
No New Accounts Today - pg
Traffic is unprecedentedly high today, presumably because Reddit is blacked out.  I don't want to repay them for their impressive stand by stealing their users, so I've temporarily turned off the ability to create new accounts.
======
eof
I am surprised you would think of it as 'stealing' users. More likely you are
trying to avoid too many of a certain type of user that is only on HN because
reddit is down.

~~~
raganwald
I imagine that too many new users on one day is a troublesome idea regardless
of what site they’re from or why they arrive here.

It’s as simple as noting that new users are new and still learning from
everyone else around them. When everybody is new, it’s hard to get a feel for
the current culture and style.

I imagine that it would probably work on a permanent basis to gate new
accounts to a certain fixed value per day or proportion of new to old
accounts, e.g. .1% per day or whatever.

Personally, I came here from Reddit 1,791 days ago, so I will be the first to
say that I hope we don’t have an “anti-Redditor refugee” policy, whether
express or implied. Far better to demonstrate through action and voting what
we value as a culture and welcome as many people to the site as we can handle
without diluting our ability to teach by example.

~~~
praptak
The idea of the percentage based gate was implemented on Slashdot to guard
moderator privilege and it worked well.

------
olh
pg, could you post the HN traffic stats for today as a post-mortem style post?

~~~
pg
We got just under 1.6 million page views, whereas on an ordinary weekday we'd
get just under 1.3 million.

~~~
orijing
What is the daily variance like?

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cryptoz
I wonder if there's a startup opportunity in helping online communities avoid
the Eternal September effect. Some would claim reddit has solved the problem
(subreddits) but others would disagree, citing front-page quality decline. So
it seems to be an unsolved, universal problem right now.

Hm.

~~~
krschultz
I wanted to look up Eternal September - but hit the Wikipedia anti-SOPA page
for about the 8th time today. If nothing else, I bet a lot of people have
learned how much they depend on Wikipedia today.

~~~
Naga
I use Wikipedia as basically an extension of my brain. I'm in a history
program at university, and so many of the names and dates that are essential
to it I don't actually know. I realized this when I was writing something last
night. I was writing about the English Civil War, and the Restoration, and I
wanted to comment on the relationship between Charles I and Charles II, and I
went to Wikipedia...and it was down!I had to go to my shelf and get a book.
Who does that?

~~~
Karellen
"I use Wikipedia as basically an extension of my brain."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exocortex>

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/fiction/accelera...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html)

------
pasiaj
This seems fair, but I'd bet Eternal September was on the minds of the people
who decided this.

------
keeran
I would have thought that while the effect was due to Reddit (and others)
being down, it was more a case of existing users refreshing for fresh content,
rather than potential new users coming to register.

Is there really that much crossover? I need to spend some time seeking HN-
esque subreddits perhaps.

~~~
redthrowaway
I agree. I'd be interested to see both:

1) The increase in uniques (pageviews don't really count)

2) How many of those uniques are _new_. That is, what percentage of those IPs
visiting today have not visited in the past month.

------
babarock
Are there ways to measure how much of the traffic is actually due to reddit
being out. I bet there are other reasons for the growth in traffic, like the
fact that HN has been making a great job at covering SOPA/PIPA for the past
few weeks, I wouldn't be surprised if part of the increase is due to natural
SEO. I'm sure one could find other reasons too.

I'm not doubting pg's claim. I'm simply interested and curious: What are the
tools available for the analyst/engineer/community manager to analyze the
increase?

------
kingkawn
This is why Google is not blacked out completely, to avoid something similar
with Bing.

~~~
ceol
Doubtful that's their only reason. Google going down would be akin to github
going down: more harm than good, and the message would get lost in the chaos.

------
djtriptych
It's an excellent policy. If these new folks are actually interested in hn,
they'll come back tomorrow.

------
Achshar
I would suggest pg to write a special "from reddit to HN" guide. That would
help and we can link that to people who seem to be new here (if they havent
already seen it ofcourse)

~~~
bingaling
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

------
larrys
I wouldn't call it stealing users. I mean if you knew the people from reddit
and they asked you and you agreed then that's one thing. But in a true
situation of a site being taken down this is exactly what happens. People go
elsewhere. What would happen if reddit was taken down for real? Would you do
the same thing and for how long?

