[meristohm]

Is it okay to plateau? If HN keeps going, gaining and losing people over time and not growing above X% of the population, and eventually declining for whatever reason, that seems the way of things. Change happens, and the best we can do is guide it and prepare. It’s okay to live and then die.

[dang]

It's cosmically ok for things to plateau, but from a local perspective I'd be concerned if HN were plateauing. It would mean that something else was wrong. Probably a lot else.

The mandate of the site is to be gratify intellectual curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). Any website achieving such a thing will naturally grow.

[meristohm]

Thank you for the reminder about the intentional limits of this forum:

> One important thing to realize is that we're trying to optimize HN for just one thing, which is curiosity

I’ve found it easier to practice creativity, for example, if I impose some boundaries.

[krapp]

For better or worse, given the contrarian nature of this community, many here would probably view a decline in membership as a good thing.