Have you ever seen an example where anything became better than before when it grew big. There is almost a law that a company, a group, a community, a game or anything once it grows past its core audience it just gets ruined.
I have seen a game with millions of players become crappy once they became mainstream and started to attract very young and very old. Suddenly all jokes were inappropriate and game themes were too family friendly.
I have seen fb go from a place of being basically school wide chat to family announcements forum.
I have seen restaurants go from personalized/affordable service, to multi-store chain food that is barely edible and more expensive.
I have seen small startup where everyone enjoyed working and build dreams to become required corporate happy hours.
Take YC, I have heard from many founders it's not what it used to be...
On that note, I am glad that HN is still a niche community and hope stays that way, and UI becomes even more crappy so people from other cultures and walks of life don't start joining in. There are negatives to this, but not huge because there are other platforms for general population. (Imagine a forum for doctors to discuss new treatments and everyone can join in, soon it'd be r/AskDoc and of almost no value to actual doctors).
Somewhere in the vastness of the Internet, it is happening even now. It was once a well-kept garden of intelligent discussion, where knowledgeable and interested folk came, attracted by the high quality of speech they saw ongoing. But into this garden comes a fool, and the level of discussion drops a little—or more than a little, if the fool is very prolific in their posting. (It is worse if the fool is just articulate enough that the former inhabitants of the garden feel obliged to respond, and correct misapprehensions—for then the fool dominates conversations.)"
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-kept-...