[sycr]

> You'll cut off the lifeblood of a community whose participants are moving very quickly past the phase where they're excited to be involved in such a community—people get successful, busy, jaded, etc.

I was about to respond to this with something to the effect of: "What have you observed that suggests in any way that the community is moving on?"

Then I looked at your credentials. It seems as though the kind of person you're describing as having moved on/become far too busy/etc is, well, you.

So it's possible that you might be conflating your own experience with the group's as a whole. Hacker News appears to me to be growing at quite a pace - independently of any such buttons or notions of elitism. In fact, I think the notion that it's growing precisely because of the elitism of quality, is worth considering.

(P.S. Love your work by the way - it's got such a superb sense of design.)

[eoghan]

Thanks for your kind words. I don't consider myself one of these people. I love reading the content I find through HN and participating in the discussions from time to time. I really don't want to see it die due to the misplaced efforts to prevent the same.