How to Build a Community: Starting with “Why?” | Hacker News Reader

How to Build a Community: Starting with “Why?”

clrcrl.com

100 pointsalexdean33 comments

Maybe a bit of an aside, but community is such a weird word these days. It can represent a group of people who mostly only interact with each other (a remote mountain community) or a group of people that just have one thing in common (a data tool forum, the investment banking community).

These things are different and I think it matters. You say “members of a community” and it’s easy to imagine people who live within a half-day walk of the same river. But it’s not that at all, anymore. You used to be a member of a community. Now you can be in as many as you want.

There’s a trade off for that. Are the people on the forums I frequent going to show up at my wedding, my funeral? Will I watch their kids while they take care of their sick parents? No, none of that.

We’ve sliced ourselves so thin. There are benefits and costs to that. Any niche interest I have, I can find 100 people to talk about it with. I don’t have to worry if my neighbor is into it. I don’t have to worry about him at all.

I'm not sure it changed in a way that matters so much. You have 2 necessary groups you need to survive: the close mutual help group, people who will actually turn up at your funerals, wedding, help your kids if you die, shits like that. And you have the group of people you need to discuss things, change your opinion, teach you things, buy and sell to/from you.

So you want to talk "before", so let's say 1850 to go far enough.

For the first group, the affective partnership group, you had your family, often large and extended, and a few friends you met along the way.

For the second group, the social need group, you had you childhood friends still living around, your village, the other farmers around you, your clients and your trading partners (animal food providers, if you raised animals, stuff like that).

Your community, an American concept we don't have in French (in French it has a religious/isolated meaning like a monastery, I feel we would rather say "village"), I suppose would be the second one. People who depends loosely on you and on which you depend loosely (but you can switch, there's no personal feelings if you stop contact with part of it etc).

A forums on the internet, if you're an at home programmer, for instance, will be the same. You need some of them now, they're like a group of traders in your village you use to get stuff for your own farm. Now if you dislike their pricing or advice, you can change forum just like you could look for another group in the village before.

In short, I think your mistake is to expect community members in the past would go to your funerals (well there was a sense of duty in a village to do it because church, but it didn't mean people would cry at it or deeply miss you). A family and friends, a concept that has existed forever and still exists to this day, would and will.

And if you're not a programmer, the internet might be a lot less important, it may be to discuss guns for instance, and have fun comparing and sharing experience. But I guess calling that a community is more a PR move by people trying to sell you a social aspect to an experience, rather than a proper usage of the word to describe what the concept is. I'd call it an online forum, which is what these things are (the word has this underlying "discussion" meaning, in a multicast way)

Thanks for your insight. I can see the similarities you're pointing out.

Definitions from Oxford Languages

community /kəˈmjuːnɪti/

noun

1. a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. "Montreal's Italian community"

2. the condition of sharing or having certain attitudes and interests in common. "the sense of community that organized religion can provide"

They're both valid definitions. My more earnest point is the trend of being less involved in more communities. And the corresponding shift in intensity from "all of your lives depend on each other and almost no one else" to "you all make money the same way".

And that shift is accelerating. Agriculture caused a big jump. The industrial revolution caused a big jump. The internet caused a big jump.

I don't think it's all bad. It's just different. My idea for the healthiest setup (covid aside) for modern work is remote in a friendly, local coworking space. That way if you change jobs, you only change half the people that you spent 9-5 with, not all of them. There's a resiliency from diversification.

> Are the people on the forums I frequent going to show up at my wedding, my funeral?

It can happens yes. The obvious example is a couple meeting in a game like WoW, marrying and inviting their in-game friends. Or that stories of a kid with rare genetic disease who could only socialize online and got people his parents didn’t know at his funerals.

It definitely happens, it's just a matter of frequency. If your community is your village, you're almost certainly going to marry someone from your community or the greater community that includes your village next door (but maybe you travel instead!). Now those deep bonds being forged online happens, but it's not the default.

Genres of music are all different too but I'm not listening to rock when I put pop on just because both of those are genres.

> Are the people on the forums I frequent going to show up at my wedding, my funeral?

Really this doesn't has anything to do with the "forums". Depends on the relationships you've build on those forums. It could be that strong that they will happily come at any important event of your life, and if they can't because of physical distance, they would still be happy/sad/whatever about it.

I sometimes wonder about the “why?” for HN. It’s probably some mix of “because it’s interesting to the YC principals and participants”, “because it’s good inbound marketing (generally and specifically) for YC itself”, “it’s good marketing spot for YC companies to launch and hire”, and a sliver of “because it means arc gets used in prod somewhere”.

I wonder the original mix and how it’s shifted over time.

I suspect it was something along the lines of: "There no place for people like us, to discuss thing we like to discuss, in a (civil facts-based) way that appeals to us (but not the riff raff we see elsewhere).

This feels a bit elitist to me. I also doubt that there's a single unifying narrative that applies to every user of this forum.

For me, browsing HN is a low effort way to get exposed to tech stuff I might not otherwise, and read industry news and interesting takes on that news. There's nothing particularly high minded about my usage. Don't get me wrong, the high quality discussion is pretty special, but the "riff raff" comment really rubs me the wrong way.

Yes and no. Rule #1 for starting a community - and starting is not the same as later - is to establish a strong and tight knit core.* That's more important than trying to appeal to _everyone_. Is that elitist? Or smart?

Religious beliefs aside (read: it's simply an example), look at Christianity. One guy and twelve disciples. I'm not a preacher but I don't think Jesus was elitist :)

* The same can be said of product. That is, established a core audience. Establish fit. Evolve from there.

Elitism and differentiation aren't the same, and in particular the latter doesn't imply the former (and likewise for elitism and exclusivity). You are right about exclusivity and differentiation being effective strategies and gave good examples for how they are useful.

