Ask HN: Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would you pay $5/yr for HN?

101 pointsalexandros166 comments

I know what I am going to say is borderline hubris in this web 2.0 world we live in, but bear with me.

A lot of problems this site faces are due to the large influx of new, anonymous users. So I was wondering, how would this website be different if there was a small (say $5/yr) subscription needed, at least for posting. For one thing, it would have less (active) users, but we know that the sweet spot for social news sites is when they have a relatively small amount of users. Also, these users would be easier to identify and perminently ban if necessary. Finally, these users would most likely be those who are more positive in their interaction with the community. I find it hard to imagine a troll paying.

There are of course negative side-effects, not least of which is the locking out (from posting) of hackers who may not have a paypal account/credit card. Also, some may feel a sense of entitlement, an expectation of service-level. On the plus side, if there is anything left after the transaction processing, it may go towards covering server costs and whatnot. Even if pg/YC was to make some money off of this, I doubt us raging capitalists would mind, given the value we get out of HN. It might also go some way towards proving (if successful of course) that users will pay for quality and that ad-supported/freeminum is not the only way.

So, do you think such an alternative-reality HN would be desirable?

View on HN

Of course I would pay $5/year for HN. I lose more money than that every time I compose a new comment. Time is money, after all.

That doesn't mean it's a good idea, though. I think it almost certainly isn't. It sends entirely the wrong message, it's a much bigger pain to implement than it's worth, it might work all too well at cutting the volume of submissions and comments (if you think a crowded HN is bad, fork HN -- the code is open source! -- put it up on your server, and see how exciting that is)... and it won't work. You really think a troll won't pay five bucks a year? I think you severely underestimate the entertainment value that a troll derives from trolling.

If, in fact, HN eventually declines to the Reddit level, the solution will be the same as ever: Some of us will head off into small invite-only groups (note that invite-only is distinct from for pay), and the rest of us will migrate to a handful of other new social news sites which will thrive for a while until they succumb to the same problem, or to an entirely new problem, after which the cycle begins anew. As someone has said in the past, it's like restaurants, or music clubs. They flare up, grow, shrink, and die out all the time.

I don't think i can truly fork HN. HN is not only the code, it's also pg's leadership and the community that has gathered around it. (if you can give me the code for that, i'd love to fork :P ) Anyone else than pg making this work is much more difficult, as HN already exists and critical mass will be hard to acheive.

The reason I think trolls won't post as much is that while trolling is based on impulse decisions, making a payment is a much more elaborate procedure and I don't think the impulse to troll would usually be enough to overcome that threshold. But even if it does, blocking that account, noting the payment details and blocking further re-registration with them raises the re-registration barrier even higher.

It might discourage drive-by trolling, but it does nothing to stop the more determined griefer. If anything they'll see it as a challenge.

I think you underestimate the probability that the world does not divide neatly into trolls and non-trolls. Rather, the troll lurks within us all, and without constant vigilance, under the right conditions the troll will emerge!

In other words, users will not pay to troll. They'll pay to make a comment, which may or may not be a trollish comment. (A lot of trolls can't, in the heat of the moment, tell the difference between a troll and a comment -- that's what makes them prone to being trolls.) And then they'll have paid, which means there's no barrier at all to future trollish behavior from the same person.

Yes, I am talking about intended trolling. 'Accidental' trolls can be brought to shape by the community, as they always have. Also, the payment T&Cs should say that the community still has the right to kick them out, refunding the amount if necessary.

That is certainly true. I've sometimes run across people cross-posting comments here and on Reddit who've actually taken the trouble to write two versions, a flame for Reddit and a civil version for HN.

Having done something similar, it's not necessarily taking the trouble to write two versions. Sometimes after writing one version, you mellow out, have a change of heart, or just realize you might not have been completly right (that "W" word :-), so the post on a complementary site is more thought out and polite.

"Time is money, after all."

A wise old man once told me: "Time is more important than money; I can always make back any money I lose, but time is gone forever."

I get your point, but how does the wise old man explain how to make back money without losing even more time?

The value of your time increases with time. Making back 1 hour's worth of your time in cash today will probably only take you a few minutes a 20 years' time. However, making back 1 hour's worth of your time in time is impossible.

Originally? The wise old man bought and sold mortgage backed securities with a triple-A rating. Now, he stands out in the street corner with a cup in his hand and a cute cardboard sign.

It's much easier and more likely for someone to give you money than to give you more time.

You cannot always make back any money you lose, if you could, the world would not be in this current financial crisis and the many before it.

