What criteria do you use to determine 'health' in online communities?
Depends on the context, for example, commercial/business health may vary from the actual health of the members interactions that make up a given community. Personally, I would assess the health of HN community based on raw engagement numbers as well as a qualitative assessment of the interaction value, like:
Are the topics relevant to human growth & evolution of the mind? Diverse? Intelligent? Controversial at times? Is the content I am exposed to and consuming making me a better _________ ? Do community participants interact in a way that fosters understanding and knowledge transfer/gain? Are members willing to admit what they don't know, when they are wrong, and respectfully disagree in the mean time? Are there a lot of blatant trolls/negative or useless quips/spam?
What is your working definition of "success" and "health" is what I would wonder given that you and your institution are apparently investing resources here?
How do these differ from those criteria you use to determine ‘health’ in offline communities you are in?
For me, they don't differ much - same criteria, expectations and standards sought elsewhere online.
How does HN exemplify or not exemplify 'healthy' behaviors?
Not sure how moderated the forum behind the scenes, but I rarely am subjected to irrelevant, toxic, rude commentary, so props to whomever/however they pull that off because it keeps many people actively returning and engaging in best practices aka healthy behavior.
Also, love how dead simple and basic the interface is, don't ever change HN!
One thing I do wish would be clearer communicated / understood is how the algorithm works as in 'why am I seeing what i am seeing?' I might be missing this already shared, but it would make for a healthier community by being as transparent as possible about this because it builds trust in the platform.
What behaviors of your own would you acknowledge may or may not contribute to the overall ‘health’ of HN?
I'm just here to listen learn from smart people, (in fact I was a lurker for almost 10 years before more recently creating an account to facilitate my goal of writing more). My hope would be that individually my impact or value this community is a net positive :)
How did you get into HN? Who introduced you? What makes you stay?
I don't remember, I think everyone in the entrepreneur/hacker community just knows about it.
I will conclude by saying one aspect of this community that is unique and you may want to look into as you conduct your "health" and "success" research is: the role 'identity politics' has on the quality of conversations among members in a given community. I am unaware of another robust online community that places such a high emphasis on the caliber of content/conversations and low emphasis of who it's coming from as far as I can tell?