What you are saying in a way is that a company or organization's competitor
(if you want to call it that) can do something by free choice and decision,
then you have to do something as well or you may be viewed as doing the wrong
thing and viewed as doing something not politically correct.

------
pasbesoin
PG, once again a stand up guy. Cheers!

------
jetsnoc
Thank you. I don't mind rage comics and kittens but if I wanted to read about
those, well, YC wouldn't be my normal watercooler. I spend time here because I
want to talk about hacking apps, hacking life and the different start-up
business cycles and modalities. That's why YC is my day-to-day watercooler.

------
larrys
It actually looks like somebody hacked "ugh" account. Seems a little out of
character.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ugh>

Edit:

And this one as well:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=suyash>

------
ck2
It certain is not stealing IMHO.

There are plenty of places to visit, dzone is another good site and maybe
techmeme but neither of those have even a black bar on their site in
solidarity.

HN does feel a tad sluggish though so maybe lack of new accounts helps prevent
a total crash.

~~~
sossles
Not stealing, but it is profiting from goodwill. Attention is the currency of
the web, and while you can't stop people looking for alternatives, you can be
respectful about not profiting from it.

------
solac3
I find it funny that people of reddit try and keep the "youtube" community
out, and hackernews wants to keep reddit out... Who wants to keep HN out??

------
mathattack
Bravo! Despite the folks saying, "It's not stealing," I think there is good
reason to make a principled stand. Reddit is not a competitor.

------
g3orge
I don't see it as stealing. reddit is a great community, but completely
different from HN.

------
iscrewyou
Yeah, we wouldn't want any memes popping up on HN now would we?

------
tatianajosephy
pg, I'm curious why you haven't blacked out Hacker News today. Would love to
know your thought process.

~~~
mooism2
I expect it's something along the lines of "Everyone on HN is already aware
about SOPA/PIPA, so what would be the point?"

~~~
SquareWheel
The same could be said of Reddit, but it is a symbolic gesture and really
encourages you to call up your representative.

~~~
mooism2
I haven't seen anything about SOPA/PIPA on Reddit, apart from the warning that
they were going to be down protesting against it. It's just not come up on the
subreddits I read. I imagine it hasn't shown up on most non-politics non-
internet subreddits.

------
tigergb
luckily I registered an account 2 days ago.

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conradfr
I even went to Digg ! See what SOPA does !!

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dos1
Regardless of the reason, I think this is the right thing to do.

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suyash
you must be dumb!

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zokier
This happens six hours after reddit blacked out. I'd guess the most eager
redditors ended up here already, for better or worse.

~~~
monochromatic
Let's make it retroactive.

~~~
masklinn
I agree, removing all accounts younger than 371 days should help.

------
jdost
Classy move, :thumbsup:

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alphamale3000
Do you own shares in Reddit? Then I get it, as HN has no direct revenues.
Else, what's the point?

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blueplastic
Horrible stance.

~~~
mooism2
Why?

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sidcool
No, no. Reddit users won't enjoy here. This site is for us, the enlightened
ones. I am also on Reddit, but that's when I am not in a learning mood. You
cannot steal Reddit users, coz most of them will come here looking for cats,
and having found none will rather go to Digg. So your worries are baseless.

------
ugh
FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU-

Edit: I’m happy to inform the HN community that your defense mechanisms at all
superficial signs of redditry are in order and working. (One negative karma
point per minute is damn impressive.) Whether those defense mechanisms also
work against more subtle (and much more dangerous) redditry is, however, very
much up in the air.

