> That the efficacy of this approach is repeatable suggests that the problem exists primarily b/c sites are willing to put up with bad behavior. I think there'

> That the efficacy of this approach is repeatable suggests that the problem exists primarily b/c sites are willing to put up with bad behavior. I think there's a little more at play, here. Look at the two subreddits /r/askhistorians and /r/askreddit, which vary about as much as possible in moderation patterns and resulting quality: /r/askhistorians is possibly the best moderated forum on the internet, allowing only high quality top-level comments from a historiographical perspective. OTOH /r/AskReddit is a cesspool of bigotry, puns, and reddit memes so tired they might as well be generated stochastically. However, looking at what differentiates them, it's entirely culture. It's not that the moderators on /r/AskReddit are bad or aren't interested in moderation, they are simply trying to cultivate a much less formal discussion. Similarly, I think you'll see higher rates of success wrt moderation on focused, interest-driven discussion than on "free-for-all" forums where one can e.g. successfully start a blessed conversation with the intent to troll the forum itself. For an example, people arguing for neo-nazi type politics on HN (or Dr. Dobbs) might not be tolerated for obvious reasons. But they're also not likely to comment in either place. On an article discussing controversy affecting the general public, you're going to have an extremely difficult time finding a line between civil and uncivil discussion—the normal for the context is probably not civil by most peoples' standards, but restricting the conversation would look a whole lot like trying to shape it. Tl;dr every community has its own needs and expectations; I don't think there is a moderation panacea without creating isolated communities that self-select towards the conversation they want to have. Thoughts?