4 ms·

The fact that this was posted ten years ago underscores that this is not an HN problem, but a perennial challenge of any large community. I don't think most pe

The fact that this was posted ten years ago underscores that this is not an HN problem, but a perennial challenge of any large community. I don't think most people grok exactly how difficult moderation is, and how that difficulty doesn't just scale, but rather evolves fundamentally as a community grows. Moderating a smaller community is sort of like setting a certain tone within your group of friends and figuring out ways to encourage them to follow suit. Moderating huge communities is more like designing a judicial branch. For what it's worth, I think HN is one of the best examples of successful moderation. The team balances their roles as curators and moderators well, they seem to work hard at intellectual honesty in their policy design, and they do a fantastic job of combatting marketing schemes and bots. No doubt there are areas where I don't entirely enjoy HN, but by and large it is the most consistently enjoyable community of its size for me.

ozim 6y ago
I think it is expectations failure "the more the merrier" is not the case. Having tight 10 person group is so much better than having 100 people group. You probably don't want to get new ideas directly from 100 of sources but new ideas filtered trough trusted people. From time to time it is good to get someone new and give it a shot, but most of the time it is better to stick to known group. Unless your group is about drugs and alcohol only then maybe just change the group.
- natmaka 6y ago
  The Evaporative Cooling Effect hits hard. https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2015/10/14/the-evaporative-cooling-effect-in-social-network/ https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2015/10/14/the-evaporativ... ... and, more generally, "Wherever something is wrong, something is too big" (L. Kohr).
  - karmakaze 6y ago
    The link referenced there is 404. http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software-sundays-2-the-evaporative-cooling-effect/ http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software-sundays-2-the-...
    - M2Ys4U 6y ago
      The IA has an archived copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20160923123125/http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software-sundays-2-the-evaporative-cooling-effect/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160923123125/http://blog.bumbl...
mncharity 6y ago
Why isn't there a greater emphasis on filtering controlled by readers? "Don't show me anything said by someone who joined after I did". "Show only <person, writing on topic> pairs with historical ratings above this threshold from raters in the weighted set generated by crawling thusly from this seed set." "Prioritize anything on topic X which multiple people from this set like." At 8am: "Don't show me anything this classifier thinks is a pun"; 8pm: "Show me puns, please". "Show me anything the author thinks is good, if their self-evaluation rating on the topic meets the following criteria." "Don't show me anything dang rates as not meeting criteria X". Even USENET 30 years ago had people sharing kill files (don't show me comments whose headers match [patterns]). They weren't sufficient to check eternal September, but we can do better now. It seems like there's a rich design space available here that we've not been exploring. What am I missing?
- lwhi 6y ago
  I want an environment that mirrors the serendipitous nature of real physical life conversation. What you're proposing seems very similar to blocking people who you feel shouldn't be allowed to contribute. "...forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society ..." I'm obviously exaggerating my point, but this snippet of a definition feels appropriate.
- muttled 6y ago
  Perhaps something like the Nest thermostat approach might be best: have something that learns your preferences based on time, day of the week, and other factors. Maybe it attempts to see what kind of mood you're in?
  - bondarchuk 6y ago
    No, please, no. It will end up like youtube: spend one evening watching chess videos, and suddenly all your recommendations are chess videos. And afterwards on a meta level there is anxiety with everything you click on and how it might influence your filters.
    - 6y ago
namelosw 6y ago
> this is not an HN problem, but a perennial challenge of any large community. It seems to be many people could agree on this. When a community grows, most of the time old members would start to struggle about the problem. I wonder, could there be a design where it is a typical community, then when enough old or hardcore members realized this and believe this is no good it would trigger a threshold, they can vote to fork or diverge to a new community? This is a repeatable process, and then there would be multiple communities with different vibes where everyone can enjoy.

ozim 6y ago

I think it is expectations failure "the more the merrier" is not the case. Having tight 10 person group is so much better than having 100 people group. You probably don't want to get new ideas directly from 100 of sources but new ideas filtered trough trusted people. From time to time it is good to get someone new and give it a shot, but most of the time it is better to stick to known group. Unless your group is about drugs and alcohol only then maybe just change the group.

natmaka 6y ago
The Evaporative Cooling Effect hits hard. https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2015/10/14/the-evaporative-cooling-effect-in-social-network/ https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2015/10/14/the-evaporativ... ... and, more generally, "Wherever something is wrong, something is too big" (L. Kohr).
- karmakaze 6y ago
  The link referenced there is 404. http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software-sundays-2-the-evaporative-cooling-effect/ http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software-sundays-2-the-...
  - M2Ys4U 6y ago
    The IA has an archived copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20160923123125/http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software-sundays-2-the-evaporative-cooling-effect/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160923123125/http://blog.bumbl...

mncharity 6y ago

Why isn't there a greater emphasis on filtering controlled by readers? "Don't show me anything said by someone who joined after I did". "Show only <person, writing on topic> pairs with historical ratings above this threshold from raters in the weighted set generated by crawling thusly from this seed set." "Prioritize anything on topic X which multiple people from this set like." At 8am: "Don't show me anything this classifier thinks is a pun"; 8pm: "Show me puns, please". "Show me anything the author thinks is good, if their self-evaluation rating on the topic meets the following criteria." "Don't show me anything dang rates as not meeting criteria X". Even USENET 30 years ago had people sharing kill files (don't show me comments whose headers match [patterns]). They weren't sufficient to check eternal September, but we can do better now. It seems like there's a rich design space available here that we've not been exploring. What am I missing?

lwhi 6y ago
I want an environment that mirrors the serendipitous nature of real physical life conversation. What you're proposing seems very similar to blocking people who you feel shouldn't be allowed to contribute. "...forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society ..." I'm obviously exaggerating my point, but this snippet of a definition feels appropriate.
muttled 6y ago
Perhaps something like the Nest thermostat approach might be best: have something that learns your preferences based on time, day of the week, and other factors. Maybe it attempts to see what kind of mood you're in?
- bondarchuk 6y ago
  No, please, no. It will end up like youtube: spend one evening watching chess videos, and suddenly all your recommendations are chess videos. And afterwards on a meta level there is anxiety with everything you click on and how it might influence your filters.
  - 6y ago

namelosw 6y ago

> this is not an HN problem, but a perennial challenge of any large community. It seems to be many people could agree on this. When a community grows, most of the time old members would start to struggle about the problem. I wonder, could there be a design where it is a typical community, then when enough old or hardcore members realized this and believe this is no good it would trigger a threshold, they can vote to fork or diverge to a new community? This is a repeatable process, and then there would be multiple communities with different vibes where everyone can enjoy.