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.
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.