For me, I noticed it when people started posting things from investor blogs and the VCs and angels themselves started commenting here. I think that spurred some small handful of users to start showing off how smart they were in hopes that they'd get a response from fredwilson or whoever, and that just naturally spread the way it did. (There's a certain high when you get fredwilson or msuster to respond to your comment on their blogs; I think it's the same dynamic here.) I'm not blaming the VCs at all here - but that's when I started noticing it. (joshu and yegg are the exceptions that prove the rule because they're hackers first.)
Also, I've been told the Something Awful community is surprisingly pretty awesome, although I'm not a participant there. If there's some intersection of structure/moderation between MeFi and SA that HN could implement, I think that'd be a great place to start.
sighs We complain because we care. It doesn't mean that we have all the answers or we're pointing fingers. It means we're so invested in finding a solution to this problem that we won't just move on. Given just how good HN was (and remains), minute changes are more noticeable. I don't think a comparison of then-and-now really gives us useful data. There's just a gestalt, a feeling, you get that something's not quite the same. The closest I can think of is when you're out to dinner with someone you've fallen out of love with; your routine isn't any different, but you just know that it's not the same.
SomethingAwful was (is?) good because of the membership fee, and because of the viciously strict moderation.
You could have your account deleted, with no warning, for:
* Persistent lack of punctuation or grammar
* Posting tired memes
* Persistent inability to cite sources for claims (in some subfora)
* Dozens of other things I can't remember
* Basically anything the mods decided to ban your for
The reason this worked is because the mods were drawn from the community. The admins would look at a subforum, see who was trusted on there, had good judgement and was there a lot. They would then make that person a mod, without asking them or even telling them! That person would just log in next time to be confronted with lots of extra widgets on the UI.
Because the community was so cohesive across the site, that person would then know immediately it was their duty to post a thread saying "Hi, I'm XYZ, your new Moderator" and christen their new powers by stickying the thread.
Again, they were not told to do this, but they would immediately and without fail, because the criteria for being chosen as a mod means that anyone who is chosen would be aware of this tradition, and in fact every other aspect of their role, having learned by example.
The SA forums were operating lots of quite deep game mechanics stuff nigh on ten years ago. It's very interesting. Most of the measures wouldn't be appropriate for here though, a lot of them involved strategically fostering antagonism for the benefit of wider community cohesion. It really worked over there for a long time though.
EDIT: I seem to remember that for a long time they only took payment by actual credit cards, visa and so on, and not debit cards, paypal etc. This was deliberate to prevent kids from signing up.
Something Awful and Metafilter both charge money to join.
Something Awful is pretty awesome...but is double-sided. The people from Something Awful are the same people who founded 4chan. ADTRW (Anime Death Tentacle Rape Whorehouse) is one of the boards of Something Awful and they were the first people on /b/ the day it opened along with 4chan and have set the bar to where it is since.
They are basically a grown up 4chan...amazing things like Copenhagen Suborbitals http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/ but aren't all pretentious and srs business like Hacker News likes to pretend it is.
Also, I've been told the Something Awful community is surprisingly pretty awesome, although I'm not a participant there. If there's some intersection of structure/moderation between MeFi and SA that HN could implement, I think that'd be a great place to start.
sighs We complain because we care. It doesn't mean that we have all the answers or we're pointing fingers. It means we're so invested in finding a solution to this problem that we won't just move on. Given just how good HN was (and remains), minute changes are more noticeable. I don't think a comparison of then-and-now really gives us useful data. There's just a gestalt, a feeling, you get that something's not quite the same. The closest I can think of is when you're out to dinner with someone you've fallen out of love with; your routine isn't any different, but you just know that it's not the same.