Ask HN: Are you paying for access to a private community? Why? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are you paying for access to a private community? Why?

8 pointsRikNieu6 comments

I'm trying to understand paid-for and private social networks and communties and would like some input from those who use and appreciate them.

What communities are you part of? What makes it worth the money for you? Why not just use free alternatives like Reddit or FB?

I'd really like to understand this because it's such a foreign concept to me - I don't think anything could convince me to sign up for something like that, yet loads of people do.

Any thoughts?

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I pay ~$10 for membership on a niche dating website (for a community that is not served well by the likes of Tinder / Match.com / etc.). The emphasis is on meeting IRL, and the biggest problem they solve is to offer a large and dense (geographically speaking) network of like-minded real people who are ready to meet. Paid subscription is not the only trick they use to weed out fakes, but it goes a long way. Money is pretty much the only constraint that keeps the site from being flooded by bots and spams.

Membership quality is the most important part of a good community. Cash is a good filter.

Something Awful bans a lot of people, quite often. Cash keeps them from simply signing up to get around the ban and acts as fine to remind them to behave and read the rules.

> "Membership quality is the most important part of a good community. Cash is a good filter."

That's true, but in some cases cash can act as bait, to lure members in with a false sense of security.

The Ashley-Madison leaks revealed that a large percentage of their female users were just bots, made by the company to increase engagement...

You can't always trust private walled-gardens

It's not easy to run a good forum; helping the people that do so earn a living seems like a great idea. Such communities often benefit from the filter of having everyone there having a stake in wanting to be there, or a good reason to not want to be there when its no longer fun.

Those aspects make a forum fertile grounds for cultist tribal social bullshit, which often kills the community. It's like setting out fresh baked bread; it will grow mold eventually; but for the period before that it's a lovely wonderful warm comforting thing.

Financial Times. Articles relevant to work and comments section makes for good reading i.e. often well informed commentators and debate, usually the journalists chime in too.

I spent $10 on an internet forum :|

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