[sharken]

I think of Hacker News as a community, but it's still large enough that you don't really notice who is posting.

What makes a difference to me are the insights you get here combined with thoughtful answers, as in rarely the lowest common denominator type of discussions.

For that there are all too many forgettable social media sites.

[beaconstudios]

Hacker News isn't a community in any meaningful sense. I have had interpersonal interactions with maybe half a dozen people from here, all very positive but I don't know these people like I know my neighbours or my friends or even the people who work at the local shop.

Hacker News is a very large and impersonal forum. You can have interesting conversations on a forum, but the degree to which they are a community is the degree to which you develop relationships with the other people. I wouldn't call /r/videos (or any other massive subreddit) a community either, and they have the same level of social intimacy.

[Multicomp]

> Hacker News is a very large and impersonal forum

Agreed. Aside from recognizing some familiar usernames[1], unless you know someone from IRL or via another social media platform, the posts all 'pseudo-anonymously' blend together. The standardized comment formats, fonts, and command bar next to each comment help make it so, even if you perform per-page custom styling.

[1] my personal list OTOMH is tctpateck(sp?), dragonwriter, doreenmichelle, dang(ok thats a gimme), sklabnik

[lurker619]

Exactly. Many times I've typed out a comment and at the last moment refrain from posting, because I feel it doesn't really add to the discussion. I'd rather there be less higher-quality comments, than many comments like mine justing adding +1. Ironically, I almost deleted this comment.

[OJFord]

It took me years, (I don't mean that to sound like I was trying) but I have actually started recognising quite a few usernames. Not even particularly prolific/high karma users, or at least not only them, just people with some common interests so we're frequently reading/commenting on the same things I suppose.