I see what you're saying... but I'm young enough that I could loose my house and cars and 401k and all the other junk, and still make it back in 20 years, probably less because I'm more productive. Granted, that's not true for everybody. But i think it's only true for the super rich, and the very old. My dad's doing pretty well. if he had to start over... I don't know if he has enough time to make it all back but he's smart and hardworking. I'm sure he could make a dent.

I think a better argument would be, "you have to start over" and starting over sucks.

Many jobs can be summed up as exchanging time for money. Also, to make back the money you lose, you have to use time.

"You really think a troll won't pay five bucks a year?"

I think a truly motivated troll might pay five bucks.

But now we've got a clear, concrete ban target. Thwack! Out five bucks.

Can they sign up again? Sure! I wouldn't even try to stop them. But thwhack!, out another five bucks. How many trolls are $100 interested in trolling?

The equation for trolling radically alters when money is involved. Just like how spam wouldn't be practical if we could somehow charge even a penny per email. (Which I am well aware is impractical, but if it was, it would destroy spam.)

There are sites which have severe problems with persistent trolls -- the kind that, once banned, will come back under pseudonym after pseudonym. A lot of spammers fall under this category. And, yes, I expect that charging money will solve that problem. This may be why some sites have had great success with charging money -- they needed a big hammer to solve a big problem.

But is that a problem HN needs to solve? My impression is that whatever PG is doing to keep out the spammers is working very well. I don't see a lot of complaints about it, even from PG himself. (Not that PG ever seems to complain. He just quietly goes about the business of trying things.) What people seem to be complaining about is a sort of gradual degradation in the quality of comment threads. That's not a problem you can easily solve by banning anyone, unless you really do want to make people flee in terror. ("That LOLcode meme used to be funny, but now it's ten months past expiration! The penalty is death.")

So what about making HN invitation only. I like the idea.

The people who have contributed in the past could be autoinvited and could invite others as well (maybe depending n karma -> 100 points -> 1 invitation... )

I think that it would lead to HN becoming quite insular and elitist. More pragmatically, I think discussion would suffer if we judged new entrants solely by whether or not 'good' contributors vetted them. This might inadvertently weed out people with differing viewpoints.

So how would an elite hacker who knows no one currently on Hacker news join under your system.

Seems like a pretty broken model to me.

If she's an elite hacker, she already knows someone on HN, or could easily get to know someone...

Interesting that assume said elite hacker is female.

This just won't always be true. Consider an eleven year old hacker, he/she may be elite for their age level but are unlikely to know anyone on the site.

Same for many of the elite hackers in countries like China and Russia.

Well, a truly elite hacker would simply hack their way past the block. You can check that one off as solved then.

I would pay more, but that still wouldn't solve the problem. A better solution is to not allow anonymous posters. That said, a lot of folks here post under their real name or have info about their real name on their handle. This would do a lot more than charging $.

They flare up, grow, shrink, and die out all the time.

I think you pretty much captured the cycle of online communities.

"fork HN -- the code is open source!"

-sorry, where is it?

http://arclanguage.org/install

or write one thats better

No.

Basically, part of the value (most?) of HN is that there are other people here. Charging $5 would mean less content submitted and fewer comments. If the NYTimes or WSJ tries to charge, it doesn't significantly change the content of their sites since they're both created top-down by paid writers and editors.

When you're trying to monetize user-generated content, you can't try to do so in a way that will mean less user-generated content. This is the same problem that Facebook has - their value is that you have so many users and content from those users, but if they start charging they won't have so many users and people will find another site to replace Facebook with. Sure, one could make the argument that here a $5 fee could keep out some of the less desirable people, but it would also eliminate many of those who make the site desirable. It's not that the content doesn't have enough value to be worth $5 to me, it's that once you start charging money, the value of the content drops as many won't pay for it.

Metafilter has a one-time, $5 signup fee, plus restrictions on new users to post content:

http://www.metafilter.com/newuser.mefi

Unfortunately, by raising the bar to participation, a lot of people who would be an asset to the community are prematurely excluded.

My suggestion for dealing with trolls and flames is applying a "three strikes" rule: If a new user's average comment rating drops below negative two, their account gets frozen for a set period of time. Or, you could apply some sort of "three strikes" rule (three comments -4 or below result in a freezing).

a lot of people who would be an _asshat_ to the community are prematurely excluded

FTFY.

The problem with staying free and censoring unpopular opinions is that sometimes those opinions turn out to be right.

