Despite 14x growth, the character of the site has remained intact. So far this experiment seems to be working.
I'm not sure what counts as character and this is obviously subjective but my personal feeling is that HN's quality has taken a slight hit in the past year. It doesn't seem as unique as it once was and many of the topics that make it to the front page seem to be more formulaic. Furthermore many newcomers seem to post the same things that were raised here previously. I've lost track of the number of topics about hosting providers, credit card processing and the like. Also with the increased volume it's been hard to make effective use of the "new" page. Odd things that may interest me that don't quickly get enough attention are lost faster.
Unfortunately I predict growth and network effects will speed up this trend and 2 years from now HN will likely be much less interesting as the HN of a year or two ago.
I'm not sure what counts as character and this is obviously subjective but my personal feeling is that HN's quality has taken a slight hit in the past year. It doesn't seem as unique as it once was and many of the topics that make it to the front page seem to be more formulaic. Furthermore many newcomers seem to post the same things that were raised here previously. I've lost track of the number of topics about hosting providers, credit card processing and the like. Also with the increased volume it's been hard to make effective use of the "new" page. Odd things that may interest me that don't quickly get enough attention are lost faster.
Unfortunately I predict growth and network effects will speed up this trend and 2 years from now HN will likely be much less interesting as the HN of a year or two ago.