Ask HN: How to develop and maintain online community of very high quality? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to develop and maintain online community of very high quality?

7 pointsrayalez9 comments

Hi! What are some ideas on creating an online community that has the level of quality similar to HN/LW?

Are there some methods that can help me to keep my community positive, intelligent, creative?

Please share your thoughts and advice.

P.S.

Specifically, I am developing a community for writers, and I want it to consist of the kind of people who like to hang out here, on LW, and on /r/rational. If you can share some ideas on how I could go about doing that - I would really appreciate it.

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I tried to build an online community of youths interested in politics and failed for lack of people. (We did have a very narrow target group: German youths who were both interested in social matters and enjoyed writing. That probably killed us, since we didn't (yet) manage to spread our advertising net wide enough to attract enough people for a snowball effect.)

So I think you're first problem isn't going to be how to keep your community, but how to grow it. I'd like to hear what ideas others here have on that?

1. Good content, advertised occasionally

2. Heavy moderation

3. Esoteric writing

The first two are pretty simple. The third one is theoretical, based on the book I've been reading lately: Arthur Melzer - Philosophy Between the Lines. It's a dense and exhaustive but compelling history of esoteric writing in philosophy and its sudden disappearance in modern times. Writing esoterically acts as another, explicitly elitist filter because it locks out the people who would reach wrong, unenlightened conclusions.

(I recommend the book, it is a slow read though. I'm only about halfway through it.)

Write high-quality content, and allow people to discuss it. It worked for slatestarcodex.

What is LW?

http://lesswrong.com

Clearly state - in writing, what the true objectives of the community are.

compare slasdot to http://www.slashdotmedia.com/

Many engineers object to facebook for many good reason. I rather enjoy it but I havent configured any favorite books or movies because I dont want SkyNet to comoute my psychological profile.

I dont by any means object to advertising but I do object to tracking.

The only way is to be exclusive. Every community that allows everyone in eventually gets watered down and destroyed by the masses.

"Forty below keeps the riff-raff out." -- Marguerite Payne, Muskegon, Michigan

In general: Pick a specific topic or set of related topics. Limit the audience to the literate. No pictures. No video.

I don't think writers will go b-tard on you.

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