I am usually impressed by the ability of folks on HN to disagree while keeping the conversation civil & interesting, especially when compared with other platforms. That said, I suspect that the demographics that frequent HN represent a pretty narrow slice of humanity, and like any subculture this narrow slice of humanity is subject cultural whims and various ugly forms of groupthink and gaps in perspective that any culture on Earth is. That's specifically what rubs me the wrong way about your previous comment about "civil facts-based conversation" (and framing of people on other platforms as "riff raff").

Fair play. Riff raff was a quick lazy choice. That said, one trip to Yahoo Answers - or whatever it was called - or similar and riff raff might be too kind. :)

Maybe we describe others as "less thorough and more emotional"?

To your point about HN, there's definitely - at least on some topics - a very narrow view; plenty of group think. Plenty of times, I've been down voted for not staying in line. Not for being wrong, or adversarial, etc. But for not thinking with the group.

If you view it from the perspective of people who watched Slashdot fall apart, it seems a lot less elitist and more pragmatic about SNR.

I've struggled with finding the "why" for the things that I'm doing, as my hyper-rationalizing brain often comes up with thousands of whys and I get stuck in not knowing which one why to choose.

> But if these are the primary motivators for why you’re building a community, I’m skeptical that you’ll succeed. These reasons put the benefit of the company ahead of the community member, and I’m pretty sure that any of our community members would see right through these motivations.

What I read in the quote from the article above is that it may be less about why one is building a community and more about for whom one is doing it. I've generally found for myself that this question motivates me more: "For whom am I doing this?"

Just seems that the why answers are rationalizations that we often give after doing something, whereas for-whom answers may motivate us to do something before we have done it.

I don't know though, I'm curious to hear your experiences.

I like this essay and it sounds like a good development model for certain companies and organizations. However, all my favorite communities were initially existed because “what” or “who” that can be summed up in one word (“Paul Graham” in this forum’s case.) That what or who is not only shorthand for a rallying collection of ideas, goals and preferences. It gives the community something to regularly do or react to together. As the communities grow, they start to become defined by themselves, i.e. by the value of the network and association with the accomplishments of many community members. At a point, asking “why” becomes a useful way to delineate and communicate the accidental collection of principles from the original who/what.

The assumption that community building is an unalloyed good pervades tech, especially FOSS. I never see any analysis that concludes "building a community takes lots of work, requires skill sets that not everyone possesses in equal measure, and often can't justify the ROI".

I'd like to see an article on why you should not build a community.

The assumption that learning to program is an unalloyed good pervades the world, especially the USA. I never see any analysis that concludes "programming takes lots of work, requires skill sets that not everyone possesses in equal measure, and often can't justify the ROI".

I'd like to see an article on why you should not learn to program.

I've actually seen plenty of "not everyone needs to learn to program" articles.

https://www.google.com/search?q=not+everyone+needs+to+learn+...

I'd like to see analogous skeptical articles about community building.

Short of writing your own, you'll have to wait until the shrillness of "OMG you have to learn community-building NOW or else you'll be sleeping in a cardboard box on the streets" reaches the same levels as learning programming so that sufficient numbers call out the BS in such hype.

>> I'd like to see an article on why you should not learn to program.

This abstracts to a set of unlimted topics, so essentially you're asking for justification to not learn about anything. This seems a little absurd so perhaps the question is framed incorrectly and should be "why you should not learn to program and instead learn [something else]" i.e. the basis for time/energy/focus being scarce and deciding how to allocate them for maximum utility, however you define that.

Hard agree, building a community takes year and you have to be constantly available. You're the one who's going to do most of the talking for the first few years so you better be more skilled than 90% of the people who join if you want them to find value in it. Can't speak on ROI, mine isn't business focused but I'll say it's a great way to meet interesting people, especially if you're not the outgoing-type because it forces you to be.

These corporate mission statements make me gag. It sounds like you came up with a money making idea and then reverse engineered a mission statement from that so that employees who need a sense of purpose can pretend they have one.

This reminds me of the Simon Sinek classic "Start With Why." He leans on the example of Apple a bit too much, but otherwise it's a book that gets your attention and makes you wonder why something so simple can be missed by so many.

https://simonsinek.com/product/start-with-why/

TED Talk as well, tho' I don't think it does the book justice.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA

Little fun fact: I am @simon on Twitter, and Simon Sinek and Simon Cowell are the two most common references/mentions that my Twitter handle (erroneously) gets.

I'd say that more than 90% of mentions are not intended for me, but for other Simons. [0]

[0]: https://twitter.com/search?q=%40simon&src=typed_query&f=live

It is important to start with the 'why' because often managing around the community becomes a thankless endeavour. It helps persevere till the point when it becomes self-sustaining or additional hands are available.

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

I searched the post for "video" and "stream". Zero.

How can one build a community without video and livestreaming in 2021? Not that I like it but even hard-core tech communities, eg in the embedded space, have some video exposure. Or big discords have often some video/streaming outlet.

This is a community without video and livestreaming in 2021. Especially amongst long term usernames.

Multiplayer game communities - not the watchers but the players - are also one.

I enjoyed the article but realized reading it there are different types of community. The form discussed there is more business/promotional, which is different from HN or MMOs.

Successful communities without any video exposure started ages before 2021, eg HN.

There are plenty that started in 2020. I cannot recommend any of them to you.

a) This comment seems antithetical to the post, by immediately jumping to the "How?" without ever stopping at the "Why?"

b) Video/Streaming is not for everyone. I prefer my technical discussions in text, with a few well chosen illustrations. There's nothing that makes my heart sink more than hearing "well, if you just watch this rambling, 2 hour stream of consciousness explanation, it will all become clear to you" (Worst of all, there are companies now doing this in lieu of manuals).

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