sankalpb

Thanks for this, can you tell me more 'if you can filter those out'? what does that look like in practice, based on your own experience?

Thanks, I'm fascinated that you bring up the 'inability...to have civil and productive conversation about things that matter, and like as not, politics does matter', what makes this the case here at HN, in your perspective? Also, can you say more about the how 'this community has the pretense of holding itself to a standard of intellectual merit and civility above the internet mainstream'? How do you think the this 'pretense' came to be held? why 'intellectual merit and civility'? and makes you say it is 'above' the internet mainstream?

thanks, can you say more about what you think makes a member of an online community, in this instance HN, a 'jerk' ?

thanks, will you tell me more about the 'astroturfing' at HN?

thanks, can you say more about this? which aspects of the HN demographic do you see as being important to consider here?

hey, thanks! would you be willing to say more about your experience of the 'reply thread spiraling out of control'?

Thanks, I'm intrigued that you mention going to another online community to learn what people think of this online community - can you say more about this? are these people HN members?

Thanks for this reply, I'm interested in the 'down-voting' you are describing, do think that type of HN member behavior is related or not related to the 'defensiveness' and 'techno-utopian ideals' you feel characterizes the HN community? For you, does 'increasingly political and divisive' signal whether an online community, in this case HN, is 'particularly healthy'?

Thanks, can you tell me more about the 'bikeshedding' at HN?

Would you be willing to say more about this bit?: "But I was always an outsider looking in who never really got to benefit from that strong sense of community (in fact, it arguably did me a lot of harm)." I'm interested in this outside/insider dynamic, and how those correspond to a member's sense of community (leaving aside for the moment whether HN is a community), as well as the experiences of harm that members have had because of those dynamics.

Thank you for clarifying this, and I'm sorry that I misunderstood what you were saying. I appreciate the distinction you have made between platforms, forums, subgroups, and communities. I am also interested in the social dynamics you refer to (i.e. above a certain size, sense of community does not really compute) as well. I'm going to reply to your comments where I have questions!

Thanks for raising this point - what makes you say that 'technical' and 'social' are separable as it relates to the problem of 'group-think' and 'sorting content by vote count'?

Thanks, I appreciate the different examples you gave! Can you tell me more about what makes you believe that what makes a 'community' is its size, instead of say, for example, its coherence, or its norms, or its duration of existence?

I'm really interested in the point that you are making about 'there's no coming back' at the level of the community (i.e. ratio of 'those folks : total users) and the level of its members (i.e. deciding to leave) - do you think they both register with members/community in the same way, as either are happening? As in, other members in the HN community may not be aware if another member decides on 'not coming back' at any one point in time, whereas it could be the case that all members of some certain relation to the community (i.e. 10 years of membership or longer) knows when the HN community is not what it was once.

By contrast, is there a case to make for when 'an un-informed, un-thoughtful, un-pleasant person decides they're not going to post anymore'? If so, what would you say that tells us about an online community?

thanks for bringing this up. I'm interested by the way you characterize this 'vicious cycle', and wonder whether you see 'dialing back' to be as much of 'contribution' to the dynamic you're articulating since you are also suggesting that people doing so, 'stop contributing'. I'm also wondering whether you would be willing to share more about the how it was that the shared experiences you heard offline (i.e. IRL tech community that you respect) shaped your decisions as a member as to whether to or to not engage as much with HN, as an online community?

thanks so much for being so thorough, I'll offer my own impressions of 'success' and 'health' below the following questions to your response:

can you tell me more about whether, when you say 'it would make for a healthier community by being as transparent as possible' - you're referring to transparency of the platform, transparency of the culture, transparency of the membership?

when you describe yourself as 'just here to listen learn from smart people' and go on to say that you were 'a lurker' for a relatively long period of time, would you say that there's a connection between two? As in, members who feel certain role relations (i.e. just here to learn) to the HN community end up sustaining certain behaviors (i.e. lurking).

I'm not sure I know enough about 'identity politics' as you're using it here, but fascinated by this distinction between 'caliber of content' and 'who it's coming from' - what do you think or see as sustaining this 'high/low' emphasis the most?

Personally, and provisionally, I consider 'success' and 'health' to be as much about the ability of a community to sustain itself through a transition - shift in purpose, direction of vision, change in norms, etc - as much as the capabilities of its members to bring about these types of transitions.

thanks for the reply, I think the point you make about having noticed yourself 'doing some of the things that annoy' you is helpful to see be brought up, and I'm wondering if you can say more about 'confident ignorance', as well as 'weird behavior' you have made an effort to 'remove' yourself from but that HN 'brings...forth'?

thanks for this response, and for making these suggestions of a new forum as a contrast to HN — are you seeing 'content' and 'content metadata' as two distinct modes with which HN members make comments? Is there perhaps a balance between both, such that you wouldn't find discussion 'annoying' to read through, while also ensuring that members don't feel at a loss if their comments are removed for being one or the other?

Thanks for your reply! I'm intrigued by this point, "HN is as unhealthy and flawed as its members, which is something to be proud of", could you say more? also, what do you mean by the part about 'healthy' at a global scale only being a 'sterile echo chamber'?

thank for suggesting the concept of 'agonism' here, would you say that HN enables or doesn't enable 'agonistic' relations well, such as the ability of its members to 'disagree', and how?

hey there, thanks for this list - do you see these attributes applying equally to both 'online' and 'offline' communities?

thanks, I hadn't known about this service!

thanks for the response, as well as for the alternative 'bar at a train station' example as a way to think about HN, rather than as a 'community' - I'm curious about the last point you make, about how an online community is 'healthy' in so far as can make any of its members a 'better person' - do you think this goes both ways, so to speak? As in, would you think that members of an online community are only as healthy for the online community in so far as they can make it 'better'?

hey there, for you, what are some characteristics that make a topic seem 'even vaguely related to gender'?

Hey, thanks for bringing up the question of whether certain topics are 'downvote magnets', 'hot button issues', etc. I'm fascinated by your observation that 'following a thread over several days is a near hopeless endeavor' - will you say more?

thanks, would you say that 'learning a lot' is an indicator, for you, of 'health' in an online community, such as HN? in what ways does being 'about as civil' shape your sense of HN 'health'?

thanks, do you see this pattern ('it's just people complaining about everything rather than improving things and building a future') as indicative of HN? for you, is this a result of endogenous or exogenous forces? both?

Thanks for the interest, and being so thorough. I do hope to share my result here, so that this can be part of an on-going conversation. I'm not sure about how subscribing works on HN, but I'm currently considering making results available through an edit to the original post of this AskHN. Hope that works!

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?

thanks for offering an example with which to contrast HN and for being open to disagree with the premise of questions from my original post. I'm interested in this 'healthy enough' bit that you bring up - do you think there's a threshold of being 'healthy enough' that online communities should reach? is this threshold constant? can it be met then lost then met again?

I also find your suggestion of examining places that were 'fantastic for year but died to events' unrelated to the core function of the community really intriguing as well.

thanks, what have you found constitutes an 'unpopular opinion' here on HN?