There is even a term for this phenomenon: eternal September [1]. It originated as Usenet slang for a period beginning in September 1993, AOL started offering Usenet access to its users which overwhelmed the existing culture for online forums.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

There are platforms which can and do survive. HN, despite bumps, does pretty well. Metafilter is another that seems to be kicking along.

Others tend to become Generation Ships of the founder culture. I'd put the Well in that category, as the userbase still seems to be strongly focused on the original cohort. Some fresh blood is necessary.

Actually: the idea of a university as an intentional community that tends to survive over time has occurred to me. Not fully assured, but there are an impressive number of centuries-old instances.

And, continuing that thought: YC emulates a critical element of that dynamic, in having regular incoming classes.

The platforms that survive tend to be either incredible focused around a certain niche (ycombinator), or heavily moderated with a strong editorial hand (metafilter). Slashdot is still limping on as a much less interesting site since it had money behind it but places like Kur05hin (however it was spelled) and its ilk quickly imploded.

People like to complain about heavy-handed moderation but all the experiments to try and build self-moderating communities eventually get overrun with trolls and (worse) self-promoters.

Any automated system will eventually be gamed, something that even huge sites like twitter and youtube are starting to realize now that state-level actors are using them for their own purposes.

I'm coming to agree there's no substitute for effective moderation.

And despite occasional (and strong) disagreements with dang and sctb, they do a really good job on HN.

Oh its worse -

After you make your peace with that, theres an entire world of rules and theories on moderation, all of it useful and important to get the job done.

The cheat code to cut through that mess is -

"I'm coming to agree that theres no substitute for good editorial control"

Trust me on this, the proof is to painful to reproduced regularly.

Also agreed.

(You're going to have to try harder for an argument ;-)

haha not arguing, just seeing how deep this rabbit hole goes.

Like teachers, now editors are another social good that we need to manage information dissemination optimized for civilization's good.

Always has been, or at least so long as mass media have existed.

I've been exploring this topic, as a particular focus over the past year, though it's been an interest for some years.

If you look back to the Catholic inquisition (and its precursors), Gutenberg, Martin Luther (500th anniversary coming up at the end of October), J.S. Mill (I've run across some excellent discussion by Hans Jensen: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6x7u6a/on_the_... and http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00346760110081599 (available via Sci-Hub)).

It's sobering.

For some reason I think this going to happen to HN too, and I feel it is at 3. And I'm not sure if I'm in group #1 or group #2.

I think it's been at step 3 for longer than most sites have last. I know I'm part of group 2, but I've seen a somewhat consistent culture since I arrived over five years ago.

Looks like you joined about 5 1/2 years ago. I'm surprised you think you're part of Group #2.

Before what date do you think people can be group #1? Or are you ascribing the group number to contributions rather than date of joining?

When a friend first recommended hackernews to me it didn't show up in google searches. So I gave up. I think techcrunch finally led me to finding it. By the time I actually created an account(just 10 days before nathan^), people were already complaining about the deterioration of the community, so I assumed I was in group 2.

I am most definitely Group #2. I wish I was Group #1, but I was too loyal to /. (and a few other sites), and after /. got DICEd along with the 'f*ck beta' stuff I jumped ship to Soylentnews.org which had an okay community but a rather fascist set of admins (despite what their manifesto says).

So after a few months of lurking, I registered here, and now it's my daily[1] go-to site.

---

[1] Hourly. :)

That's exactly how I felt.

I, along with a lot of people, joined HN in 2008 after Techcrunch wrote about it. That's pretty close to "Group 2 joins" and yet 9 years later HN persists!

I get the feeling a lot of group #1 left in between 2010 and 2012. There are still tons of folks here who made accounts on day one, but a lot of the more conservative or libertarian leaning folks seem to have migrated to other communities around that time.

>other communities

lobste.rs ?

I think there's more keeping things in check here than at ./ when group #2 joined.

I'm definitely in group 2. Possibly in group 3 if that's a thing.

I think I am 'Group 3'. My account is 4 1/2 years old and I was a 'read only' site visitor for a while before that.

So there were the people who got here first, then the people who discovered the site in 2008, which was a long time ago, and have fair claim to being 'group 2'.

So I think 'Group 3' is me. A defining characteristic of 'Group 3' is that goes back to pre-Snowden times, before the truth was known. Kids today must be 'Group 4'.

This reminds me of A Brief History of Who Ruined Burning Man:

https://journal.burningman.org/2016/10/philosophical-center/...

That general pattern is followed by companies, social organizations, and even countries - to an extent.

I don't know what you guys are talking about. What happened was very clearly:

1. Group #1 joins who care about site

2. Group #1 improves site. Sense of "community" keeps things in check.

3. Site grows in popularity and group #2 joins

4. ?????

5. Profit

Where's the Profit ???

from stealing underpants obviously

also see: twitter, the internet, tech in general...