I think democratization is a better word than gentrification. In gentrification, something bad is turned into something good, in the process displacing those who made it good. In democratization, something scarce and luxurious is devalued by its increasing popularity. Niche Communities (like HN) despise the unwashed masses and recoil when their community is invaded.

It's not so much that I despise the unwashed masses, it's just that the greatest common denominator tends to go very low, as the total number of participants goes up. Take a billion Nobel prize winners and the only things they will all have in common will be sex and violence, that and the Nobel prize.

My point is, it's not that the masses are unwashed, it's just the masses - law of averages.

Thanks! I was going to go into normal distributions, communities of interest, etc, but I just used some sensational language that got the point across. For anyone offended by the original, biohacker gave the explanation I was too lazy to write.

+1 for saying GCD instead of LCD.

Maybe I'm too pessimistic, but I would actually take it one step further and say it's closer to the process of turning a nice neighbourhood into slums.

Yeah, that's a better analogy, but there's not a good word for that. Urban decay?

yes I thought the same thing, certainly not the same gentrification that is used in real estate (although having said that, there is the general view that gentrification isn't always good for an area - at least in terms of it totally changing the nature of a urban district).

What mechanisms are in place here to punish noise and reward signal?

There are quite a lot, ranging from code to autokill spam submissions to graphic tweaks to prevent mob downvoting.

In fact, most of the time I've spent hacking news.yc recently I've spent working on this class of features.

I would say HN has maintained a remarkably high signal to noise ratio thus far.

I agree. "Thus far" is what I'm worried about. This is a valuable community and at some point will need defending from the hordes. There are lots of ways to do that, hence my question.

I think it's just karma (and admin policing).

But karma is very linear, and it's a point system so it encourages gaming. What we want is a system where the genuine participant can contribute with value and not be drown out. Hacker News is small enough that i can contribute and by merits of my post alone, maybe hit the front page. That doesn't happen on reddit, digg, or yahoo buzz.

Giles Bowkett had a post a month or so ago pointing out the same thing. PG's response was basically that admin policing should cut off people trying to game the system with irrelevant content:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=196751

Presumably, he's hoping that by limiting the scope of the content, he can limit the number of interested participants and therefore the scale of the site.

Good points. Regarding HN, I think the basic concept of submitting links by community members works. What HN needs to fight is mainstreamisation and spamming. So far, HN fares satisfactory.

What remains to be seen is, if the relatively high quality of front page can be maintained for the long time by using technology and algorithms alone, and if not, what kind of editorial control would be suitable.

p.s: Why every article about community tech sites have to bash slashdot? Slashdot is alive and well, outliving both reddit and digg.

Just wait until the tech crunch crowd realizes that this is the place that folks like Fred Wilson gets his leads and you'll start to see folks gaming the system. I mean Fred already has said he gets news from here, i'm sure other VC's do too. Once the techcrunch biz dev types realize that, then you'll see the attacks on the system.

there are already attacks on this system.

i have no insider knowledge of this site, other than i keep my "showdead" parameter turned on. we get quite a few spammy submissions and comments, most of which are killed within seconds. most of this must be automated, there's no way the editors can be patrolling the place 24 hours a day.

I think what will determine the longevity of this community is the standard of modding.

BTW -- DZone, which is mentioned in the article, is awesome.

Great little startup out of North Carolina. Terrific material -- topical, technical, and relevant. (No -- not a paid endorsement, just I like the site)

You guys should check it out.