Why Habr died. What to do and where to run
Disclaimer. This post - the expanded answer to a post Habr is dying? .
In the original post, I gave a link to my discussion with deniskin from November 2014 (a little later on the point on the TS chart when Habr began to die): habrahabr.ru/post/278325/#comment_8789143
In that thread I described in detail what happened with Habr and why he dies. A year and a half has passed, a respected community can evaluate which of us was right.
The initial thesis is as follows: Habr was killed first of all by Thematic Media’s misunderstanding of what Habrahabr is and why it took off - unlike other TM projects, half of which have already been buried and the other half are flying low.
The fact is that Habr in the form in which it existed in 2010 was not at all a "site about IT" such as 3dnews and Ferra. Habr was, first of all, a circle of interests. A bunch of geeks gathered and discussed, in general, what they themselves were interested in - including, but not limited to, space, desktops, substances, evolutionary theory, greed of copywriters, Churov’s comb and others. Periodically, TM raided and banned a particularly cruel flame, but, in general, the situation suited everyone.
Then this happened: Habr grew and grew and gradually grew to very large sizes. This entailed a bunch of unpleasant consequences:
- it became profitable to write all sorts of gadget reviews and other slag for money;
- the level of discussion began to frankly fall, and the level of flame, respectively - to grow;
- Good suitable posts (good suitable == interesting to the audience’s geek core) began to be written simply uninteresting, because they drowned in all kinds of slag and received much fewer comments, pluses, stars, and that’s all.
In general, however, Habr was more likely alive than dead. But then the administration came into action, with the elegance of a hippo, who solved all of the above problems:
- no quality articles? We will declare Habr a place strictly “about programming”, we will grow a carcass / stuff of “high-quality content” through “promotions of authors” and corporate blogs;
- a lot of flooding? We’ll ban one half, cut off the other half of karma;
- Everything “not about IT” will be evicted to separate sites.
The most unpleasant thing is that the administration has completely achieved its goals . Habr turned into a collection of good articles about programming. No, really, of course, there are not so many of them, but they are quite high-quality. But the community at the same time died, Habr is no longer a collective blog, namely, that the publication platform with thin comments.
In the discussion “at the opening of the clocktime” of that time, I expressed the thesis that someone would definitely make a “normal clone of a habr”, which would take away the audience from TM projects. This did not happen, since Habr is not dying in favor of some other site, and this is pretty clear from the above. Personally, I stopped writing in Habr, because the level of the community fell. Where am I going? Obviously, where there is a society interesting to me - on Facebook, Telegram, whatever. My hypothesis is that the audience of the old Habr was quietly creeping into other places of the geek party, that's all.
Finally, instead of a conclusion. These processes, in my opinion, are irreversible. There is no "Old" Habr, it is impossible to revive it, and nothing like it is expected on the horizon. So it goes.
In the original post, I gave a link to my discussion with deniskin from November 2014 (a little later on the point on the TS chart when Habr began to die): habrahabr.ru/post/278325/#comment_8789143
In that thread I described in detail what happened with Habr and why he dies. A year and a half has passed, a respected community can evaluate which of us was right.
The initial thesis is as follows: Habr was killed first of all by Thematic Media’s misunderstanding of what Habrahabr is and why it took off - unlike other TM projects, half of which have already been buried and the other half are flying low.
The fact is that Habr in the form in which it existed in 2010 was not at all a "site about IT" such as 3dnews and Ferra. Habr was, first of all, a circle of interests. A bunch of geeks gathered and discussed, in general, what they themselves were interested in - including, but not limited to, space, desktops, substances, evolutionary theory, greed of copywriters, Churov’s comb and others. Periodically, TM raided and banned a particularly cruel flame, but, in general, the situation suited everyone.
Then this happened: Habr grew and grew and gradually grew to very large sizes. This entailed a bunch of unpleasant consequences:
- it became profitable to write all sorts of gadget reviews and other slag for money;
- the level of discussion began to frankly fall, and the level of flame, respectively - to grow;
- Good suitable posts (good suitable == interesting to the audience’s geek core) began to be written simply uninteresting, because they drowned in all kinds of slag and received much fewer comments, pluses, stars, and that’s all.
In general, however, Habr was more likely alive than dead. But then the administration came into action, with the elegance of a hippo, who solved all of the above problems:
- no quality articles? We will declare Habr a place strictly “about programming”, we will grow a carcass / stuff of “high-quality content” through “promotions of authors” and corporate blogs;
- a lot of flooding? We’ll ban one half, cut off the other half of karma;
- Everything “not about IT” will be evicted to separate sites.
The most unpleasant thing is that the administration has completely achieved its goals . Habr turned into a collection of good articles about programming. No, really, of course, there are not so many of them, but they are quite high-quality. But the community at the same time died, Habr is no longer a collective blog, namely, that the publication platform with thin comments.
In the discussion “at the opening of the clocktime” of that time, I expressed the thesis that someone would definitely make a “normal clone of a habr”, which would take away the audience from TM projects. This did not happen, since Habr is not dying in favor of some other site, and this is pretty clear from the above. Personally, I stopped writing in Habr, because the level of the community fell. Where am I going? Obviously, where there is a society interesting to me - on Facebook, Telegram, whatever. My hypothesis is that the audience of the old Habr was quietly creeping into other places of the geek party, that's all.
Finally, instead of a conclusion. These processes, in my opinion, are irreversible. There is no "Old" Habr, it is impossible to revive it, and nothing like it is expected on the horizon. So it goes.