4 ms·

Is this forum a cesspool? (No.) Is it an open public conversation by anyone in the world? (Yes.) You can have conversations without it becoming a racist, bigot

• Aqueous 10y ago
  I would argue that this site is not quite public in the same sense that Twitter is. Sure - anyone can register and post comments and articles, but the community of this site is extremely self-selected to those with a specific domain of knowledge.
• GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  People get banned from here all the time tho and there's plenty of racist garbage that gets posted.
  • nstart 10y ago
    Exactly. HN is a very good definition of a community that's maintained a significant standard in good communication by using relatively basic tools and quality community moderation. Twitter could have been this. But they chose to believe that no moderation would be just fine.
    • retox 10y ago
      The post count here is significantly lower than Twitter. I shudder to think how many moderators it would take to administer Twitter. You might think that the downvote mechanism here helps somewhat, and it does, but on any large community with voting such as Reddit the ability to downvote turns the community into an echo chamber where only the largest group gets a say and any dissenting voice is vanished. I dare say we see the same thing here on HN.