Two problems with that:

1. Gentrification does not imply displacement. It can happen but is a political attachment to the term.

2. Displacement does not necessarily displace “those who made it good”, whatever that means.

“In democratization, something scarce and luxurious is devalued by its increasing popularity.”

Huh? Again more political attachments. How is the ability to read and write devalued as more people learn?

I think the gentrification term is more appropriate.

Can you not see the irony of playing up your role in Indymedia and calling yourself “Anarchogeek”, then leaving for the the most elitist community of them all, Hacker News, leaving the “unwashed masses” as you call them in your trail?

Basically what you want is a poll tax. If what you want is to keep out the rabble and be exclusionary, then you need to set standards for participation.

For those of you who argue that’s elitist, undemocratic, and wrong, I reply that you’re right.

The gold standard for non-filtering or very very weak filtering is YouTube, whose comment threads are all but unreadable. Actually, no, they’re utterly unreadable.

Metafilter, a place with great comments has restrictions on membership, well executed flagging of comments and participation, and a loyal community. It works because there’s are standards set for participation.

(came in via Waxy.org. Interesting stuff you have here)

The question is, how do you compare that to online communities. And how do you create online communities dedicated to finding new stuff, which is what these link voting sites do, which retain quality.

How do you find the women to keep the keys, the people least likely to abuse the situation, yet also create space for participation.

Regarding keeping the rabble out, what a very funny concept… To me it’s about how to do we create a space for the multitude, many different identities, communities, subcultures, which can share and discover without being overwhelmed by a dominate monoculture, which is the gentrifying force of online communities.

I don’t think the trust metric solution is appropriate; it’s solving a different problem. That might allow a community to grow without being taken over by spammers. It does not allow someone to continue to have that cool little neighborhood they had when they started. As they grow, sites like reddit drift towards lowest common denominator news items, like cute pictures, because they are the most generally popular. You can recover some of the original community by going to specialized topics, but that wasn’t as interesting as being involved with a community of people who shared the pioneer spirit. I wonder if one can create a cohort group for people that joined around the same time as oneself.

It’s a bit selfish I know, but one of the great things about Hacker News is that the names there often look familiar. The community seems small enough that you feel like you know people there.

Oh and by the way, I submitted your brickhouse post to Hacker News. I found it on someone’s del.icio.us network. I hope you don’t mind.