I agree that that's an issue. I've spent many hours talking with such users (generally by email) but of course most of them don't contact us.

The goal here is to have a healthy community that's organized around intellectual curiosity. Every time we lose one intellectually curious user, to me that is a disaster that cuts into the core of the site. To the extent that people aren't here because they feel unrepresented in the community, that's a big deal. We need their curiosity as much as anyone's, and diversity—if I may use that word literally—is a must-have for intellectual curiosity to function at all. Curiosity thrives on diffs.

And of course there is a vicious circle: if they leave, then they are even less represented here. I'm open to ideas about improving this. The problem is not that it is overlooked (by us, at least). It's that the same forces that make it hard to solve in society at large make it hard to solve here, and in one respect even harder, because people misinterpret the nature of this community in the way I described above.

This discussion can be tricky because it overlaps with the ideological question, which is not the same thing. Sometimes people want us to ban everyone who expresses the opposing ideology, because that's the only sort of community they feel welcome or safe in. Even if we wanted to do that, it wouldn't work. That does not mean we don't care about inclusion. We care a lot about inclusion. In fact I spend the majority of my waking hours trying to nurture the conditions for it here.

By the way: if any of your friends would be open to it, please send them to hn@ycombinator.com. I would very much appreciate hearing their concerns.

I have seen this in many communities, and my opinion is that it occurs from large growth and no monitoring trends in attrition with a coincidental "that's how the community voted; too bad, so sad" mentality that, unfortunately, generates a shout-down chamber, even if only on a limited set of topics.

This occurs, right now, here on HN, and IMHO it comes from the comments feed, a feature I find only useful to moderators and manipulators. Even the mention of certain topics from even a meta-discussion perspective receives down-votes, sometimes within seconds. This seems further amplified in communities where senior community members are granted super powers.

> One important thing you should also consider isn't just the fact that the community mostly stays together, but instead also that there's something to be said about who leaves, and which voices are subsequently never heard again.

> Many of my friends who left this site did so because of how alienating these threads can be to people not represented in this community. I think that's been overlooked.

I am one of the commonly dissenting voices and nearly left about two years ago. When I decided to stay, I decided my accumulated karma was to be sacrificed in the downvotes of those lurkers who disagree without having the courage to engage.

When my karma runs out I will leave the site forever.