is a
healthy community because it consists to a degree of like minded people. Smart
people with an interest in programming and technology business/startups.
Whereas Reddit is everybody from teenagers to farmers. That's not to say I
dislike Reddit. I was on that site many years.

------
yeswecatan
I'm a big fan of the discussion and insightful comments provided by the
community. Things tend to be quite negative though. I wonder if that's just
how tech people are ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

------
gitpusher
> communities with controversy aren't necessarily 'unhealthy'

I recommend you explore the concept of "agonism" – which claims that (certain
forms of) conflict and disagreement are essential components of a healthy
democratic system. Many parallels could be drawn to online communities
(specifically) and the curation of productive, social spaces (in general.)

In this era of conflict avoidance and information siloing... promoting the
right sorts of disagreement might actually do a great social good!

Good luck with your assignment.

~~~
sankalpb
thank for suggesting the concept of 'agonism' here, would you say that HN
enables or doesn't enable 'agonistic' relations well, such as the ability of
its members to 'disagree', and how?

------
zaptheimpaler
Even before we get to the "healthy" part, I'd argue HN is a true community,
which is hard to say of other social networks today..

1\. The commenters here have some common interests beyond the lowest common
denominator of politics/pop culture/humor(memes). In larger networks this part
often breaks down.

2\. It genuinely has shared values - particularly curiosity, skepticism and
debate. Plenty of negative ones too - cynicism, anger, grandiosity but hey :)

3\. It is NOT a ad-click-maximizing dopamine slot-machine like FB. When
networks go down that path, i think they stop being communities altogether and
become something more like TV.

4\. It is more resistant to group think than e.g Reddit subs like /r/investing
because it has a broader scope I think.. networks with a overly narrow focuses
inevitably become echo-chambers the network converges on a consensus view. HN
is somehow not completely defined by "i'm interested in X, so lets go to
/r/X", its broader than that, but narrow enough to not

Maybe i'm behind the times, but HN is one of the very few places I'd even call
an online community, forget healthy. "Healthy" at the scale of a global
community can only be a sterile echo chamber. HN is as unhealthy and flawed as
its members, which is something to be proud of. I've never seen a real
community of people I'd describe purely as healthy.

~~~
sankalpb
Thanks for your reply! I'm intrigued by this point, "HN is as unhealthy and
flawed as its members, which is something to be proud of", could you say more?
also, what do you mean by the part about 'healthy' at a global scale only
being a 'sterile echo chamber'?

~~~
zaptheimpaler
I'll try to explain it the best I can.. remember James Damore? (read this:
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/16/james-
dam...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/16/james-damore-
google-memo-interview-autism-regrets))

I happened to agree with what he said at the time (scares me to type this),
because he talked about AVERAGE differences between genders as group, and i
thought it was ridiculous to assert that men & women are identical in all ways
from a biological perspective.

But i'm definitely kind of aspergersy/autistic, and after a LOT of reading and
some private discussion with friends, i came to understand why everyone was so
pissed at him. My friends know me, and they didn't stop being my friends the
second I said that. This is what his girlfriend had to say:

"But after reading it a few times, and discussing it with him, her position
mellowed; she even came to agree with one or two of his points. She maintains
Damore was, for the most part, naive and wrong,"

So in happy offline world, a naive guy said a dumb thing, people got mad at
him, but they forgave. If the memo had been only between him and his
girlfriend, he would have learnt from that experience and come out a slightly
better person.

\------

But what happened in the online sphere, orchestrated by people who did not
know him? He lost his job and any prospect of ever being hired again for years
at least.

Consequences in the online world are FUCKED. There is no safe way to engage
with controversy when the stakes are that high. Everything you said will be
accessible to all people, for all time. And remember, everything from the
heliocentric universe to the idea that gay people deserve equal treatment was
controversial at one time.

Hence, online forums with real names attached become "sterile echo chambers"
as I said.

HN is able to engage in some amount of controversial discussion without
devolving into a lynch mob. Its a very rare thing. The whole idea of calling
online forums "communities" at all grates at me because people forget how
truly different these artificial spaces where we engage with context-less
pieces of other people are to the real world.

\-----

I think healthy at a truly global scale can only be either communities that
completely stamp out controversial thought but end up saying nothing
interesting , or those that don't but involve mob mentality and lynching.
Those are the only 2 global level endgames for online networks, and they both
suck in their own ways, but fundamentally because of human reasons. Only
networks that aren't used by everyone have any shot of being in the healthy
middle.

------
milesvp
There’s a lot of comments on this thread, and I apologize if I’m saying
anything that’s been said multiple times already.

I would say that HN is the healthiest comment driven site I’ve been part of in
the 27 years I’ve been on the internet. It’s big, and still doesn’t succumb to
the trolls who tend to be the biggest problem on anonymous comment threads.
There are a few rules here that are pretty well policed, bit I think the
single most important one is to read and respond to comments in the most
positive light possible. It keeps threads civil, and tends to starve the
trolls.

It also helps that we have very good moderators.

I will say that it feels it feels like the heart of what made HN isn’t as
apparent anymore. Many of the strong core that was here isn’t as prevalent
anymore, but despite this, and it’s seeming growth it still hasn’t succumbed
to the poor behavior of a minority of users that tend to disrupt and subvert
communities like this after a surprisingly short amount of time.

I keep coming back because the comments tend to have good gems, and a good
take on the main article, without having to deal with most of the vitriol of
most comment sections.

------
thaumaturgy
Hi Sankalp.

I've been on HN since before 2008. I've seen it change a lot. Before then, I
was a regular on Slashdot, on IRC, on various phpBB boards, and, before that,
dial-up BBSs. I've got a fairly healthy offline life too and have been a part
of climbing communities, business communities, and outdoor communities, and
have had organizational roles in some of those. So my opinions aren't worth
more than anyone else's, but I've spent a lot of time developing them
nonetheless.

Whether a community, online or not, is "healthy", or not, is largely a matter
of perspective. You'll see a lot of people say some community isn't healthy,
and then a lot of people say the same community is healthy for the same
reasons that other people find it unhealthy. The only metric that makes sense
to me is whether the community helps me to be a happier or better person. A
community might have a lot of faults, but if the overall impact of the
community on me is a positive one, then it's healthy -- for me.

So from that standpoint, HN has been good to me. I learn a lot from it, it
helps me stay sharp in my part of the industry, it challenges me to learn new
things all the time. Some of the stuff I've learned here, I've gone on to
teach others (as faithfully as I could) or just shown other people how to find
it here on their own.

There are a lot of smart people here and a lot of interesting content on all
kinds of subjects. Sometimes a subject matter expert shows up to point out
everything that's wrong with some content that I thought I was learning
something from; from their perspective, that content made HN a little bit
worse, but from my perspective, that content led to their participation and
together that made HN a little bit better.

Sure, there are some "personalities" on here that some people disagree with
from time to time, or maybe that a lot of people disagree with often. Well,
those people are in every community and I don't think HN would be more healthy
without them. They could, maybe, benefit from a little more humility, but so
could I.

I'm a bit mercurial and I'm passionate about some topics, especially those
involving the health and welfare of the people around me. And, honestly, I'm
just a bit of a jerk sometimes, a fault that I developed young and something I
have to work on every day. That's made me an "unhealthy" part of HN from time
to time. It's also my humanity, though, and I don't think that the things I've
written in a dispassionate voice have necessarily been better, or more
impactful, or even received better, than the things I write passionately. But,
I don't want to become a part of the problem, so mostly I try to be quiet and
let the smarter people lead the discussion.

One of the healthiest parts of HN is Dan Gackle (~dang). Okay, so some of this
might be interpreted as boot-licking, so you'll have to trust me when I say
that nobody's ever accused me of loving authority. I have never, in any of my
communities, online or offline, seen a more even-handed, fair-minded, or
restrained person in a moderator role. There have been some articles written
about his work here ([https://thenewstack.io/the-beleaguered-moderators-who-
keep-h...](https://thenewstack.io/the-beleaguered-moderators-who-keep-hacker-
news-focused-on-intellectual-curiosity/),
[https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-
valley/th...](https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/the-
lonely-work-of-moderating-hacker-news), [https://qz.com/858124/why-y-
combinators-hacker-news-silicon-...](https://qz.com/858124/why-y-combinators-
hacker-news-silicon-valleys-premier-news-source-is-halting-all-political-
debate-for-a-week/)). I keep hanging around here in part because he and the
other moderators here do such a great job overall. So, anybody ever wants to
get rid of me, there ya go.

Their positions necessarily mean that they're going to piss somebody off now
and again. They have the unenviable task of often asking people not to talk --
well, argue -- about the subjects they most want to talk or argue about. I'm
amazed at how many people though instead say something like, "You're right, I
was out of line, sorry." I wish this was a skill they could teach, I'd sign up
for that class without a second thought.

I do wish we had a little more balance here. We need more outspoken women here
for instance. I appreciated ~jl's presence here and a few others early on and
was hopeful there would be more. We need to hear more from people who are
experiencing the industry, or life, in a different way from the rest of us.

I wish also that there were more opportunities for people here to be, well, a
little more "human", I guess. HN's nature leads it to sort of discourage
humanity in the discussions. You have to make an effort to get to know anyone
here, and mostly that happens outside of HN, in email or elsewhere. So to that
extent, HN often feels less like a real community to me. I knew much more
about the people in my old IRC communities.

The only other weakness I think HN has is the really short-lived nature of its
discussions. In the past, online communities all had software that would allow
discussions to continue for a little while, so if you read something
interesting and wanted to say something interesting about it, but needed time
to compose it or maybe do a little research before saying anything, that was
fine. You could take a little bit of time to write something better, and
people would still read it. On HN, once something isn't on the front page
anymore, nobody reads it. If something is on the front page for a long time,
then it usually gets so many comments that there's no point adding to them,
because nobody will navigate through hundreds of other comments to find the
new thing you wrote, even if it's good. And if something's on the front page
for a short time, you have to rush to add to the discussion before it
disappears forever. It's a bit like the whole forum is always doing a bit of
methamphetamine, and that's not great.

I never know what to put in the last line of comments like these.

------
rkangel
All judges of health are subjective obviously, and while HN has flaws I would
judge it to be, yes.

The main thing I would point to justify that it is healthy is that the vast
majority of the comments are informed, well written and productive. They add
to the information in the linked article, and provide insight from multiple
points of view.

------
CuriousSkeptic
There’s a very long and deep dive into the topic of healthy communities here
[https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-
us.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-us.html) which I enjoyed.

To borrow from that analysis I would say that HN do exhibit some tribal
thinking tendencies but over all dissenting perspectives are tolerated enough
to allow new knowledge about a wide variety of topics to bubble up.

As someone noted the seemingly large amount of subject experts present for
those topics might contribute more to this than the actual culture though.

And often enough some self proclaimed expert, or an entire clique of them,
spin off into some thread sharing their take. But I’d say there just enough
skepticism presented to prevent things to devolve into pure cargo culting.

------
mav3rick
It can get very insular and dogmatic at times. Some common views -

1\. "I don't know who would have smart speakers at home. " Most people don't
care.

2\. GOOGLE is Lord Voldemort.

3\. FB is Sauron.

4\. Startup life > Big company

5\. "Who would live in the bay area. I am happy at my ranch doing remote
work."

