Maybe some percentage of invitees? I can definitely see the need to disincentivize imprudent inviting, but one mistake is pretty rough. Surely you’ve met somebody in real life who’s revealed themselves as a jerk after initially appearing ok.

That is basically the idea behind https://lobste.rs/ . There's approximately zero spam or other bad behavior.

You can look at the full user tree (https://lobste.rs/users) and see if there's anyone you know who might be willing to invite you to join.

Very little spam, but also very little engagement. The same post on hn might have 100 comments and on lobsters it has four.

I think we need to stop using "engagement" as a measurement of anything related to quality and usefulness.

Quantity has a quality all of its own.

Sure. But the odds of finding an insightful comment on HN is much higher than finding one on lobsters, merely because there is more content.

As long as the growth rate is positive and it isn’t too expensive to host, a small stable growing site could be fine.

Hey!

I have been a good citizen of Hacker News for fourteen years now...

Anyone here would want to throw me an invite to lobste.rs?

:)

Haha that's my line! I would guess that those people who are already on the seafood website know other technical people in their day-to-day workspaces like silicon valley or Palo Alto or wherever, so it's easy for them to get a link. Meanwhile for those of us on the opposite side of the US or, barely in the Anglo-Sphere at all, we are on the outside looking in and are not likely to get a link just by being mostly lurkers and occasional contributors.

At least for me, I'm the only HN user I know except my dad who doesn't even post, he just got lurk links from his knee if the woods like hackaday.

I requested an invite from a guy I have only known via Reddit, we've never met IRL.

I can't actually remember who is the person who I requested the invite from, I think they were given out somewhat freely by some users.

You can look on your user page, or search for your username on the user tree page.

I did, but I can't say who that username is

Well, that would be an awkward DM to write. "Hello, you invited me to the website, but I don't actually know who you are."

Modern problems...

like this idea too!