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Comment by groby_b | Hacker News Reader

It strikes me that a logical step to prevent #2 is "allow only new contributing members that have been vouched for by n old members".

Yes, I'm that elitist. And yes, I'm well aware I probably wouldn't get voted in :)

But here's the other part - keep the site open for reading. That means it (hopefully) self-selects for quality, and other people can observe a high-quality discussion.

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Do you have any examples of a site where treehousing has improved things?

Apple comes to mind, app-wise.

I was thinking in terms of communities.

Metafilter is often cited. They have a $5 fee for accounts.

Then again, Something Awful is $10...

That's clubhousing, not treehousing. Treehousing would be putting social barriers on entry. Clubhousing would be financial.

These terms are 100% arbitrary and invented an hour ago, but these seem like good definitions.

Dribbble, then.

It'll be interesting to see how that model holds up to another 2-3 years. The few invite-based communities I've been a part of started to degrade as the social graph grew out and started to pick up the occasional undesirable.

It was harder to get rid of them because they knew someone who knew someone, and trying to push them out had a network effect. It might be obvious to someone removed by 3+ levels that a bad element is bad, but the person who invited them might not see it.

Advogato investigated the problem of transitive trust networks pretty thoroughly as I recall. Anyone here able to comment on how they turned out?

I am seriously considering pruning branches, not just leaves of the social graph to keep communities healthy.

I.e. if you invited a bunch of bad apples, you will be pruned too. I have no idea if it would work, but it's pretty obvious that open social graphs beyond a certain threshold are not conducive to high-level discussions.

Zed Shaw's Utu had that idea. Doesn't seem like he's still working on it.

I'm not surprised that I like how Zed Shaw thinks :)

This is how many private bitorrent sites work, or at least claim to work. You are responsible for your invite tree.

A better way might be to nuke the undesirable, put their branch on notice if they start to cause trouble, and remove them if necessary.

It avoids unnecessary disruptions. Not all branches will shake if a leaf falls.

There is a story making rounds about hiring policies of Saint-Petersburg Mint (back in Royal Russia times). Every new hire not only needed three recommendations from current employees, but that should the new person ever get fired, those who recommended him would be let go as well.

Brutal, but brilliant... even if it is not necessary true :)

I assume, of course, that this process wasn't fully recursive, lest the entire mint be fired for one unfortunate hire.

Even then - it's only going UP the tree, not traversing down again to the siblings :)

This is similar to how many private BitTorrent trackers work. If someone you invited gets banned, so do you.

But here's the other, other part: keep the site open for writing as well, but make the non-elites' contributions only visible when you are logged in as a non-elite. Then the elites can continue their excellent discussions unhindered, and any passing stranger can browse the elite discussions: yet everyone can have their say in the agora.

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