~~~
abnry
Like some of those views are silly, but I find it hard to get worked up when
someone is passionately expressing one of them.

If I feel my buttons are regularly being pushed, then that is a sign of an
unhealthy community. That's why I quit twitter.

~~~
krapp
There's also racism, sexism, occasional anti-semitism and nationalistic
antagonism.

Just about any thread that mentions China, India, certain "politically
incorrect" tech luminaries, race or gender politics tends to devolve into
passionately expressed cesspools of toxicity and vitriol. Follow dang's
account for a bit, he has to talk people down from the crazy ledge all the
time. He's done it to me a couple of times, because this place just gets under
my skin sometimes.

~~~
abnry
I consider those the more political posts, and pretty much any of those is
guaranteed to be bad because modern society's political discourse is miserably
bad. One thing I think is good about HN is that if you can filter those out,
it becomes a pretty good place. My experience on twitter is that it is
basically impossible to filter out the political stuff (I tried many things,
its too hard). That, to me, makes it a lot less healthy.

~~~
krapp
The unhealthy part in both cases is the inability of erstwhile professional
adults to have a civil and productive conversation about things that _matter_
, and like as not, politics does matter. It matters a lot more than many of
the topics that get discussed here, despite being sorted into the "mainstream,
therefore off topic" bucket by most.

It's particularly unhealthy in HN's case because this community has the
pretense of holding itself to a standard of intellectual merit and civility
above the internet mainstream. We can have intellectually stimulating
discussions about compiler design or type theory all day long but wander
outside the "technical" box and suddenly people are screaming about white
genocide and cultural marxism or spouting QAnon or anti-vaxx conspiracy
theories.

~~~
sankalpb
Thanks, I'm fascinated that you bring up the 'inability...to have civil and
productive conversation about things that matter, and like as not, politics
does matter', what makes this the case here at HN, in your perspective? Also,
can you say more about the how 'this community has the pretense of holding
itself to a standard of intellectual merit and civility above the internet
mainstream'? How do you think the this 'pretense' came to be held? why
'intellectual merit and civility'? and makes you say it is 'above' the
internet mainstream?

------
verylittlemeat
Hacker News is good because it's a middle ground. It's not toxic like
metafilter where users know each other well enough to form factions. It's not
as big as reddit so that you lose any sense of community.

------
zwieback
Yes, I'd say for what it's trying to achieve it's pretty healthy and the
responses here seem to confirm that. The limit of text only and the voting
mechanism prevent the worst instincts and I think the moderation is okay.

I'd heard about it shortly after it started and have been following ever since
although not as much as I used to.

I like it as a place to get exposed to "modern" software topics but I feel
like I get more value out of it after learning the overall bias of the
commenters.

I feel (no proof whatsoever) that the downvoting behavior suggests juvenile
members are the heaviest voters.

