[sankalpb]

Thanks for the interest, and being so thorough. I do hope to share my result here, so that this can be part of an on-going conversation. I'm not sure about how subscribing works on HN, but I'm currently considering making results available through an edit to the original post of this AskHN. Hope that works!

Here are other thoughts and questions I have for your points:

2 - your point about rituals needed to shape an offline community is fascinating, do you find that there are any adjacent rituals for online communities?

3 - I hadn't realized that quality degrading for links, but not comments would be a pattern that arrives but would love to hear more about this if you're willing to offer more details!

5 - can you say more about the 'stay below a threshold to continue to attract users who have more to offer' bit?

[1123581321]

Thanks. I don’t think most people will see the edited post. Would you consider collecting email addresses from people and sending the report that way?

2. I’ve seen various online facsimiles of offline rituals but I can’t say whether they’re effective.

3. I meant to say that degrading link/content quality precedes degrading comment quality. I thought about it more and not every community is going to be like that, though. Sometimes community/comment degradation happens first. I think one will always cause the other to happen, though, and the unhealthy dynamic in either case is to believe that the primary thing that drives quality in the rest of the community is not really the point anymore.

5. A healthy community needs to attract quality members and convince them to invest in the community with creative contributions and discussions. If the signal-to-noise ratio drops too much, the community won’t be as attractive to those members (and will attract members who find opportunity or affinity in a lower quality community, creating a cycle.)