Here are other thoughts and questions I have for your points:
2 - your point about rituals needed to shape an offline community is fascinating, do you find that there are any adjacent rituals for online communities?
3 - I hadn't realized that quality degrading for links, but not comments would be a pattern that arrives but would love to hear more about this if you're willing to offer more details!
5 - can you say more about the 'stay below a threshold to continue to attract users who have more to offer' bit?
2. I’ve seen various online facsimiles of offline rituals but I can’t say whether they’re effective.
3. I meant to say that degrading link/content quality precedes degrading comment quality. I thought about it more and not every community is going to be like that, though. Sometimes community/comment degradation happens first. I think one will always cause the other to happen, though, and the unhealthy dynamic in either case is to believe that the primary thing that drives quality in the rest of the community is not really the point anymore.
5. A healthy community needs to attract quality members and convince them to invest in the community with creative contributions and discussions. If the signal-to-noise ratio drops too much, the community won’t be as attractive to those members (and will attract members who find opportunity or affinity in a lower quality community, creating a cycle.)
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.
Hopefully that makes sense. Keep in mind it’s my opinion. I still consider MetaFilter a generally healthy community, too.
Bad actors everywhere are really all the same. They build up good will with insightful content and active participation, then they use that to strong arm the community to further their personal biases.
As the parent comment said, the mods at metafilter are too close to the community. Being involved can be a good thing but I think the mods have taken for granted how it allows them to be exploited and bullied by a very vocal minority.
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.