------
plerpin
Kind of. There are a lot of smart people who think that their expertise in one
narrow domain transfers universally. There is a lot of bikeshedding and
reinventing concepts from first principles, often badly.

~~~
sankalpb
Thanks, can you tell me more about the 'bikeshedding' at HN?

------
DoreenMichele
I would say it is sort of the online community equivalent of a healthy big
city, not a healthy small town. As such, it's not reasonable to expect the
same sense of community here as you would with a smaller social group.

Last I heard, HN gets about 5 million unique visitors a month. The human brain
can cope effectively with a community of around 150 members.

For a time, I was the lead mod for The TAG Project. Prior to my arrival, the
founder had done some good internal research on her group of online
communities (a set of email lists) and found that 20 percent of members were
regular and active, another 10 percent posted once or occasionally and the
rest were lurkers.

This seems to be roughly true for other communities I have participated in
elsewhere.

If you do the math, that means you will have about 150 active members posting
regularly when you get to about 750 members. In my experience, once you get to
about 750 or 800 members, you start seeing splinter groups form and you start
getting new things budding out of that.

Other small email lists began to spin off of one of those email lists once it
got big enough.

So if you want a strong sense of community, you are talking about a small town
atmosphere where you have about 150 active members and some number of lurkers.

I have passingly thought that the leader board of HN should maybe be 150 names
long instead of 100 to help foster some sense of community -- to help foster
that same pattern of "there are 150 people whom we all know and can follow all
the relationships and so forth" that you get with a smaller online community.
But I don't feel strongly about it and I don't see any point in making it some
hill to die on, so I think I have mentioned it in comments maybe once or twice
before for some reason and that's it.*

Big cities rely on formality and such to account for the fact that we don't
all know each other well etc. HN does a better job than most communities of
actually applying the rules fairly even-handedly and not just playing
favorites for certain insiders.

There are some really corrupt communities that pretend they are nice places,
but the rules are applied by the mods completely differently for "insiders"
versus "outsiders" and it's very toxic. No, they probably won't help you
assimilate either.

This is not true here. The mods don't have to personally like you to give you
a fair shake if you will make an effort to reform your bad habits and actually
play by the rules.

I think HN is a healthy space, but no longer has a strong sense of community
like it did when I first joined. But I was always an outsider looking in who
never really got to benefit from that strong sense of community (in fact, it
arguably did me a lot of harm).

I stuck around because it had those big city formality things already going on
and was kind of the least worst option for my needs and purposes. It had
virtues that helped me make it work for me in spite of humans being human and
certain problems (like sexism) being rampant and inescapable across the globe.

* Edit: I run my mouth a lot. It's probably more than twice in the last decade, but I certainly don't harp on it.

~~~
thaumasiotes
You've come the closest to the point I wanted to make -- I think, in a
"healthy community", the members recognize each other as members. Otherwise,
you're not a community.

Your idea that HN is more like an economically healthy city than a socially
healthy town sounds like another take on that idea. I think it conflicts with
this suggestion:

> I have passingly thought that the leader board of HN should maybe be 150
> names long instead of 100 to help foster some sense of community -- to help
> foster that same pattern of "there are 150 people whom we all know and can
> follow all the relationships and so forth" that you get with a smaller
> online community.

The problem is that the leaderboard is a list of community heroes, not a list
of community members. You may know who tptacek is, but he doesn't know who you
are. (In general.) By my criterion, that means he is a part of the community,
and you're not.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I don't see a conflict. Making people aware of who the supposed insiders/"real
community members" are to _foster a sense of community_ has potential value
for the group at large.

I don't actually think there is a core community any longer. I don't think
everyone on the leader board exchanges emails or something.

I've spent time on the leader board under a previous handle. I appear to be
the only woman to have done that. It absolutely wasn't some magic "in" where I
suddenly joined some club and all that. I've been around enough to know they
aren't all friends or something.

Members of the leader board come and go. Edit: By which I mean making the
leader board isn't some kind of permanent status. I'm not the only person who
used to be on the leader board and still participates.

A social group of this size fundamentally works differently from a small town.
That doesn't mean that only hardcore insiders benefit from a sense of
community.

Probably, the reason people talk a lot about famous celebrities and popular
movies and TV shows on the internet is because those are touchstones we have
in common to help socially orient ourselves, smooth communication, etc.

Fostering a sense of community can help establish community norms, help
newcomers orient and figure out how to fit in, etc. No, participating here
isn't going to be the same as living in a tiny town of 150 people your entire
life. It doesn't need to be to benefit members and for things to generally run
better when we apply some means to help establish cultural norms, etc.

------
ape4
I posted something slightly wrong by accident and was voted down like crazy.
In a human conversation it would have been easily corrected. But on the whole,
I really like the HN community.

~~~
sankalpb
Hi there, when it happened, did that experience of being downvoted change your
perspective on the 'health' of HN? can you say more about contrasts between a
human conversation and the conversations on HN?

~~~
ape4
Well, I noticed the downvotes. It didn't ruin my day but I wondered why. I
didn't notice my mistake. After a few hours somebody commented correcting me.
Oh yeah, oops, that was what I meant. Did that change my perspective? Not
sure. Voting is a rather crude way to do things but its easy to implement and
sometimes is useful.

~~~
skissane
Sometimes I wish there was a rule that you had to reply to a comment before
you can downvote it.

I see people say things, and their comment starts going grey, and from that I
can infer that more than one person found what they said disagreeable, but no
replies – none of those people have explained why they disagree. The commenter
(and observers such as myself) just have to guess why.

(Often, when I see a comment going grey for unclear reasons, I'll give it a
compensatory upvote. I'm sure I'm not the only person who does this.)

------
hartator
I feel sometimes you get upvoted or downvoted more depending on politics more
on the inner comment quality.

For pure tech and startup comments, I would say it's very healthy.

------
DrNuke
Here you find a lot of people trying hard and learning or already building
something in accordance with proven and successful guidelines, which is much
better than many similar internet aggregations out there. After that, sure,
there is some latent negativity on here, it sometimes resembles a cult and it
is not the Red Cross charity for sure. All in all, healthy maybe, a daily
nudge for sure.

------
meheleventyone
From my perspective it’s pretty healthy. It’s just very insular and inward
focussed. Checkout n-gate which does a great job of pointing out the inherent
contradictions here. My only other criticism is that moderation tries too hard
to make this place “of great minds discussing ideas” outside of material
conditions. Lots of nasty stuff gets a pass for being academically delivered.

I do find it funny that a lot of posters find this place left leaning. I guess
I could see it as such if you take left wing as Democratic neoliberalism but
from a lefty European perspective it’s the same uninspired, technocratic guff
we get from our mainstream right wing parties.

------
blaser-waffle
> What criteria do you use to determine 'health' in online communities?

Level of activity, quality of discourse (that's hard to measure, but like art
vs. the pronz, "I know it when I see it"), ease of use, and the ability to get
and give useful feedback on relevant topics.

> How do these differ from those criteria you use to determine ‘health’ in
> offline communities you are in?

Mostly the same. "If you're the smartest person in the room... find a new
room" is true in real life as online. Things like culture, language, and
hygiene are more of a consideration in person; I don't care what you smell
like when you're posting on reddit.

> How does HN exemplify or not exemplify 'healthy' behaviors? What behaviors
> of your own would you acknowledge may or may not contribute to the overall
> ‘health’ of HN?

Active, knowledgeable, and able to refute obviously bad points (though it
still has its circlejerks at times) -- I would characterize this as healthy.
HN also has a specific focus -- highly technical -- and is free of ads and
other unwelcome overt marketing (though I'm 100% sure there is covert
marketing happening). It is an organ of YCombinator, so some degree of start-
up shilling is expected and tolerated (even welcome, sometimes), but again it
is expected and thus easy to avoid or ignore.

HN also is able to get rid of or generally marginalize the few, obviously
toxic posters. They show up, no doubt, but are fairly hard to find compared to
some of the clearly bad-faith subreddits like fatpeoplehate or the like.

>How did you get into HN? Who introduced you? What makes you stay?

Regular reddit and slashdot user, lots of overlap with those sites. I stay
mostly because it is a fairly healthy tech forum; see the reasons above. HN
also represents (generally) an older (as in, not 19-year-old wanna be hacker,
but like 29-45 year old who has been around) professional crowd, with a very
heavy focus on tech. That said, HN also has enough people who aren't in IT to
keep it interesting. The level of education and overall work experience is
_considerably_ higher than a lot of other forums, as is the "grown-up-in-the-
room", peer-to-peer feel of the place. By comparison, some subreddits like
r/relationships or r/legaladvice is full of people talking entirely out of
their ass, or with no sense of reality or self-awareness (or just straight up
trolling).

------
gintery
This site suffers from extreme group-think. Comments are essentially
predictable, as anyone who disagrees with the public opinion will either
refrain from posting or not get upvotes anyway. This is what you get from
sorting content by vote count. I think that, ironically, the problem is
technical and not so much social.