I'll give you one data point that you may want to consider:

When I was a high school student, it would have been difficult for me to participate in HN. $5/yr was a significant amount of money for me then ($5 = INR240). And I wasn't even poor.

Many people I know totally couldn't have afforded $5/yr when they were students. I am sure there are countries where US$5 is even more unthinkable.

I can't believe that. If you really wanted to spend the money for hn, which it seems many here do, you could save up 5$ worth of quarters at least.

He says "$5 = INR240", Indian Rupees, so I assume he was from India. The cost of living is vastly cheaper than the US in many parts of the world, so $5 may seem like not much here, but Wikipedia says India's average income is $977. So $5 is about 1/200th that. Say you're making $70,000, that would be like paying $350 a year for Hacker News.

Now is it worth it?

I replied that I had misread that. That is a huge amount of money.

Oh you aren't from the us, I got ya. That would be difficult.

This is what MeFi and Kevin Smith's forums do. I believe Smith donates the money to charity, but his aim is to keep the crap out.

I'd pay $5/yr for this. Hell, I'd pay $10 if it went to a tech charity.

I'm glad someone mentioned this. MeFi has done really well and certainly hasn't lost steam since requiring a paid account. If HN were to go in a paid direction I think the posts and comments should be available to anyone (a la MeFi).

MeFi is actually $5 for life and it's worked pretty well.

IIRC MeFi is a one-time fee. I was there before the fee, so I don't know for sure.

Nope.

I just turned 18. I have no bank account, no credit card, no PayPal account, nothing. Charging for HN would mean asking me - and others like me - to leave. HN is a valuable website, and I don't want to lose it.

Here's an idea: make HN invite-only. Members get to invite others only when they reach a certain karma level (say, X). Once they reach level X, they get to invite 3 people. After that, they get to invite one more person per Y karma points, where Y < X. Moreover, inviting others would mean losing those Y points.

Diligence on the part of existing users would ensure only people who post insightful content get karma.

Invite-only would get rid of people like me, who come here to learn from those who are able to do, with hopes that one of these days I'll be able to do it myself. I lurk, yes, and only try to comment when I feel I can contribute to the discussion. But I certainly don't troll, or post witty one liners just to get my karma up. A pay site would at least allow me in, but I don't know anyone here, and no one here knows who I am, so I wouldn't know how to get an invite.

I have a solution to the no-money objection: to become and to stay a member, you have to pay $5 / yr or solve CAPTCHAs or do some other kind of tedious make-work that takes about an hour per year out of your life.

Yes, because what Hacker News needs most right now is a bigger sense of entitlement among its users.

Do you have any idea how much billable time is lost/spent with a group of highly skilled hackers sitting around commenting? Millions of dollars? Tens of millions?

HN is a bunch of bits. Worth about as much as any other bunch of bits. Without the people's investment of time and effort in submitting and commenting the site is worthless.

As someone who often bills hourly, I'll go with $0. Your time isn't fungible; it only commands a bill rate if you can commit to a start time, milestones, and a delivery date. Very few businesses want to pay for your spare cycles.

So an hour with Bill Gates where you sit around chatting is basically worth nothing since he's not being directly paid by Microsoft at the time and his time is non-fungible?

Quick. The 15 seconds it took you to write that comment? Go sell it, and tell us how much you get.

Nice comeback, but address the example. People's time -- worth something only if sold?

Does the phrase opportunity cost ring a bell?

I'd argue that space cycles help you refresh yourself. I usually get off of Hacker News geared up to churn out code and designs. If I coded nonstop all day I would burn out.

I don't know about it being worth "something", but I'm pretty sure it's not worth "money" if you can't sell it; the context here is users paying for HN access.

The difference is market value. If Bill were to auction off an hour lunch date with him, the winning bid would be its market value. If he spent an hour lurking or commenting on HN, it doesn't mean that hour cost him the same amount.

I ready both of your comments and enjoyed them... Would I pay $5/yr for content like this? Sure. However, it seems that only one of you would stay around...

Agree, I liked/enjoyed those comments as well, was even wondering if they were talking about houses for a minute and not comment prices:-) I come here to exchange ideas. I'd be open to the experiment, besides if it doesn't work we can always put it back....

If you're friends with Bill, I'm sure he'll find the time for free.

I realize that I may have sparked this line of argument with my quip about the time I spend posting on HN. But the fact is that for every hour I lose here I might well save an hour somewhere else, because some person posts something about github, or Linode, or Dropbox, or some other tool that I might otherwise never have heard of and I get that much smarter.

