Instant share button for Hacker News
thechangelog.com
thechangelog.com
I think HN, with its current audience and contributors is PERFECT the way it is.
so sorry to burst your bubble :(
But I hope you understand; its soo darn hard sometimes to keep your mouth shut :|
But again note that the comment you're responding to is parroting something 'pg himself has said.
Trying to prevent growth in a certain area (i.e. the less awesome people who you like here) will prevent growth in all areas—e.g. HN buttons could also promote HN to great but new hackers. If you stop these guys from getting involved, you'll cut off the lifeblood of a community whose participants are moving very quickly past the phase where they're excited to be involved in such a community—people get successful, busy, jaded, etc. and not forever passionate enough to bother doing the things that HN needs: reading, commenting, voting. You need new guys to replace the old guys, and both can learn from each other.
If HN is locked down to a degree that its natural growth is stunted, it will die, and probably deservedly so.
I was about to respond to this with something to the effect of: "What have you observed that suggests in any way that the community is moving on?"
Then I looked at your credentials. It seems as though the kind of person you're describing as having moved on/become far too busy/etc is, well, you.
So it's possible that you might be conflating your own experience with the group's as a whole. Hacker News appears to me to be growing at quite a pace - independently of any such buttons or notions of elitism. In fact, I think the notion that it's growing precisely because of the elitism of quality, is worth considering.
(P.S. Love your work by the way - it's got such a superb sense of design.)