~~~
sankalpb
Thanks for raising this point - what makes you say that 'technical' and
'social' are separable as it relates to the problem of 'group-think' and
'sorting content by vote count'?

~~~
gintery
My guess would be that there's a feedback effect, where posters learn to only
post comments which are likely to get upvotes. The net effect is that shared
opinions converge. Ideally a comment section would be a sample of the whole
distribution of opinions, while in practice only the mode of this distribution
is represented. This is a direct effect of having votes on comments.

With regards to your question, what I meant was that these two aspects are in
fact non-separable. The technical solution (upvotes) shapes the social
behavior (the type of discussion) very strongly.

------
1123581321
Just replying to give you a data point, not to argue with anyone. Is there a
way I can subscribe to get the results of your study?

1\. Criteria for health in online communities: users are sincere and extend
goodwill towards each other when they discuss topics. Many users (more than a
tiny minority) contribute original ideas, personal stories and evidence of
things they make. There is some effort required to contribute but members are
incentivized to try by the anticipated responses and reactions of other
members. Moderation is predictable and is emotionally intelligent. A critical
mass of users are mature enough that norms don’t quickly change, and there is
no mechanism a small minority can use to be over-represented when
administration considers the wishes of the community (i.e. the Metafilter
problem.) The community does not believe that its comments are the main
attraction to the site. This isn’t a complete list.

2\. How the criteria differs from offline community health: online communities
are mostly discussion whereas offline communities work together, share meals,
and so on, so it’s vital for the discussion to be high quality online in order
for the community to be healthy. Offline communities have greeting and parting
rituals that shape them.

3\. How HN exemplifies healthy or unhealthy behaviors: HN mostly exemplifies
healthy behaviors. There is a minority of users who are too immature and
inexperienced to make valuable contributions, and a smaller minority who are
antisocial. This percentage doesn’t seem to be increasing quickly, though. A
substantial number of HN users believe comments are the main draw to the site,
which is an unhealthy mindset to the degree those users are willing to let the
quality of the links and text posts degrade.

4\. Behaviors of my own that contribute: I try to extend goodwill towards
users and encourage discussion of particulars, rather than fighting over
general statements. On the other hand, I have a tendency to participate in
inconsequential/creativity-free conversations that need to stay below a
threshold to continue to attract users who have more to offer. I also downvote
a lot of comments that attack other users or write unhinged, insubstantial
polemics.

5\. How I got into HN: I came here from a Paul Graham essay in 2008-2009
(different username.) He had a link to HN on his personal site. At the time, I
was developing heavily in Rails and learned a lot from the Ruby-oriented and
JS framework articles.

6\. Who introduced me: See above. I didn’t know another HN reader personally
for years, or at least didn’t know whether I knew one.

7\. What makes me stay: the links and Show HN are interesting. Ultimately,
good content drives good discussion.

~~~
ashika
>no mechanism a small minority can use to be over-represented when
administration considers the wishes of the community (i.e. the Metafilter
problem.)

I agree that is a decent criterion for health, but is metafilter really so
notorious for special interest coddling? I always found the administration
there fairly transparent, especially around topics of decision-making. Did I
miss something scandalous? I tend to hold them up as the only example I know
of for a healthy general-purpose discussion forum.

~~~
1123581321
Just to explain, I’m saying the dynamic in MetaTalk itself is unhealthy, not
the resulting policy changes (separate question.) MetaTalk encourages
incessant participation in controversial threads by users who want to
influence the site, which then draws users who make valuable contributions to
the rest of the site into MetaTalk to defend the viewpoints of themselves or
others, which decreases participation across the site. It also creates an
unnecessary opportunity for long-time members to get upset and close their
accounts. Over time, MetaTalk has fatigued the staff, so they have implemented
controls to limit discussion, which in turn upset community members who feel
they are denied access to that backchannel, which has driven participation in
new side channels that respect fewer of the site’s norms.

Hopefully that makes sense. Keep in mind it’s my opinion. I still consider
MetaFilter a generally healthy community, too.

------
ravenstine
It's healthy in some ways and unhealthy in others. Overall, I guess I'd have
to say that it's _healthy_ since the quality of the content and discussion far
exceeds Reddit, Twitter, etc.

But it's not without serious flaws. As others may have mentioned, there's a
lot of groupthink here that's shrouded under very academic/intellectual
pretense. Because everyone wants to look like they're on the cutting edge, the
community creates this illusion that "only _real_ developers use <insert
language/framework of the day>". I'm almost certain that a lot of content gets
no attention or isn't discussed because it's not considered cool.

However, this is nothing new. I haven't really seen this community degrade in
that sense.

What has degraded is the community's attitude towards voting/downvoting. In my
opinion, as I have expressed many times, the comment voting system is broken.
Obviously, there needs to be some kind of community moderation, so I'm not
necessarily saying that the system should be abolished(not yet), but it's not
functioning that well in its current state. Users have to be extremely careful
about what they post because, if misinterpreted in the slightest way, your
opinion, even if civilized and valid, will be demoted. If your comment is even
the slightest shade of grey, few will take it seriously, and it will be pushed
down on the heap. All it takes is a few people to not like what you have to
say and press the down arrow in the belief that their dislike should mean
something.

Over the past maybe 4 years, I've noticed more people taking advantage of
downvoting rather harmless comments without creating a discussion about why
they feel that way. This is harmful because, due to the mechanics of
downvoting, people are de-legitimizing others when they should really only
reserve the down arrow button for "This comment is blatantly rule-
breaking/offensive/wrong, and others shouldn't see it". The latter really
should be a rarity.

I don't know if it's just the politics of our time that have encouraged
everyone to hold strong opinions on everything, but the increase in downvoting
behavior makes me believe that downvoting should be removed and replaced with
flagging. Maybe HN runs on bare bones, but if something isn't breaking the
rules, then it shouldn't be suppressed, but if something breaks the rules,
moderation should know about it rather than letting randos on the internet
determine what's legitimate and what isn't.

TL;DR The community is healthy in that it has above-average caliber in
discussion, but there's a higher level of intellectual suppression and back-
patting than I've seen elsewhere.

------
RMPR
> How did you get into HN? Who introduced you?

We have pretty much the same story in this regard.

> What makes you stay?

An important part of what makes me stay is the straightforward design of the
website :) and it's lightweight, so it loads even on slow networks which tend
to be fairly common where I live.

------
jbkiv
Hello Sankalp, I am starting an online community for financial services
professionals. They have decimated by this crisis. If you have any draft of
your paper, I would love to read and maybe we could learn from others'
mistakes. Thks. jb at kivfinance dot com

------
kangnkodos
I think there are two axes to consider.

Is it possible to have reasoned debate? Yes.

Is the community a bubble? Are some topics and ideas which are immediately
shut down? Yes.

It's possible that you have to have some of the second in order to get some of
the first.

------
kissgyorgy
It's heavily moderated, so we can't really tell, but probably not, because
most of us lives in the tech bubble with good salaries, good opportunities,
whine about small stupid things and such (including myself).

------
dhosek
I'm not sure whether this makes things more or less healthy, but because HN
really downplays the posters of links and comments, I don't really have any
sense of personalities on the site like I do elsewhere.

------
egypturnash
I am just gonna say that I think Metafilter is a much healthier place than HN.