Time spent socializing with smart people is very difficult to value in dollars, but it is certainly not valueless! If nothing else, it preserves one's sanity and morale. And these are very hard things to buy, indeed.

Seconded. I've spent a lot of time here over the last few weeks as I've slowly come to understand the culture (not that I really understand it yet) but that is time well spent. I've seen several pointers I've already used, and come away enthused and eager to work.

I don't "spend" time here, I "invest" it. As I discover people with similar opinions and complementary skills, my network expands, and my "value" increases.

My time here is not wasted, even if my username isn't orange.

If lost billable time is spent on Hacker News, then how is paying $5/yr for a subscription going to change anything? Your clients will, apparently, still be losing money.

Only if it would stop posts like this.

We're not in charge of HN, we can't set up a billing system; we can't make Paul's decisions for him and he asks for input when he wants it. As such, these musings are just killing time and taking up space on the front page where actual hacker news could be.

Meta-discussions were really the death of digg. Soon after come the "experiments."

Unfortunately, the "experiments" have already arrived:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=465991

Exactly my opinion, so far so good, the posts are still of great interest for me.

What bothers me more is the increasing number of meta-talk.

Again MetaFilter provides some guidance-- a separate silo for site meta-discussions (MetaTalk).

Sorry, but I disagree. The death of digg is squarely at the hands of the trolls, spammers, and morons that flocked to the site like locusts.

Ok, I stand corrected. The meta-discussions were the _start_ of the death of digg.

No, you're confusing cause and effect. The arrival of the spammers and trolls led to the discussion of the long(er) timers over how to prevent it. The meta-discussion was the symptom, not the cause.

I don't think I am. There were meta-discussions very early on.

Kevin Rose was famous and pitched the site hard. The community started going downhill very early on.

Except that he didn't pitch the site hard at all for the first nine months (in fact he repeatedly denied being involved with it). And he wasn't all that famous (host of a dying show on a dying network). It was only after the VC money arrived that that started.

I'm obviously not going to argue with you over the history of digg, of course you're intimately familiar with that, but I felt like I got there pretty early, and I only personally got a couple of month's worth out of it before I felt it was overrun.

And I didn't mean to imply that he was actually famous, but he was certainly well-enough known among the target audience that having his name attached made a significant difference.

Actually I'd love to argue with you - my memory is not perfect, and I'd love to hear other people's perceptions. What point in time were those couple of months?

I know where you're coming from, and I kind of agree. But the tendency to deconstruct every element of one's environment and debate how it might be improved is one of the very hacker tendencies that the site is intended to encourage. We're not going to get rid of it. Just ignore it if you can. I try to ignore it, but obviously my success rate is not 100%. ;)

This thread isn't uninformative. Among other things, it is evolving into a catalogue of other sites that have tried this idea, and how it might have worked out for them (or not).

I'm pretty sure this is not the answer. Metafilter does this, and I would not want the kind of culture they have there. What's prized there is sounding clever, and I wouldn't be surprised if the $5 fee was partly responsible-- if people were more willing to pay $5 to hear themselves talk than to e.g. answer a question someone had asked.

Even before the token fee, MetaFilter's culture valued witticisms and welcomed contributions whose value was primarily entertainment. So I doubt the fee is responsible, given that the behavior was in the founding ethos. The fee may have prevented that clever-competition from becoming as coarse as it has become elsewhere.

Wow, that's rather harsh. You must had some really bad luck with Metafilter, or it must have had changed significantly since I frequented it more often.

I remember Ask Metafilter as an excellent resource for questions on many topics with many thoughtful responses (especially from people that knew a lot about what was being asked [1], not just the internet-usual - "I'm clever so I think X is the answer").

Indeed, it was usually worth to start your search on some particular problem on Ask Metafilter before turning to more general Google search.

Metafilter also has much less transient feeling than HN. There is a strong culture of not repeating yourself, so people detect duplicates and link to previous instances of similar questions/answers.

This leads to answers have more "archival" feeling to them. You know that it's worth to spend a lot of time on your answer, because if anybody in the future will ask a similar question, there is a very high chance that somebody from the community will remember your answer and link to it.

[1] As an example, here is Steven Wozniak paying $5 just to post one comment:

http://ask.metafilter.com/47835/Woz-More-like-Was-am-I-rite#...

Or Adam Savage looking for inspiration for the MythBusters episodes:

http://ask.metafilter.com/55694/Old-west-Mythbusters

http://ask.metafilter.com/111253/Movies-where-someone-hangs-...

