"Traditional methods for protecting community from..scale..are now manifestly unfeasible"

I love how K5 articles have their own writing style. It's a shame the community is dead, because I genuinely miss the writing that came out of there, with its own unique rhythm and set of tropes.

Counter intuitive principles and highly thought provoking ideas make it a great, although long, read. The application of the conclusions in this article would be interesting to behold and analyze.<p>Author, rightly or wrongly, holds some strong opinions against Clay Shirky's ideas.

Meta-discussion blending with topical discussion here, I'd be interested to know what the moderation burden on HN is. HN has maintained quality up to this scale and may be able to prevent additional growth, but what's the cost?

There's a lot to be said for this theory if you look at the real world, where anonymous interactions play out well 90+% of the time (selon anecdotal experience.)

on a practical side what's happening at the moment with facebook and twitter is destroying the classical online communities and replacing them with your personal social recommendation network. That works quite well for people who already have a wide network and a lot of people to follow, but I think it's a bit sad for the kid who wants to learn and just starts...