~~~
dnissley
It used to be, but the culture wars drove me away from it years ago. I think I
checked out after this discussion:
[https://www.metafilter.com/145707/Privilege-doesnt-mean-
you-...](https://www.metafilter.com/145707/Privilege-doesnt-mean-you-dont-
suffer)

~~~
egypturnash
This is one of the reasons I think it is healthier. A post about the problems
of not being a white middle class male no longer has to have its comments
devolve into people attempting to explain why this particular kind of person
has a right to exist, or what it is like to be one.

------
downshun
Some measures of toxicity briefly mentioned here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22691540](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22691540)

------
badrabbit
With respect to it's goals, it is a healthy community. But in general, it
suffers from several echo-chamber ailments that are difficult to overcome for
any community.

------
NorthOf33rd
Anna Wiener makes commentary in her book Uncanny Valley that's pretty on the
nose, and I know I wouldn't be able to do it justice. Worth a read.

------
m3kw9
Pretty healthy, as a comparison, is a lot better than Stackoverflow as it
feels I can’t say anything without getting voted down unless I please their
gods

------
crtlaltdel
imo, “mostly”. its my impression that this community is very defensive at
times, especially when it comes to issues of inequality along gender lines

------
ItsumoAtarashii
I've always found discussions to have a variety of perspectives which is cool.
I just wonder if the community is mostly men.

------
ykevinator
I would say it's well above average, mostly intelligent respectful discourse
with the occasional religious person or jerk.

~~~
sankalpb
thanks, can you say more about what you think makes a member of an online
community, in this instance HN, a 'jerk' ?

------
sharemywin
not sure if your looking for multiple communities, but you might also check
out indiehackers.com

~~~
sankalpb
thanks, I hadn't heard of that community before!

------
buboard
Most people self censor here. Alternative points of view are not debated, they
are flagged. Ask yourself how good of a job it did to help people get the
picture about Corona, while other places (like my twitter) proved much more
valuable. Health level 50%. It s a legacy community largely saved by having a
more aged demographic than reddit.

------
eanzenberg
It's better than most but it's still a bubble that doesn't match the real-
world.

~~~
dkdk8283
Yes, there are strong ideological echo chambers here. It is also left leaning.

~~~
dang
That's in the eye of the beholder. Edit: here's a nice example in this very
thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22706035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22706035).

I can give you a long list of links that say the opposite.

Edit: I can't help myself.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19194629](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19194629)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16407769](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16407769)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231654](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231654)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16750306](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16750306)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17248326](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17248326)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21220644](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21220644)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21641004](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21641004)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21316611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21316611)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17499061](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17499061)

Stop me before I link again.

~~~
PopeDotNinja
> Stop me before I link again.

STOP :)

------
5cott0
a healthy amount of groupthink

~~~
devmunchies
I was about to say that if you quantify human individuality, then HN would
have a low score. Anything with a downvote mechanism will eventually lead to
conformity of opinion, especially if downvotes are public (ie. gray text).

~~~
Gibbon1
Friend of mine spent 16 years in the coast guard during which the coast guard
started recruiting women into the ranks. I remember someone asking him what he
thought of women in the coast guard and he said, 'Any group composed of one
sex is dysfunctional'

------
_curious_
Hello Sankalp, good questions, here's my responses:

What criteria do you use to determine 'health' in online communities?

Depends on the context, for example, commercial/business health may vary from
the actual health of the members interactions that make up a given community.
Personally, I would assess the health of HN community based on raw engagement
numbers as well as a qualitative assessment of the interaction value, like:

Are the topics relevant to human growth & evolution of the mind? Diverse?
Intelligent? Controversial at times? Is the content I am exposed to and
consuming making me a better _________ ? Do community participants interact in
a way that fosters understanding and knowledge transfer/gain? Are members
willing to admit what they don't know, when they are wrong, and respectfully
disagree in the mean time? Are there a lot of blatant trolls/negative or
useless quips/spam?

What is _your_ working definition of "success" and "health" is what I would
wonder given that you and your institution are apparently investing resources
here?

How do these differ from those criteria you use to determine ‘health’ in
offline communities you are in?

For me, they don't differ much - same criteria, expectations and standards
sought elsewhere online.

How does HN exemplify or not exemplify 'healthy' behaviors?

Not sure how moderated the forum behind the scenes, but I rarely am subjected
to irrelevant, toxic, rude commentary, so props to whomever/however they pull
that off because it keeps many people actively returning and engaging in best
practices aka healthy behavior.

Also, love how dead simple and basic the interface is, don't ever change HN!

One thing I do wish would be clearer communicated / understood is how the
algorithm works as in 'why am I seeing what i am seeing?' I might be missing
this already shared, but it would make for a healthier community by being as
transparent as possible about this because it builds trust in the platform.

What behaviors of your own would you acknowledge may or may not contribute to
the overall ‘health’ of HN?

I'm just here to listen learn from smart people, (in fact I was a lurker for
almost 10 years before more recently creating an account to facilitate my goal
of writing more). My hope would be that individually my impact or value this
community is a net positive :)

How did you get into HN? Who introduced you? What makes you stay?

I don't remember, I think everyone in the entrepreneur/hacker community just
knows about it.