Something Awful Forums charges a $10 one-time fee (plus add-ons), and it doesn't seem to impede people from doing truly stupid things, as you can see with a simple glance at their Lepers Colony: http://forums.somethingawful.com/banlist.php

The other side of the coin is that they've maintained arguably the best General BBS for years and their members work en-mass to do some really insanely good (and bad!) stuff. SA basically has the best of the best in whatever the members choose to do.

I'm surprised how the $10 barrier suddenly makes the quality of people and discussion on the forums much, much better. You can at least depend on everyone to use decent punctuation and spelling, among other things. Being able to lurk before signing up an account is a crucial part of this; otherwise people won't have any idea if you have quality content or not, and will default to not signing up.

I also like the fact that it's a one-time purchase; I don't have to worry about a yearly charge to a card that I feel like closing.

SA also gets a decent amount of cash by charging for things which are free on most forums; forum avatar, avatar title, searches, archives, private messaging, etc.. I wonder if this model could be applicable to a more minimalist site like HN, or any other non-forum.

kuro5hin.org did more or less exactly this and it pretty much killed the site. Growth reversed, and the trolls and spammers turned out to be willing to pay. Personally I'm in favour of enforcing strong identity so that folks reputations follow them around.

That being said, it does seem to have worked for Something Awful.

Second that. I wouldn't like to use an overlong username though so I've shortened it a bit. And to put my money where my mouth is I've just added my full name and email address to the profile.

Reputation systems that are based on anonymity don't really work well in the long term, your 'net creds' don't translate in to 'street creds' and vice versa unless there is a one-on-one correspondence between the two.

Wikipedia has made some big goofs with this, allowing people to claim a reputation they could not back up in real life. There was the one guy that claimed to be an authority on religion if I recall it right that had just read through 'catholicism for dummies' or something like that.

Probably yes, but think of all the budding college & high school entrepreneurs that that would discourage.

$5/year is absolutely nothing now that I'm employed. But for a kid who doesn't hold the purse strings, it's much more than that. It's not really the money - most parents also have no trouble sparing $5/year. It's the hassle of convincing the parents that it's worth it, and not just a random time-waster.

Plus, as soon as the 'rents are paying for it, you lose the sense of "this is something I'm doing for me, and it's my own identity and not my parents." For me, one of the reasons I got into computers was because my parents knew nothing about it, and I was overjoyed when I started getting jobs based on connections I'd made online instead of ones my mom had setup for me.

Wow you nailed the story of my life with your last para.

Make it $5 per HOUR. That would be the perfect noprocrast.

I'm finding the ability to not override anymore is saving me a ton of time. Funny how when I could override it I would... Even though I set up the noprocrast parameters.

the problem is that a lot of people refuse to pay on principle. To many people it doesn't matter if its $.01 or $99, the whole process of paying is a barrier to them

I have that principle, but I'd relax it for HN. I think it's because I'll know that I'm being charged for a good reason.

That, and there's no "cat in a bag" situation: I know exactly what I'm getting.

My first thought was absolutely yes but then I began to wonder whether that would do anything for the quality of submissions. $5 isn't very much; why would that discourage low-value comments any more than high-value ones? I assume you mean that reading would still be free but you would have to have a paid account to post?

Counter-proposal: make it easier to tie someone's HN name to a real identity. Perhaps require email address confirmation and a waiting period for new accounts before allowing a first post?

On the high-ratio orange-username thing: neat idea but comment karma depends so much on how early in the life of the thread a comment is posted. Readers who check in less frequently and respond to longer threads are less likely to score high regardless of comment quality. (Also, I'm sad to not be orange.)

I think strong identity is going to be how this sort of thing is eventually settled. Email addresses is fine, but there are plenty of sites which provide a means of getting a throw-away address. Maybe mimicking how banks and governments handle it and requesting N out of M different kinds of identity might help?

[Since I can't update the post itself anymore, I'll write an update with a reply]

After the great discussion that has followed, a number of good modifications has been proposed that could significantly reduce grievances. The fee could be one-time, and proceeds donated to charity. Also, uers with a lot of karma could invite other users (in case they cannot register due to no cc/no paypal/underage etc.) This would probably require an area for users to request invites etc. but even the process would certainly make users more mindful of their posting. Additionally, the new users could be mentored by the one inducting them, further increasing culture preservation. Keep the thoughts coming.

