I'm fairly sure that HN uses lots of manual human monitoring to make sure that good content doesn't slip through the cracks. In fact, most of the secret sauce o

I'm fairly sure that HN uses lots of manual human monitoring to make sure that good content doesn't slip through the cracks. In fact, most of the secret sauce of HN seems to be real-human intervention along with making that intervention invisible. When the mods boost up a story nobody really notices because it looks like the 'normal' way a story gets boosted. Bans aren't really public or announced, etc. And none of that is criticism, it works really damn well. Moreover, the HN moderation explicitly 'owns' the community in the sense that it's their house and their rules which helps because it doesn't give people a sense of entitlement about representation. (Having some experience with the matter, nothing kills you more dead than people getting entitled and demanding a 'reasonable explanation' for every descision you make. Everybody wants theirs and it means you can't actually take any action to improve things without wading through lots of crap.)