I will conclude by saying one aspect of this community that is unique and you
may want to look into as you conduct your "health" and "success" research is:
the role 'identity politics' has on the quality of conversations among members
in a given community. I am unaware of another robust online community that
places such a high emphasis on the caliber of content/conversations and low
emphasis of who it's coming from as far as I can tell?

~~~
sankalpb
thanks so much for being so thorough, I'll offer my own impressions of
'success' and 'health' below the following questions to your response:

can you tell me more about whether, when you say 'it would make for a
healthier community by being as transparent as possible' \- you're referring
to transparency of the platform, transparency of the culture, transparency of
the membership?

when you describe yourself as 'just here to listen learn from smart people'
and go on to say that you were 'a lurker' for a relatively long period of
time, would you say that there's a connection between two? As in, members who
feel certain role relations (i.e. just here to learn) to the HN community end
up sustaining certain behaviors (i.e. lurking).

I'm not sure I know enough about 'identity politics' as you're using it here,
but fascinated by this distinction between 'caliber of content' and 'who it's
coming from' \- what do you think or see as sustaining this 'high/low'
emphasis the most?

Personally, and provisionally, I consider 'success' and 'health' to be as much
about the ability of a community to sustain itself through a transition -
shift in purpose, direction of vision, change in norms, etc - as much as the
capabilities of its members to bring about these types of transitions.

~~~
_curious_
Hello again,

"can you tell me more about whether, when you say 'it would make for a
healthier community by being as transparent as possible' \- you're referring
to transparency of the platform, transparency of the culture, transparency of
the membership?"

-Transparency around the manual methods & algorithms used on HN as a platform specifically when determining submission/content rankings. Is it 100% social voting?

when you describe yourself as 'just here to listen learn from smart people'
and go on to say that you were 'a lurker' for a relatively long period of
time, would you say that there's a connection between two? As in, members who
feel certain role relations (i.e. just here to learn) to the HN community end
up sustaining certain behaviors (i.e. lurking).

-I don't understand this question, but I think it's just more my nature to be a fly on the wall by default.

I'm not sure I know enough about 'identity politics' as you're using it here,
but fascinated by this distinction between 'caliber of content' and 'who it's
coming from' \- what do you think or see as sustaining this 'high/low'
emphasis the most?

-Again, I don't really understand this question the way its worded? But first and foremost it starts with the way the platform is designed. Think about how little personally identifiable information is required to join and participate this community. All you get is a random handle (which I'd wager most people don't even look at anyways) and nothing else asked, needed, or wanted. It's actually great equalizer on many levels.

...and because of this design approach, how little emphasis is found around
here on who we physically are in terms of age, race, ethnicity, gender,
location, orientation, disability, etc. These components of our 'identity' are
largely if not completely irrelevant in this community. Effectively, what this
does is it creates and keeps more space for the intellect to speak freely and
for itself without distractions, subconscious biases, etc. stemming from the
"who" we are outside - rather it's much more about what's going inside!

I don't know what to call this hypothetical relationship whereas less identity
politics = better content, conversational qualities, and learning
opportunities...(read: health) but there's something bigger at play here on HN
vs any other scaled social community/forum I am aware of - save for some niche
subreddits. (And Twitter would be just about the exact opposite, which maybe
healthy as a business operation, but not nearly as healthy in the community
sense for me at least). Maybe because the nature of the topics and shared
interests on HN is grounded much more in the rational, logical, mathematical,
scientific realm? Does this place and emphasis the pursuit of truth and reason
above all else? Does HN intentionally lack the emotional side of humanity, and
therefore is deemed "healthier" among certain types of people?

Personally, and provisionally, I consider 'success' and 'health' to be as much
about the ability of a community to sustain itself through a transition -
shift in purpose, direction of vision, change in norms, etc - as much as the
capabilities of its members to bring about these types of transitions.

-Thanks for answering that and reading mine.

------
dsfyu404ed
Since nobody's mentioned it yet, you would be very wise to pay attention to
the demographic(s) of this community vs other communities. They explain a
whole lot of the behavior and opinions that are popular here vs elsewhere.

~~~
sankalpb
thanks, can you say more about this? which aspects of the HN demographic do
you see as being important to consider here?

------
t0astbread
That's an interesting question. I think HN has its good and its bad sides.

What I like about HN is the (usually) high quality of discussion. You're
likely not gonna get hit with insults or low blows or trolling on this site. I
think this is in part due to the great moderation (I always wonder how they're
able to pull that off so well with so little staff) but it's also manifested
in the culture here. Commenting on HN just feels different than on Twitter,
for example.

I've also noticed that I act differently on HN compared to other circles that
I'm in. Like, VERY different. On HN, people (me including) share way less
details about themselves and their emotions (from what I've seen - I'm not a
credible source for data), to the point where it sometimes feels like you're
talking to a bunch of robots. Compare that to Twitter: I'm mostly just on
Twitter to follow people I relate to for their portrayal of character online
(be it real or staged). I'm also more open to show my own emotions on Twitter
(though that has its limits as well). However, I wouldn't engage in a serious
discussion on Twitter or use it as a source of information.

Generally I don't think HN really has a concept of "community". It's just a
place where a lot of information is flung around and people (mostly serious
and professional) come to talk about it but you don't really form "bonds" or
"networks" on HN. I mean, sometimes you don't even read the name of the person
you're replying to. That's why I like to think of it as "the least social
network".

I don't take it too seriously either. Like okay, maybe HN has moved the needle
in the real world sometimes but I think most of the discussion here doesn't
have a real impact other than that we're entertained for the moment. (Though
it would be interesting to see an analysis of what HN has or might have done
in the real world.) Therefore I also sometimes see it as a bit of a "roleplay"
where you act in a fancy way just for fun. Like, I'm not trying to mock
anyone, I say exactly what I would say IRL, just in a more formal and correct
manner and I think it's nice to do that occasionally but I don't know why. I'd
like to know what others on this site think about that.

All in all, I don't know. There's a lot more to the question if a site is
"healthy" I think and in the end it greatly depends on the receiver. HN also
has a couple of mannerisms that could make it a bad experience for some, like
strongly favoring some concepts and technologies while being extremely
pessimistic on the rest. I'm glad there is something like HN but I think it
could be a bit more open (to new ideas, different views, etc.) and, for the
lack of a better word, human.

Addendum: While writing this I had the idea that Hacker News is filled with an
equal amount of humans and (actual) robots and the humans are trained to be
more robotic while the robots are trained to be more human, to prepare the
singularity. That could make for an interesting novel.

------
satvikpendem
It's a hard question to answer. It's healthy in that it encourages discussion
due to skeptics of all kinds. However, it can get very pedantic at times,
where some people nitpick not over the post itself but some non-pertinent
detail about the post, such as the title, website loading speed, trackers, and
so on; the content metadata, as it were, rather than the content itself. This
is quite annoying to read through. If I were to make a new forum, I'd want
something like the following stipulations for posters:

\- Steel-man all arguments: consider the best possible interpretation of the
argument, and if you need to, consider playing the devil's advocate not only
for the post you are replying to, but also your own post. I've written a lot
of philosophy papers and they strongly advocate this point, that you must
consider each and every single counter objection. I know that HN rules include
consideration of the best possible interpretation, but it may not be enforced
strictly enough.

\- Do not comment if you cannot do the above. This includes short one sentence
comments that should be permitted if they truly and exemplarily contribute to
the conversation, such as a necessary piece of information. Too often I see
pithy quotes or humor, which, while interesting, are not very suitable to
argumentation in the formal sense.

\- Focus on the main content, not metadata. As above, many posters comment on
something that is not part of the content but its metadata. This goes hand in
hand with the "best possible interpretation" clause. If you so feel the need
to nitpick over the title, do so only after addressing the content at hand.

How does one achieve this? People run on incentives, so the design of the
forum must incentivize people to act in this way. On one end you have Twitter,
which incentivizes short, flame-baiting "hot takes" over long-form discussion.
This is inherently and entirely due to the _design_ of the site alone, where
the 140 (now 280) character limit creates these incentives. On the other hand,
you have academic paper communities, which incentivize understanding long-form
content lest a reader misunderstands a paper, creates an opposing paper,
publishes it, and is socially ridiculed for not having noticed the
misunderstanding sooner. In other words, the design of the forum incentivizes
the reader to digest content fully. The hypothetical forum would stand
somewhere in the middle.

Now, to achieve this in practice, versus theory, there are certain designs you
can have to do so:

\- Strict moderation. This is similar to the moderation levels of
/r/AskScience or /r/AskHistorians on Reddit where low-effort comments and even
branches are removed. This is the easiest to implement technologically but
also the hardest sociologically, due to needing manpower and choosing
acceptable moderators.

\- No downvoting, and no showing numbers of votes. HN does this well to some
extent, but you still see branches downvoted for differing opinions. Perhaps
one can only downvote or report posts with a rational reason, basically held
to the same standards as if they were to reply to it.

\- Randomizing content to a certain degree. HN and Reddit have algorithms to
do this so that the top-most content is not always shown.

\- Sorting and filtering any and all posts based on content and votes. This is
more of a convenience feature but I wish more sites could let you sort and
filter by certain tags or number of votes, and by date, like reddit and HN
with the Algolia search.

That's what I've thought of for now, I know it doesn't exactly answer your
question but these were a few things that annoy me about most fora.

