Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

How do we know you're the real Techcrunch?

Well, it's too late anyway. The cat is out of the bag. Besides, if no one had talked about it, I never would have found it, so you have my blessing.

Yes, because TechCrunch has nothing to do with hacking.

But the other posters are definitely right: this is an inevitable problem and it would be nice to have a more organic solution. I've been trying to read and vote on the "new" page more.

It'll grow regardless. And, the kind of people that will actually stick around tend to be the kind of people we want to be here. The rest will wander off...back to digg, over to reddit, whatever.

Thanks for asking, though.

Now it's pg's job to figure out how to programmatically maintain the high quality of results. I still want one down-vote per week for stories...sometimes a story shows up that makes me feel ill to see it on the front page, and it would feel real good to vote them down, even if I only got to do it once per week(day|month).

Somebody is going to do it if you don't, so I'm not sure our answer to the question matters, does it?

I am firmly in the camp of "HN will eventually go to heck" -- mainly because of the mod system and the way these things tend to drive to the lowest common denominator. I know that the good-article-per-page ratio today is not as good as it was 6 months ago. But hey, pg wants to play this thing out, so crank 'er up, right?

Two things: 1) It would be great to have more reasonably good people here. 2) But I just don't want the scoring to be screwed up. If the voting keeps stuff that's only of interest to people who are into hacking and startups on the front page then other people will simply not stick around.

PG, please consider action for #2. Don't go with the "show everyone different rankings" approach of reddit though.

Security by obscurity is not really security at all. Perhaps the TechCrunch exposure has hurt the site in the short term, but if Hacker News can get through these growing pains it will be presumably better off in the long run.

The problem as I see it is not the size of the community but the concentration of thinkers. It doesn't really matter what articles make it to the front page; if the comments start filling up with cheap one liners and unreasoned opinions I know that I for one will lose interest.

You are a tad bit late in asking ;-). In any case, you can't control the kind of folks that read your website and decide to show up and participate here.

That said most of the folks here (at least the ones that have been using this website from the earlier days) don't want this site to go the way of other communities online, where the quality of shared articles and conversations go down the drain.

From my time on many online communities, it's not the question of if the quality will go down, but when, and I would rather see an algorithmic solution to reduce the noise.

I think the influx of new users is good; there are probably people out there with great things to contribute, that don't even know Hacker News exists. But of course the characteristics of the front page posts are going to change.

There is a somewhat controversial solution here... just make a sub-section of HN where only users that signed up X days ago or earlier can post and vote. If X = 250 and guys like me get screwed, then so be it; if old timers are actually better voters, then at least I'll get to read the better articles. And you don't lock out new users either, since the original front page will still exist without any vote weighting.

Personally I don't know if the quality of the "old timers" section would be any better or worse than the normal front page, since "interesting" is a subjective concept. But if you miss the Hacker News of the good old days, then maybe it makes sense to bring that HN back to the future this way.

since the demographic of this community seems to be smart entrepeneurs, what would people here think is the best way to protect their community from the morons of the internet? I remember in olden day's when digg was a friendly place full of interesting news, nowadays its, well it's digg... Keeping a social news site under the raydar is not the solution to this problem, there should be something more elegant, any ideas?

disclaimer i am not looking for ideas for a news site, personally i feel the market is saturated, and anyway i have far better ideas to work on ;)

When the programming language site Lambda the Ultimate was going through the same transition, the admin asked long-time members for their opinions. The discussion is here:

http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1550

My answer from there:

For me, read-only access to "old LtU" would be more pleasant than read-write access to "new LtU". In other words: I don't think bans are "extreme", my vote is for a lot more bans, and I wouldn't mind being banned myself if this improves the signal-to-noise ratio.

I think it is somewhat presumptuous of techcrunch to consider themselves as determining what is under or over the radar, as the metaphor goes. Techcrunch has less influence that it supposes.

I don't think a site like this can remain occult forever. When you consider the name is 'Hacker News' it's surprising it hasn't been swamped already with spam and adolescent comments. Perhaps a high quality community forum like this has a limited life span. It's a depressing thought, but I know if anyone can fix it, then pg can!

The people giving you that feedback are bitch punks. Don't listen to 'em.

There are a lot of discussions that need to be had concerning filtering, vote weighing, etc. We just have to have them earlier now.

I see where they are coming from - the discussion was better when it was under the radar. That says nothing about the future, however.

The REDDIT.com community is saying the same thing now. They claim that their website is now polluted and that the quality has gone down.

BTW: I found this community via TechCrunch last week and like what I see. Still unsure that I'll fit in with you guys although I like the content.

When communities get too big, even if they spoil, it's not a bad thing. It's a good thing because people are encouraged to then start their own communities.

Digg -> Reddit -> Hacker News -> .. next thing ..

It's this progression that keeps new and interesting sites coming along. If it hadn't happened, we'd all still be using Digg.

>> Do you guys think I'm hurting the site, not helping?

No, I don't think so. The community pollution is a separate peril, which should be continuously taken care of by improving the moderation system and/or using some form of editorial control. If this site will continue to improve, the increased traffic is inevitable.

The question seems to center around the universal problem of mediocrity through popularity. It's not unique to the 'net. In the early 80s a flood of frat boys and party hounds invaded Dead tour and pretty much destroyed a truly beautiful thing. There's a similar trend happening at Burning Man. Pop culture visibility tends to dilute unique subcultures to the point of obscuring the original flavor.

Active mentoring of appropriate behavior and a willingness to exclude offending users seems to be the only way to preserve the culture. But if you take that approach too far you run the risk of becoming elitist and self-righteous.

Openness has a real value and very real risks. I like the "benevolent moderation" idea suggested by murrayh the best...

Improvement comes from stress.

To get bigger muscles, you lift weights. To increase cardiovascular performance, you run. To improve cognitive ability, you read, study, and solve problems.

To improve software, you load it up.

Bring them on.

I'm excited to see TechCrunch here--you're helping. I read TechCrunch, which convinces me there are TC'ers who will add value. HN has to deal with idiots. If there's going to be an influx, let it be TechCrunch's influx. TechCrunch also has hacker, angel, and VC readers who might give real-world insight into startup financing or business questions--we should welcome them and learn to deal with TC's idiots (really, idiots in general) with the right control measures, in preparation for the day HN tops Digg.

I enjoy the smallness of this community a lot. On the web, that's a commodity in some sense.

I'm one of the whiners on TechCrunch about exposure. Sorry!

Basically, I think the community was excellent before you made a big deal of announcing it. It has continued to be excellent after, but the signal to noise ratio has worsened somewhat. I'm not a long-timer, but I have very much enjoyed this site and, for once, would be quite happy if the community didn't grow wildly.

I think that publicity has worked out okay, though, probably just showing the resiliency of the community.

I imagine "Hacker News" as a shy, but talented hacker. It can live with a few minutes in the spotlight, shaking hands, and taking awards, but it's going to do its best work when it can quietly focus and get the work done with its team. The more time spent in front of the press, the less time it has to improve the world behind the scenes. It understands how the fanfare is important at times, but certainly doesn't seek it when there's clever coding to be done.

Just out of curiosity: Why did you post about it? Was it to grow the site? To help your readers find a good source? Or did you want other founders to know about it to grow the number of startups that hang out here?

Honestly, I haven't seen a noticeable effect. People still post great links and are generally cool in the comments. No influx of trolls, no flood of spam or otherwise bad posts on the home page.

I did see someone say on twitter "There's no need to read news.yc because everything good is reposted on techcrunch". That's not cool, but the point is that there is still plenty of good stuff here on news.yc