I might pay 5$ a week for HN as it i now, but I think you would lose a lot of users at 5$/year. At which point the site might not be worth 5$/year. If you want to make money off of a website the most proven method is to use advertising or to have a basic free site and then add a premium tier.

This means finding a feature that adds 5$ a year in value but is not needed for the rest of the site. Which is not as hard as you might assume. One obvious option for HN would be the ability to bookmark and follow users. Even a simple table with timestamps of last post, and the numbers of posts in the last hour, day, week, and lifetime might do it.

I find HN a mixed bag. Some things are very good, most things are so-so, somethings are really bad. Just like real life.

The simple act of registration is enough to keep me away from most sites. At least this one is good enough that I thought it worth registration. Add a charge? I don't think it would be worth it for me to continue with it. I can find what it gives me elsewhere.

Like it or not, the Internet is a jungle.

The good thing about a jungle is that its full of all kinds of living things. The bad thing about a jungle is that its full of all kinds of living things.

When you live in a jungle its eat or be eaten then you die no matter what.

No, and not because I can't afford it but because I think that any site that charges $5 for people to contribute content is misunderstanding the beauty of the web.

Everybody can contribute, even those for who $5 would be a very large expense, and you'd be surprised how big a portion of the world that would be.

Some Indian, Latin American, Chinese or Russian hacker would - even if capable of paying - find themselves locked out because they can't pay by card, either because they don't have them or because the IPSP won't allow them to use it.

Easily. I'd pay more depending on what kind of content is shown. If there was a way to block 37signals, joel's blog, and some others then I'd be up to $10/month ;)

No.

Hasn't experience over the past 10+ years answered this question been already?

1. Audience shrinkage — less readers and posters would mean less garbage, but it would also denote less of everything, including quality…

2. Less of an attraction even to one subscribed with the subtraction of public visibility (outside search engine scope).

3. Already a tried and failed proposition — look at NY Times, WSJ, etc.…

The genie is out of the bottle and their really is no way to stuff it back in and cap it again…

Like others have been mentioning here, Metafilter has a fee like this, and from what I hear, it works really well for them. Thinking about it more, though, I can see how it would could really prevent new users from wanting to join. I'm not sure exactly what would happen. I'd be willing to support an experiment and try it, though.

If I may try to put together a response.. 1 - Remembr that what many refer to as the 'golden age of HN quality' is when it had less users.

2 - I am not sure I understand this, can you clarify?

3 - HN is not a newspaper, it is (among other things) a filter and a community. While people may not pay for content, they might pay for these two.

I would definitely pay (whether $5 or $50 doesnt matter) a year but feel that paying just to post/comment would merely serve to limit the number of people committed to quality contribution without offering added value to the core community. Essentially you would have to pay to help other HN users. What if the stories remained public but viewing/participating in the discussion required membership (at a cost)?

No. Building a critical mass of good users is hard enough without adding false friction.

If you're looking for a place to improve, I'd look at the way karma is used.

IMHO sites like HN should continue innovating with ways to better calculate and utilize karma. In most cases, it's done very badly, rewarding early commenters disproportionately, so that people with a lot of time on their hands get a bigger voice.

OP suggested using a fee to reduce trolling and somehow qualify users. It addresses the problem in a round-about way using economic incentives to filter "non-HN" users, or trolls. Inefficient.

In order to qualify site membership, why not require a non-monetary merit test? For example, one can only sign-up or comment/submit for a month if they can solve a simple computer problem appropriate to the site content, in this case maybe deciphering a simply double-encoded string (say, HTML entities + rot13 or base64 or something). If you only want only "hackers" on HN, make them "hack" their way in, like some kind of text CAPTCHA for computer geeks. I guess a math forum could make people solve an equation to comment, or a zoological forum could ask some taxonomy question or something.

If the real problem is that HN needs money for infrastructure in a depressed ad market, then call it what it is and do a voluntary fundraiser, ala Wikimedia or public radio. Those of us who value this site will pony up accordingly.

I love the community here at HN, but I don't want to discourage new users from joining this environment. I do believe that good moderation by long-term users will keep the environment stable, but eventually HN is likely to burn out like an old candle and charging any amount of money is just hurrying up the process that will lead to the end of HN.

