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And yet, here you are on hacker news, and extremely heavily moderated forum. The only way for popular forums to maintain interesting content is moderation. Oth

by fhood 8y ago

And yet, here you are on hacker news, and extremely heavily moderated forum. The only way for popular forums to maintain interesting content is moderation. Otherwise the top posts tend towards generic mush that is vaguely interesting to most, and extremely interesting to very few.

edwinksl 8y ago
It appears a lot of people are not aware of this important function of moderation unless they see it for themselves, perhaps by doing some moderation. It is not surprising at all to people who have done some moderation that relying on just upvotes and downvotes does not surface good content.
- foepys 8y ago
  Up- and downvotes work to a certain extend. But when the community grows big enough, the upvotes tend to heavily favor "funny" and other easily digestible content. Many subreddits and other online communities died the, what I call, 10,000 member death. If you don't apply moderation at that point, serious content will disappear.
Mirioron 8y ago
I'm only here because I've read through the subreddits I'm interested in for today.
ProAm 8y ago
> The only way for popular forums to maintain interesting content is moderation Which is all well and good, just don't portray your site as one where the users are in control of the content. This was the seed of all reddit backlash.
Gargoyle 8y ago
>extremely heavily moderated forum. I wish. The best subreddits are the ones like r/askhistorians, which are draconic in their moderation. As a result, the content is consistently extremely high quality. > the top posts tend towards generic mush that is vaguely interesting to most, and extremely interesting to very few. This is how HN tends to work, especially in regard to the comments. It's unfortunate.
- sireat 8y ago
  I find r/askhistorians extremely infuriating and useless because of the extra strict moderation. I understand that by definition /r/askhistorians should have good moderation but it's insane. My last straw was where I posted a link to a primary source in an relevant question thread 5 subthreads deep. Moderation removed it because I should have provided more context. It should have been obvious what the context was from the thread itself and my answer was not at the first nesting level but 5th. Mod agreed with me but did not restore my answer. So there went my time finding the source. Okay, so if posting on /r/askhistorians is useless, then maybe the answers are well researched? There lies the second problem. Answers are not that well researched. I remember a certain question concerning Soviet economy in the 1980s. The single approved answer appeared wrong to me and cited rather limited number of sources(ie chiefly official 1980s ones). Other alternative answers were deleted. My personal anecdata were screaming at me that the top answer was ridiculously wrong, but I had to spend hours of sifting through more up to date research to prove it. (cue https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/) So why should I trust /r/askhistorians answer about something happening 300 years ago if they can't get it right about something happening 30 years ago? Third: The low hanging fruit ie popular answers have been answered. Literally hundreds of quality questions go unanswered on r/askhistorians for each quality answer. So it is pretty much pointless to ask a question there for some specific questions.
794CD01 8y ago
That's how they maintain content that you, as someone who prefers heavily moderated forums, find interesting. Most people aren't you.
- masklinn 8y ago
  > Most people aren't you. And there's at least one order of magnitude more subreddits catering to those people who aren't them.
craftyguy 8y ago
The two options should not be 1) moderation or 2) no moderation. Some moderation, as you pointed out, is required. The key is to find the right balance.

by fhood 8y ago

edwinksl 8y ago

It appears a lot of people are not aware of this important function of moderation unless they see it for themselves, perhaps by doing some moderation. It is not surprising at all to people who have done some moderation that relying on just upvotes and downvotes does not surface good content.

foepys 8y ago
Up- and downvotes work to a certain extend. But when the community grows big enough, the upvotes tend to heavily favor "funny" and other easily digestible content. Many subreddits and other online communities died the, what I call, 10,000 member death. If you don't apply moderation at that point, serious content will disappear.

Mirioron 8y ago

I'm only here because I've read through the subreddits I'm interested in for today.

ProAm 8y ago

> The only way for popular forums to maintain interesting content is moderation Which is all well and good, just don't portray your site as one where the users are in control of the content. This was the seed of all reddit backlash.

Gargoyle 8y ago

>extremely heavily moderated forum. I wish. The best subreddits are the ones like r/askhistorians, which are draconic in their moderation. As a result, the content is consistently extremely high quality. > the top posts tend towards generic mush that is vaguely interesting to most, and extremely interesting to very few. This is how HN tends to work, especially in regard to the comments. It's unfortunate.

sireat 8y ago
I find r/askhistorians extremely infuriating and useless because of the extra strict moderation. I understand that by definition /r/askhistorians should have good moderation but it's insane. My last straw was where I posted a link to a primary source in an relevant question thread 5 subthreads deep. Moderation removed it because I should have provided more context. It should have been obvious what the context was from the thread itself and my answer was not at the first nesting level but 5th. Mod agreed with me but did not restore my answer. So there went my time finding the source. Okay, so if posting on /r/askhistorians is useless, then maybe the answers are well researched? There lies the second problem. Answers are not that well researched. I remember a certain question concerning Soviet economy in the 1980s. The single approved answer appeared wrong to me and cited rather limited number of sources(ie chiefly official 1980s ones). Other alternative answers were deleted. My personal anecdata were screaming at me that the top answer was ridiculously wrong, but I had to spend hours of sifting through more up to date research to prove it. (cue https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/) So why should I trust /r/askhistorians answer about something happening 300 years ago if they can't get it right about something happening 30 years ago? Third: The low hanging fruit ie popular answers have been answered. Literally hundreds of quality questions go unanswered on r/askhistorians for each quality answer. So it is pretty much pointless to ask a question there for some specific questions.

794CD01 8y ago

That's how they maintain content that you, as someone who prefers heavily moderated forums, find interesting. Most people aren't you.

masklinn 8y ago
> Most people aren't you. And there's at least one order of magnitude more subreddits catering to those people who aren't them.

craftyguy 8y ago

The two options should not be 1) moderation or 2) no moderation. Some moderation, as you pointed out, is required. The key is to find the right balance.