I think that the structure of the commenting system here at HN might contribute to this feeling.
Usernames are de-emphasized and there is no indication of karma/reputation. A trick of perception can lead one to read this forum as if the same handful of broadly knowledgeable people are participating in every discussion.
The reality is, I believe, quite the opposite. There are hundreds of us here, and we all have depth of knowledge in vastly different areas. There are developers, DBAs, sysadmins, doctors, lawyers, writers... I think once I saw someone mention that they were a welder.
FWIW, I do note the usernames comments come from sometimes, particularly if they're insightful.
Regarding the numbers here, I'd say there are multiple thousands, possibly 5 figures. The top article about Apple refusing to publicly backdoor the iPhone (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11116274) got 5667 points. And sometimes my comments will attract a reply chain but not get upvoted, which shows that some proportion of people doesn't upvote here.
Usernames are de-emphasized and there is no indication of karma/reputation. A trick of perception can lead one to read this forum as if the same handful of broadly knowledgeable people are participating in every discussion.
The reality is, I believe, quite the opposite. There are hundreds of us here, and we all have depth of knowledge in vastly different areas. There are developers, DBAs, sysadmins, doctors, lawyers, writers... I think once I saw someone mention that they were a welder.
Keep that in mind when reading the comments here.