I flat-out refuse to use PayPal for anything. I am reluctant to use my credit card except for shopping sites that have a decent track record of security. A small site with a Comodo certificate won't get my business. If HN used Amazon for payment, then I would consider it since I already have CC info on file there, it's no additional risk to me. Like some others have said here, I don't think it would do much (if any) good for this site. It won't deter trolls, at least not dedicated trolls. I think moderation is the only way to keep this from degrading to Reddit, then Digg, and lastly 4chan. Delete posts that don't conform to this site's goals and TOS. Ban users that violate TOS more than 'x' times. I think this site is pretty good at self-policing itself already. The tone is much more business-like and adult than any of the other techie news/social sites that I frequent.

Yes. I'd probably pay double that.

I think that there is a huge difference between $0 and $ANY, in that it forces the the user to place a value on it. I think that the model to look to is MeFi, which has very high-quality comments, high-quality posts, and as others have stated, it seems to have more memory than your average site. Old posts are frequently referenced and there is a strong culture of DRY (don't repeat yourself).

The main objection seems to be that the site will shed users that can't/won't pay. For those users that don't have credit cards or Pay Pal (I, for one, hate PP with all my heart) could there be other options to make payment more flexible? What else is out there if you don't want to limit yourself to payments of only those types?

But I do think the $5 barrier to entry will improve, or maintain, the quality. If you don't want to pay, sorry, but I like HN more than I like J. Random Bozo's troll.

I think in time we'll see communities based on membership where you do pay a fee, and then if you behave badly you'll get nuked and kicked out of the community. And it needn't be limited to one site. You could have a site goodcitizen.com and then people would have accounts with it, and their membership there would allow them to participate in blogs, etc.

The trick will be in who finds a good way to do the 'justice' system right. I've thought about this model quite a bit..

Another problem is payment systems. Part of the culture of the internet with payments is that you have to work with parties who have a business model based on bad faith. Google checkout seems to be changing that though, and now is the first time I've thought about the model since evaluating them.

I would not pay because the content on HN isn't so specialized that I cannot find the community elsewhere. Furthermore, trolls are easily identified and ignored, like SPAM.

However if there were a subscription, I think you need to think about the value of this community. Charging just posters would unleash a backlash by the most active members of this community. Their thought would be, "why would I PAY to participate in a community when everyone else can obtain the value of my knowledge for FREE?" Using the email analogy again, if everyone who wanted to email me had to pay $5/year, I would probably receive no spam, but more importantly no emails at all -- not even from my mother who would just use a cheaper substitute (phone).

$5 is not much of a barrier to entry for someone with an agenda, say troll or marketer.

But it sure cuts down on repeated spam if they have to find a new credit card and pay a new $5 every time they get booted.

I pay $20-30 a month for LinkedIn and find HN at least as valuable. I would be willing to pay the same for the knowledge that's available in these forums and the ability to take part. I find it extremely thought provoking.

No.

Sorry, let me elaborate. I do comment on HN, I generally don't post as much as I should. I find HN valuable but no more valuable than other community sites I frequent. If HN went to $5/yr I'd lose some of the discussion but ultimately I'd move on to a different community that didn't charge $5/yr. Whilst there are many on this site that probably would pay the $5/yr for this community with this amount of users, the community would lose a lot of people and the quality of the community would drop with the quantity (as in you're not just losing deadwood and trolls here).

The content is what makes this site interesting. So I understand the concept but submit doing anything to discourage content is a bad business model. I am primarily a reader or "lurker", but am also an ANGEL investor and CEO of my own self funded start up.

So I would propose you develop a model that has a charge for reading that can be waived by posting credits. So announce 6 months from now it is $5 a yr but by being active you can reduce the charge. I realize lots of loop holes, but basically charge readers not content creators.

It does work well for MetaFilter, but voting seems to work okay here. What exactly would you describe as "a lot of problems"? What problems need to be solved?

What if you could buy 5 whuffies (or whatever points on here are called) for $5, but could only post comments if your score remained above zero? Or maybe something in the stackoverflow type scheme, where the points are correlated with privileges?

I'm reading this thread while drinking a latte that cost nearly $5. Yes, I would pay $5 for a year of HN... even if there were still trolls.

Metafilter has a one-time $5 fee http://www.metafilter.com/newuser.mefi

The problem is that in most of the cases you can't tell whether a service/website is worth this one-time $5 fee. I myself have to use a service for a while to decide whether I want to pay for it or not.

Anyone can read MeFi, but you need to be a member to post. I'm sure a similar model could apply here if wanted.

Metafilter has been very successful in preserving its user culture -- and it has a very particular community, with a sophisticated writing style, etc. It's easy to imagine that if they hadn't done the fee, the site could have degenerated into a digg-like mess.

I think Metafilter is a positive example of a small fee policy working.

