I'm here for about 1-2 years now and I don't really get the feeling of HN being a small community.

The UI really makes it feel comfortable spending time here, because it's not overloaded. Maybe that's why it doesn't feel that big (and chaotic) here. I'd love to see actual data of usage though. That'd be interesting.

It used to be small more than 5 years ago, but big posts now can get more than a thousand comments. That was unheard of back in the day. Dang even has to ask people to log out during those times to help prevent the load. That said, HN has always had an extremely fast turnover on the front page, and the content is roughly the same as ever.

There also used to be more old experts here than now. It used to be that you could come on here and expect to find someone who worked in some legendary tech position, a genuinely famous or legendary programmer. I don't see that kind of thing much now

I've made a comment earlier on that same thread that touches on some aspects of what you said. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31364858

> Dang even has to ask people to log out during those times to help prevent the load.

I witnessed that, but forgot about it.

Edit: But for real, how many are we?

Judging from the number of people I know IRL who read HN which is exactly zero, I would say it's niche.

That’s a bad measure. Is /r/atheism a niche community? What about /r/historyporn or whatever? Basically any community online is niche by that measure

Saying this from a 7-days account... Either you're relatively new and can't really speak to what HN used to be, or you're using a throwaway to post content you know is low-quality.

Why are you defensive? My old account got marked as dead, so I had to make a new one