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Lots. And they are as unknown to you as HN is likely to be to the users of them. I run a number of forums, the largest yielding 250k monthly visitors. It's not

by buro9 5y ago

Lots. And they are as unknown to you as HN is likely to be to the users of them. I run a number of forums, the largest yielding 250k monthly visitors. It's not huge... But it's 15 years old, very civil, and more interestingly has near zero moderation. The ones I operate I do so on a simple basis... This forum is default dead, if you as users run it into the ground I'll turn it off as I make no money from it do not have any incentive to tolerate your bs. Make of this space whatever you want, but if you want it to exist then that's something that you all need to make happen by figuring out how to be adults. It works. I kill 10 sites for every one that makes it, and the ones that make it are great.

gilbetron 5y ago
This is fascinating and I'd love to hear more about it. I generally despise heavy handed moderation as it changes the feel of a community from "a bunch of people talking about X" to "a group of power-mad narcissists and their groupies". Do you see ways of seeding forums that are effective? What kind of moderation do you have (I noticed that LGSS has moderators) - is it just "remove spam and illegal stuff"? Do you have rules for the forums? How often does a long-running forum suddenly, or not so suddenly, go bad? One of my lifelong "addictions" is tabletop RPGs, but the choice of forums just kinda is poor, mostly because of moderation, and so I always have in the back of my mind starting a new one, but I'm always concerned about the moderation effort, so the concept that you can take a different "moderation-free" path is tantalizing!
ineedasername 5y ago
>I kill 10 sites for every one that makes it, and the ones that make it are great. That's interesting, a sort of Darwinian selection pressure towards actual discussion. Though as I type that out it occurs to me that that could be a decent working definition of "good moderation"

by buro9 5y ago

gilbetron 5y ago

This is fascinating and I'd love to hear more about it. I generally despise heavy handed moderation as it changes the feel of a community from "a bunch of people talking about X" to "a group of power-mad narcissists and their groupies". Do you see ways of seeding forums that are effective? What kind of moderation do you have (I noticed that LGSS has moderators) - is it just "remove spam and illegal stuff"? Do you have rules for the forums? How often does a long-running forum suddenly, or not so suddenly, go bad? One of my lifelong "addictions" is tabletop RPGs, but the choice of forums just kinda is poor, mostly because of moderation, and so I always have in the back of my mind starting a new one, but I'm always concerned about the moderation effort, so the concept that you can take a different "moderation-free" path is tantalizing!

ineedasername 5y ago

>I kill 10 sites for every one that makes it, and the ones that make it are great. That's interesting, a sort of Darwinian selection pressure towards actual discussion. Though as I type that out it occurs to me that that could be a decent working definition of "good moderation"