Intentional Hacker Communities
In response to an article over here
I can’t speak to the hacker news consumption side, except for my early temporary watching of slashdot, which I compare to my early experiences with micro-brews. I have moved on generally. I can speak to the indymedia / news production side of things (as opposed to consumption). I posted an article in response to a poster on portland.indymedia.org about indymedia being “dead”. It is over here: http://www.salaud.net/blog/?p=50 and I think that Rabble and I share a lot of common perspective on this…. I would not go so far as to say that iReport.COM or the others are like what indymedia does in the sense of the intent/method.
I see the intent/method as being more important than the ends…. the means are more important. In the same way, I believe that a possible solution to the problem that Rabble is describing is that, just like indymedia, the alpha-hackers (did I just say that?) need to create an INTENTIONAL community. This intentional community can choose whether to sell out its space or not. If the ends are “get page hits”…. that’s one choice, if the ends provide a space for open-publishing of RELEVANT information, that’s another. Just as in a gentrification, which I agree is loaded word, it does not really matter, except in extreme cases, whether hipsters or bohemes WANT to buy homes or businesses in the area, the people already living there have to SELL OUT. Some cases, of course, the city forces out undesirables by taxes or other things. Long story short, prosperous, informative, and empowering hacker news sites need to have PRINCIPLES of unity that are not sold out. If they do this, then a few of these intentional communities will not turn into roving tent cities.