the best scorers in basketball have whats called shooters amnesia. They don't think about the shot they just missed. It isnt part of their reality. Focus on the next thing. don't tie your self esteem to your last shot

Security by obscurity is not really security at all. Perhaps the TechCrunch exposure has hurt the site in the short term, but if Hacker News can get through these growing pains it will be presumably better off in the long run.

The problem as I see it is not the size of the community but the concentration of thinkers. It doesn't really matter what articles make it to the front page; if the comments start filling up with cheap one liners and unreasoned opinions I know that I for one will lose interest.

In all seriousness, take a break. It doesn't have to be for a long time, just enough to refresh your mental outlook. Travel a bit, even just to visit a friend in a fun city or somewhere to enjoy the outdoors. Get away from your computer. Be patient. Allow yourself to be human.

It'll grow regardless. And, the kind of people that will actually stick around tend to be the kind of people we want to be here. The rest will wander off...back to digg, over to reddit, whatever.

Thanks for asking, though.

Now it's pg's job to figure out how to programmatically maintain the high quality of results. I still want one down-vote per week for stories...sometimes a story shows up that makes me feel ill to see it on the front page, and it would feel real good to vote them down, even if I only got to do it once per week(day|month).

To shamelessly copy from a comment I left elsewhere:

I'll mod something up if it's on-topic, well thought-out, and I agree with it. I'll only mod something down if it's blatantly off topic and rude/trollish. If I simply don't agree with what they said, but they said it in useful way, I'll just leave it be.

I'm all about modding the people who post goatse links down into negative oblivion, but I think it kind of stifles discussion if you downmod simply because you don't happen to agree. Instead of dog-piling someone for a dissenting opinion, take the extra 30 seconds to write a response. It'll enrich the discussion.

And I'll add that I upmod comments that are below -1 if they aren't trollish. If that marginalizes me somehow, who cares. I'd rather people not get their karma destroyed just because they have a minority opinion. Go destroy trolls instead.

It's the real TechCrunch.

I don't mind. Traffic had been growing pretty constantly at about 5x per year anway, so we'd have had to deal with this problem eventually.

As Pmarca wrote: attempting to improve your batting average of hits versus misses is a waste of time as you progress through a creative career. Instead you should just focus on more at-bats -- more output.

Link here: http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/08/age-and-the-ent.html

The ratio of success to failure in tech startups ranges from 1:3 to 1:10 depending on who you read. That means pace yourself, you might have to do this a couple of times before you get a home run.

I'm one of the whiners on TechCrunch about exposure. Sorry!

Basically, I think the community was excellent before you made a big deal of announcing it. It has continued to be excellent after, but the signal to noise ratio has worsened somewhat. I'm not a long-timer, but I have very much enjoyed this site and, for once, would be quite happy if the community didn't grow wildly.

I think that publicity has worked out okay, though, probably just showing the resiliency of the community.

I imagine "Hacker News" as a shy, but talented hacker. It can live with a few minutes in the spotlight, shaking hands, and taking awards, but it's going to do its best work when it can quietly focus and get the work done with its team. The more time spent in front of the press, the less time it has to improve the world behind the scenes. It understands how the fanfare is important at times, but certainly doesn't seek it when there's clever coding to be done.

Just out of curiosity: Why did you post about it? Was it to grow the site? To help your readers find a good source? Or did you want other founders to know about it to grow the number of startups that hang out here?

I agree. Go somewhere different for a bit, and try to just wipe your brain.