~~~
sankalpb
thanks for this response, and for making these suggestions of a new forum as a
contrast to HN — are you seeing 'content' and 'content metadata' as two
distinct modes with which HN members make comments? Is there perhaps a balance
between both, such that you wouldn't find discussion 'annoying' to read
through, while also ensuring that members don't feel at a loss if their
comments are removed for being one or the other?

~~~
satvikpendem
Yeah I suppose they are different modes, I see comments exclusively nitpicking
things without any other discussion, and I see other comments not doing any
nitpicking. The balance is most likely nitpick only after you've addressed the
main points, just like in real life. You wouldn't talk to someone and only
comment on their grammar for example, without discussion the content of what
they're talking about.

------
kick
_What criteria do you use to determine 'health' in online communities?_

This is a question that I think is too broad to be worthwhile, because signs
of health in one community aren't necessarily signs of health for another.

As an example of two communities that are effectively polar opposites (at
least in theory, anyway; in reality they're pretty close): HN & /r/NFL.

'Health' in /r/NFL's case is closer to emulating a gathering on someone's
couch to watch American football. Checking a random example off the front
page, the comment section has a Nazi pun at the top, and countless single- or
double-word replies to that. It seems pretty healthy.

'Health' in HN's case can be taken a few different ways.

If we look at the original announcement for it (or, at least, the announcement
that it was being renamed and refocused)[1], it's supposed to be a clone of
2006's reddit; intellectually-gratifying stories on the front page; high-
quality, civil comments; primarily self-moderating (if nothing else to the
point of not needing babysitting). We can then conclude that it's failed at
most of this, and as a result, not healthy. That seems to be the conclusion
Graham hit. [2]

However, that's not very satisfactory, is it? Plenty of things end up worse
than originally intended to be. Let's reframe a little bit.

Are _some_ of the stories on the front page intellectually-gratifying? As an
uncontroversial example, 'afandian's blog post (which at the time of writing
this is at #22) is certainly intellectually-gratifying. On the other hand,
there are more than a few that are uncontroversially _not_ so.

Are _most_ of the comments civil and high-quality? I leave answering this as
an exercise to the reader.

With that framing, it's kind of healthy.

Let's hit it from a different angle: is it better than the average public-
facing Internet community aiming to do the same things _presently_? For the
most part, I would say so, especially at the scale it's at.

Conclusion: Healthy enough.

 _How do these differ from those criteria you use to determine ‘health’ in
offline communities you are in?_

I disagree with the premise of this question as-worded.

 _How does HN exemplify or not exemplify 'healthy' behaviors?_

I think HN embodies the healthiest example of large-scale heavily- and
strictly-moderated conversation on the Internet. On the other side of that, I
think the community reacts poorly to it as a result: it's done well enough to
where it doesn't _feel_ like it's as moderated as it is, so when people notice
that it isn't they're surprised and alarmed.

 _What behaviors of your own would you acknowledge may or may not contribute
to the overall ‘health’ of HN?_

My submissions are pretty great overall. My comments aren't as good as I'd
like them to be, and I occasionally find myself commenting on things I don't
care about, so I've been reconsidering commenting at all lately.

 _What makes you stay?_

kuro5hin is dead, and I've been reading this site for ages. Since the best is
dead, most communities have little if any redeeming qualities, a good mail
client doesn't exist (great discussion still happens on some mailing lists),
and HN is by and large still decent, it's the closest alternative that isn't a
microblogging community.

I also recommend that you examine the corpses of dead online hangouts for
this. Many places were fantastic for years but died due to events that weren't
necessarily tied to the core functions or community of the hangout (kuro5hin
being an example of this alongside many newsgroups).

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html)

[2]
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Apg%20hn%20quality&sort=byPopularity&type=comment)

~~~
sankalpb
thanks for offering an example with which to contrast HN and for being open to
disagree with the premise of questions from my original post. I'm interested
in this 'healthy enough' bit that you bring up - do you think there's a
threshold of being 'healthy enough' that online communities should reach? is
this threshold constant? can it be met then lost then met again?

I also find your suggestion of examining places that were 'fantastic for year
but died to events' unrelated to the core function of the community really
intriguing as well.

~~~
kick
_do you think there 's a threshold of being 'healthy enough' that online
communities should reach?_

They should obviously aim to be as healthy/good as they can be. "Healthy
enough" is just a baseline.

 _is this threshold constant?_

Nothing is constant when the participants aren't constant.

 _can it be met then lost then met again?_

Of course. A community can get worse and then recover, though drastic recovery
is very rare.

 _I also find your suggestion of examining places that were 'fantastic for
year but died to events' unrelated to the core function of the community
really intriguing as well._

Glad to hear!

------
carapace
When I have to explain HN to normal people I say, "Culturally it's a
wasteland, but the technical information you can glean there is top notch."

What I mean by "cultural wasteland" is that you have a lot of social retards
and moral cretins on here who, for whatever reasons, will gladly lumber
threads with crazy sociopathic BS. You have to wade through and weed out a lot
of arrogant unsympathetic bastards (like me.)

On the other hand, awesome people show up all the time like, "Oh yeah, I did
that, AMA." I once interacted with Alan Kay on here! Carl Hewitt is on here
regularly (trying to get people to _finally_ pay attention to Actor model.)
Walter Bright (D lang) is here. Charlie Stross replied to a comment I made in
re: O'Neill colonies the other day. I could go on and on. (And those are just
(relatively) famous people. There are all kinds of brilliant not-quite-so-
famous people on here too. I'm just name dropping to make m'point.)

So that's nice.

\- - - -

Another thing about HN is that it's _not_ a community. It's more like a bar at
a train station. _Most_ people are just passing through and the regulars it
does have should probably do something better with their lives.

Like me. I'm pretty much a recluse these days, and this HN account "carapace"
is damn near the _only_ outlet I have to communicate with the outside world.
I'm on here pretty much every day (for better or worse) wasting time I could
be spending on important projects (like my Joy interpreter. Heh.)

Imgur is more of a community than HN: those folks send each other pizzas! I'm
seriously, there's a whole pizza club that just sends pizzas to imgurians who
are broke and hungry. HN doesn't do that.

\- - - -

To the extent that HN is a health community it's all about dang and sctb.
Those two do an incredible job and I have nothing but respect for them. Ask
them about HN's community health.

\- - - -

Last but not least, IMO the way to judge the health of an online community (or
any community) is to ask, "Has it made me a better person?"

FWIW, I think that participation on HN has, over the last few years, made me a
little bit of a better person. I'm less knee-jerk sardonic, more willing to
give the other person the benefit of the doubt. And I've learned to value good
faith conversation over witty barbs and sarcasm. (Although I do still consider
a good rant to be a kind of art, like slam poetry.)

