In my experience, which admittedly comes from sites quite different from LW, an Internet project running on volunteer contributions that’s decided to keep new members from productive roles has a useful lifetime of no more than one to two years. That’s about how long it takes for everybody to voice their pet issues, settle their feuds, and move on with their lives; people may linger for years afterwards, but at that point the vital phase is over. This can be stretched somewhat if there’s deep factional divisions within the founding population—spite is a pretty good motivator—but only at the cost of making the user experience a lot more political.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that demand for membership in a forum like this one is continuous and fairly short-term. Accounts offer few easily quantifiable benefits to begin with, very few if the site’s readable to non-members, so we can’t rely on lasting ambitions to participate; people sign up because they view this forum as an attractive place to contribute, but the Internet offers no shortage of equivalent niches.
In my experience, which admittedly comes from sites quite different from LW, an Internet project running on volunteer contributions that’s decided to keep new members from productive roles has a useful lifetime of no more than one to two years. That’s about how long it takes for everybody to voice their pet issues, settle their feuds, and move on with their lives; people may linger for years afterwards, but at that point the vital phase is over. This can be stretched somewhat if there’s deep factional divisions within the founding population—spite is a pretty good motivator—but only at the cost of making the user experience a lot more political.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that demand for membership in a forum like this one is continuous and fairly short-term. Accounts offer few easily quantifiable benefits to begin with, very few if the site’s readable to non-members, so we can’t rely on lasting ambitions to participate; people sign up because they view this forum as an attractive place to contribute, but the Internet offers no shortage of equivalent niches.