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Comment by aneesh | Hacker News Reader

I never felt any barrier to posting on HN. Nearly everyone on this site is pretty welcoming. Just comment on something that interests you, or that you know something about.

By the way, for me, and I suspect many others, it's not really a free rider problem like you describe. I don't gain much by simply having a collection of interesting links, nor do I feel like I'm doing a service when I post a comment or article. I gain from the actual discussions around interesting articles, especially when people respond to my comments.

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Aneesh, it sounds to me like you've been part of the 1% club for a long time. I applaud you for that. Without people like you, HN wouldn't be my homepage.

But the point is that the vast majority of HN users are likely not contributors. Instead, they're passive visitors to the site. With respect to that group, unless you don't want those users contributing, there's definitely a free rider problem.

Although I certainly don't think the barrier is unique to HN (although downvoting adds some pressure to come with something decent). I was just wondering what creative strategies people have used to get people to leave their first post or comment. Because I think once you get that first comment, you get the user hooked (b/c then they experience the added value of the discussion you mention).

It's great to finally find an interesting community of (somewhat+) like minded individuals. I've spent my time on digg, reddit, and slashdot trying to recreate early usenet culture.

I've been searching for a while for something 1/10 of 1% of the breadth and deepness of Usenet, aside the alt hierarchy. This place comes close to the wonderful moderated rooms of the comp groups.

I've lurked here long enough though. It's high time I at least said hi.

ObOntopic: I check out hackaday.com for interesting circuit/design and control ideas. I've had months of fun by reverse biasing leds for usage of data transfer. You can use a track of them as a track-sensor for a dimmer control, assuming you have access to a PIC programmer.

+I'm a young guy, but learned from old guys. My elder friends were all hams and old school circuit hackers. One of them even built their own vacuum tubes. Programming is interesting to say the least, but not really my forte. It's always been circuits and rf for me. Sorry for sounding conceited, as it wasn't my intention.

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