~~~
sankalpb
thanks for the response, as well as for the alternative 'bar at a train
station' example as a way to think about HN, rather than as a 'community' \-
I'm curious about the last point you make, about how an online community is
'healthy' in so far as can make any of its members a 'better person' \- do you
think this goes both ways, so to speak? As in, would you think that members of
an online community are only as healthy for the online community in so far as
they can make it 'better'?

~~~
carapace
Cheers!

> do you think this goes both ways, so to speak?

Sure, the life of the forum is the lives of its members. If the server or
agora is empty what sense can it make to speak of its health?

> As in, would you think that members of an online community are only as
> healthy for the online community in so far as they can make it 'better'?

That formulation goes just a bit too far. Just as our immune systems need, uh,
stimuli to be healthy, so perhaps do online forums need a bit of, uh,
"negativity" to function well, if only to provide context for shared
expression of the underlying values of the forum/participants. (E.g. "HN isn't
Reddit", etc.)

And I think that you can judge the health of a community (also) by examining
the way it deals with problematic but-not-bad people like, say, Xah Lee or the
Temple OS author. Are we merciful, do we work to understand them, or do we
light torches and reach for our pitchforks?

In the specific case of HN you have a generally motivated crowd, whose
passions overlap between high technology and VC/entrepreneurial business, and
two very dedicated and patient moderators, so things tend to stay on the rails
around here.

------
Igelau
It's on the healthier side, but it has some strange allergies. I used the term
"boomer" once and the reply thread spiraled out of control and included
someone suggesting that I was a Russian agent just for using that word. I
think we can only really talk in comparitive terms rather than arrive at "yes,
it's healthy".

Anecdote: I saw a thread on Facebook a while back in reaction to news stories
about fights that were breaking out on a cruise ship off of Australia. One of
the commenters was posting horribly racists comments on the Facebook page of
the very father of one of those involved. This particular doofus left so much
personal information at default privacy settings that in about 5 minutes I
knew his kids names. As an experiment, in 5 more minutes I knew what
extracurricular activities they were involved in, when, and where. All based
on what he left public. No black-hat doxxing shenanigans. Not exactly the kind
of stuff I'd leave hanging out in the open if I'm going to make sweeping
generalizations that an entire ethnicity of people are violent criminals. I
closed it all. Walked away. Said nothing.

So yeah, IMHO HN is a lot healthier than Facebook :)

~~~
sankalpb
hey, thanks! would you be willing to say more about your experience of the
'reply thread spiraling out of control'?

------
whatsmyusername
"community" is a stretch considering the amount of astroturfing that goes on
here.

~~~
Minor49er
Very true. I'd suggest the OP to look up the video on how Israel uses teams to
edit Wikipedia articles to put their territory in a positive light as a good
starting point. Also check out this page on Cryptome about forum spies. They
are still very much out there and more organized and financed now than ever
before. Most people don't pay attention to these things:
[https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-
spies.htm](https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm)

------
twomoretime
>The goal of the assignment is to figure out whether an online community
exemplifies or doesn’t exemplify ‘healthy’ behaviors, from the points of view
of their own members

The culture of HN is also such that it tends to attract a certain type of
person, typically from the upper end of the normal curve. Look at the highly
technical nature of the majority of articles being posted.

What I'm saying is that community health is not just a reflection of the rules
imposed upon the community. The individuals need to meet certain minimum
requirements in various social and cognitive dimensions to have a truly
"healthy" community.

------
Markoff
personally I think it's quite toxic, if you say unpopular opinion you will be
downvoted into oblivion - echo chamber of mostly right wing libertarian
childless IT guys

some people look down at Reddit, but personally I find it much more diverse
and open to more kinds of opinions than HN

~~~
sankalpb
thanks, what have you found constitutes an 'unpopular opinion' here on HN?

~~~
Markoff
anything going against hivemind of majority, see my downvoted comment above, I
just expressed unpopular opinion and they can't they it as adults

------
pbiggar
Look on twitter what people think about HN. The general opinion I hear about
"the orange site" is that it's a toxic trash fire (this is also my opinion,
which I will not be defending here).

~~~
sankalpb
Thanks, I'm intrigued that you mention going to another online community to
learn what people think of this online community - can you say more about
this? are these people HN members?

~~~
pbiggar
In a certain sense, everyone in tech is a HN member. It's a community that's
much bigger than just the people who post here.

------
cryptica
I don't think HN community is particularly healthy. People here have severely
biased views on certain issues - Especially social issues related to money and
politics.

A few hours ago, a video which explained how the government (the Fed) injects
money into the economy was quietly removed from the front page even though it
was getting a lot of upvotes and made some interesting points.

HN is becoming increasingly political and divisive. The losers of our modern
economy have already started leaving the site and those remaining are being
actively downvoted by remaining elitist community members for not sharing the
same techno-utopian ideals.

Also, to prove my point, this comment will almost certainly get down-voted. It
will get down-voted in spite of me saying so because most people won't even
bother reading past the first line of my comment. The community is extremely
defensive of itself and its techno-utopian ideals.

~~~
sankalpb
Thanks for this reply, I'm interested in the 'down-voting' you are describing,
do think that type of HN member behavior is related or not related to the
'defensiveness' and 'techno-utopian ideals' you feel characterizes the HN
community? For you, does 'increasingly political and divisive' signal whether
an online community, in this case HN, is 'particularly healthy'?

------
kaikai
No. I avoid any topic even vaguely related to gender because people are
terrible about it. I would be surprised if this comment doesn't get downvoted,
just for implying that misogyny exists.

~~~
brink
I'm tired of these generalizations, I'm tired of anger towards vague ideas. Of
course misogyny exists in pockets and is bad. But it doesn't exist alone. Give
specific and constructive examples of misogyny, what we can do about it, and
let's work on them. Everyone knows that all types of injustice exist. Saying
some form of hate exists is not a novel idea, nor is it helpful.

------
julienreszka
Anything remotely critical of China is censored supposedly because it's to
prevent a "flame war".

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Flame%20war%20china&sort=byPopularity&type=comment)

~~~
dang
The simplest possible search shows how false that is.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=china&sort=byDate&type=comment)

