I think that's been the approach that Reddit.com has taken with subreddits- Note their refrain that "Subreddits aren't tags".
I believe they're attempting to manually and intentionally fracture their community to such that each subreddit might stay small enough to be manageable.
I think it's worked, to a degree, but it's somewhat at odds with the purpose- If X people want to be members of a community, I'd prefer to find a way to work together and ensure we all behave ourselves, rather splitting into small groups.
I'm honest curious- Would you agree that under ideal conditions, if everyone behaved, it would be better to be a larger group such that you could share disucssions, or would it be better to remain small, so that you know all the posters?
If you did want to remain small, how do you ensure the communities are of sufficient size to be viable even with people leaving?
Personally, I'd rather find ways of encouraging people to be on good behavior all of the time- That's something I liked about the applicants knowing their posts might be used as part of their YC application, and something that might work well if they posted under their real name.
"Would you agree that under ideal conditions, if everyone behaved, it would be better to be a larger group such that you could share disucssions, or would it be better to remain small, so that you know all the posters?"
I am not sure if everyone behaved it would be better;
Comments would be better - there are two types of disruptive comments; people that are just being jackasses in comments, if they are over-the-top and constant, I say smoke them out of their cubes or basements and boot them off the site. Make it possible to just kill a comment chain. The others are either new or stupid and not much you can do to these people except mentor them and give positive re-enforcement.
Stories are the biggest issue because they are the basis for what I think is the most important part of hacker news and that's the comments. One reason I really like hacker news is the "Ask HN" feature. This allows me to skip the story and read the concept, question... and dive directly into the discussion.
People are not malicious in their story submission - It's not like there are links to child porn or nazi sites. So people aren't knowingly misbehaving. The problem is that there are lots of things that a lot of people won't find interesting.
I know personally I won't be offended or concerned because you or everyone thought my submission wasn't interesting. The reason being is that I most likely didn't write it, if I did then pride-of-ownership would come into play would I would be disappointed.
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The topic of online community preservation has many parallels with "real-world" communities and even biological diversity, which means it will need to be solved by someone more advanced than me. If we could come to a conclusion on this for hacker news and apply it to the real-world we might get a noble prize.
Colin, I appreciate your signing your name, but the guidelines suggest using your profile for this (presumably because sigs take up comment space):
Please don't sign comments, especially with your url. They're already signed
with your username. If other users want to learn more about you, they can click
on it to see your profile.
Hey, no problem; I took it as you sincerely acting on your beliefs.
I guess you could do it by changing your username (though you can't take your karma to your reincarnation - unlike real karma). But I like your present username.
Thanks.
That's part of the problem I'm currently stuck on, however.
My current username is more expressive, and more "weighty" than my resume or linked in page.
If you google "e1ven", you see 14 pages, most of which are about me. My posts about the Zimbra mail server, the Freenet project, Slashdot comments, and the like.
That's far more expressive of my body of work/experience than my Facebook page, which I seldom use for anything, or my linked-in page, which I use as an addressbook which updates itself automatically.
The only advantage that those two do have is that they are specifically tied to my offline identity, which I can't easily change.
I didn't think about the same username across different sites - but of course most would do that. Makes what in some cases might have been a frivolously chosen name very sticky as you say.
I think it's worked, to a degree, but it's somewhat at odds with the purpose- If X people want to be members of a community, I'd prefer to find a way to work together and ensure we all behave ourselves, rather splitting into small groups.
I'm honest curious- Would you agree that under ideal conditions, if everyone behaved, it would be better to be a larger group such that you could share disucssions, or would it be better to remain small, so that you know all the posters?
If you did want to remain small, how do you ensure the communities are of sufficient size to be viable even with people leaving?
Personally, I'd rather find ways of encouraging people to be on good behavior all of the time- That's something I liked about the applicants knowing their posts might be used as part of their YC application, and something that might work well if they posted under their real name.