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Agreed. But I also think that as one of the admins you should refrain from explicit judgement on comments and leave that to the community.

by Jun8 10y ago

mwfunk 10y ago
HN is not community-driven in the same way that Reddit or 4chan are. I come here for that reason. I want HN moderators to tell people when they're straying from what they want HN to be. I wish more discussion-oriented sites were like that. It makes it feel a little more like a moderated mailing list. I usually agree with the moderation, but if I didn't I'd just go elsewhere, and I wouldn't hold it against the moderators here. There's nothing wrong with people preferring more democratic moderation (or none at all), and there's nothing wrong with other people preferring more opinionated and direct moderation. I appreciate sites like Reddit that are way more hands-off, and that try to give the community tools to be more or less self-moderating. But I also appreciate sites like HN which are driven by a (relatively) small number of people who just want to run a particular type of site with a particular type of community and enforce a particular level of discourse. There probably wouldn't even be an HN if this wasn't the case. There's no reason both approaches can't coexist on the Internet, and users can choose the sites with moderation philosophies that best suit them.
dang 10y ago
To add to mwfunk's fine comment, one of the lessons I draw from HN is that interesting things emerge when you have more complex feedback loops between community and moderation. Entirely unregulated discourse seems to trend to extreme states that turn out to be boring and ultimately turn into a desert, at least for a site whose guiding value is intellectual curiosity. We knew about some of this when pg started HN—that's why its original prospectus talked about trying to avoid the typical fate of online communities—and we've learned a lot more over the years. The key, of course, is to stay within an optimal range of moderation. One wants enough to avoid the perils of unsupervised discourse, and then stop. Do we get the balance right? Hard (and not) for me to say, but one thing I'm sure of is that we're not interested in controlling this place, only helping it be as interesting as it can.

Agreed. But I also think that as one of the admins you should refrain from explicit judgement on comments and leave that to the community.

by Jun8 10y ago

Agreed. But I also think that as one of the admins you should refrain from explicit judgement on comments and leave that to the community.

mwfunk 10y ago

HN is not community-driven in the same way that Reddit or 4chan are. I come here for that reason. I want HN moderators to tell people when they're straying from what they want HN to be. I wish more discussion-oriented sites were like that. It makes it feel a little more like a moderated mailing list. I usually agree with the moderation, but if I didn't I'd just go elsewhere, and I wouldn't hold it against the moderators here. There's nothing wrong with people preferring more democratic moderation (or none at all), and there's nothing wrong with other people preferring more opinionated and direct moderation. I appreciate sites like Reddit that are way more hands-off, and that try to give the community tools to be more or less self-moderating. But I also appreciate sites like HN which are driven by a (relatively) small number of people who just want to run a particular type of site with a particular type of community and enforce a particular level of discourse. There probably wouldn't even be an HN if this wasn't the case. There's no reason both approaches can't coexist on the Internet, and users can choose the sites with moderation philosophies that best suit them.

dang 10y ago

To add to mwfunk's fine comment, one of the lessons I draw from HN is that interesting things emerge when you have more complex feedback loops between community and moderation. Entirely unregulated discourse seems to trend to extreme states that turn out to be boring and ultimately turn into a desert, at least for a site whose guiding value is intellectual curiosity. We knew about some of this when pg started HN—that's why its original prospectus talked about trying to avoid the typical fate of online communities—and we've learned a lot more over the years. The key, of course, is to stay within an optimal range of moderation. One wants enough to avoid the perils of unsupervised discourse, and then stop. Do we get the balance right? Hard (and not) for me to say, but one thing I'm sure of is that we're not interested in controlling this place, only helping it be as interesting as it can.