If the charge served to reduce the chaff from unvetted commentators, then I'd have no problem with it. Depending on...

How smoothe (and trust-worthy) is the credit card payment process. If it makes registration/payment more of a hassle then the time/trouble cost would personally be a barrier when the $5.00 would not. But that's just me.

No, but I'd pay a $20 one-time fee. The reason for this is that I find recurring costs to be a hassle to worry about.

now hn has orange, why not extend it further? like belt-color levels

say a new user is of white belt and can't post after s/he of age one week (then automatically get yellow belt and can post 1 post / day max) ... higher levels can post more per day

and maybe a penalty function like temporarily giving 1 day noprocrast for trolling

I'd pay ten dollars a year for HN if everyone else had to pay five dollars a year. :-)

In all seriousness, K5 provides a pretty good example of what happens when you do this:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2007/9/10/13920/3664

I would pay if you find a way to avoid excluding people who are assets to this community, but don't want to or can't pay.

Maybe there could be a system of free trial that would extend to a free yearly subscription for people whose karma is high enough by the end of the trial period?

Surprising to me to see how many would pay $5 per annum. Personally I believe in open communication!

"Stopping" anonymous users can be done with a little bit of design in the sign-up process.

If money is required adding some ads down the RHS of the screen would easily make that much ...

just my 2 cents...

Yes I would. While I recognize that a pay for access methodology won't cure all of the ills of the virtual world, like a padlock on a door, it will serve as a deterrent to casual ne'er do wells.

A troll would totally pay to manipulate and pee in your sacred pond.

No, I wouldn't pay for it. Shouldn't the trolling issue naturally work it self out over time? If anonymous users are the issue perhaps add some additional validation of identities?

Yes. I would also pay to get more attention for my questions. Sort of like many game worlds, where you can earn points either by activity or by paying hard cash.

Yes, definitely. Hacker News is worth more than $5/year to me with the amount of time I spend on it and it'd be worth it if it keeps users more reasonable.

No.

I would pretend that I was seriously considering it, and then would find something that was nearly as good and never come back.

cf. Salon.com (despite the fact that it went free years ago)

Isn't this the same thing that Metafilter does? How's it working out for them? I know I paid my $5 for them, but I haven't been back there in a long time.

I'd pay. I left Digg because the signal to noise ratio got so bad that just felt it wasn't worth my time anymore.

we need a reputation economy. currently karma isn't good for anything but stroking people's ego.

I would be happy to pay (much more even), but I don't think it's necessary to help the community.

How about a two tiered system, whereupon we maintain both and open and invite only board?

How about a lottery where everyone pays, but where the winner gets loads of free karma?

If it meant that this place doesn't go the way of reddit/digg/etc. then sure.

No, but I might be willing to go through some kind of hazing ritual.

Sure I will. Where do I send the money? California or Boston?

Small $5 paypal button. Keep things simple. I'd click.

have users with a certain reputation in and then charge a fee for new ones or just forbid commenting for users without reputation?!

I would pay and I think it might be a good idea.

Yes! HN is my main source of aggregated news.

How about a karma floor for upmodding?

100%. It is my main source of news :)

i never post here but have been reading isnce its inception and would gladly pay $20+ a year

yes, if it was moderated by a editorial staff - not crowd rated. otherwise, no.

Yes. I would pay $5 per year.

I don't agree with the idea, but if it was required, i would definitely pay this amount to stay in the community. I dont visit Digg anymore since i know HN! For me it's an evolutionary step.

HN means a lot to me.

I would gladly pay $5/year

I'd pay $5/yr for HN.

I would pay $5/month.

Yes without a thought

I'll pay that and a little more without hesitating.

Yes, unquestionably.

No. I'm too cheap.

Yes for sure

Yes

I'd do it.

Absolutely

yes, I would pay $5/yr

no.

I had to think about this for a while, but finally: no.

It worked for something awful but it pisses me off that if I have something valuable to contribute to a thread I have to cough up ten bucks. Just feels wrong. I'm doing the work right? Something awful still gets paid when someone reads my post and clicks on an ad. So, I have a negative feeling about something awful and never go there.

I might pay $5 for something that was truly value added for me, such as a secret list of "best of" content or something, or the ability to join a community of meta-moderators, or like that.

A thousand people will pay, a hundred thousand won't.

HN will be an elitist forum of jerks in an echo chamber with fewer posts and two or three comments per post.

There goes the fun down the toilet.

no, there are too many other free sources for articles like this

google "clay shirky micropayments", kids.

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