> There are quite a few websites with little or no moderation working just fine, like 4chan. Working fine at doing what? Emulating a thousand typing monkeys? A

> There are quite a few websites with little or no moderation working just fine, like 4chan. Working fine at doing what? Emulating a thousand typing monkeys? Arguing that 4chan has some form of working discourse and rherefore everything should be like it is like arguing there is still some message at the end in the childrens game "silent mail" and therefore it should replace all methods of communication. Don't get me wrong, there probably even is some sort of use in the existence of something like 4chan (I bet some sociology doctorate has written about the function of the platform for certain demographic parts of the population for example). But there is probably a reason why you are discussion this topic here on HN instead of over there. And if I guess, this reason has all to do with you being able to have better, cleverer and more informed discussion here, than over there and is not at all hindered by the fact that the HN moderation would cut your voice off if you just pressed the right (wrong) buttons. Some form of moderation is always better for discussion than none at all, unless you are making some sort of social experiment.