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On the other hand - publicity gained by going dark along with reddit would raise the amount of people who were aware of HN and could cause more people to come here.

Either way, I don't think it's that big of a concern.

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I think the effect of people being aware of HN would be quite different from that of HN being available whilst reddit wasn't. Essentially HN is not as 'good' at doing what reddit does (because it's not meant to), so increased awareness isn't likely to shift people from reddit. Take away reddit and things change. It will be interesting to see the effect on the web without reddit for a day. With no serious Digg these days, HN would be high on the list of alternatives (even though it is not aimed as such), and there will no doubt be a lot of SOPA posting that day.

"publicity gained by going dark along with reddit would raise the amount of people who were aware of HN and could cause more people to come here."

I know it's elitist, but I have no wish for this community to get exponentially larger.

I love how there's an unwritten rule to never talk about HN on Reddit. I never even saw it mentioned, and myself try to avoid mentioning it while I see talks about Reddit and proof that a lot of HNers are former redditors almost daily on this site.

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