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While dang does a great job, I think he's helped a lot by the self-moderating community. Users here generally want the site to have civil and interesting discus

by imiric 4y ago

While dang does a great job, I think he's helped a lot by the self-moderating community. Users here generally want the site to have civil and interesting discussion, so any comments that deviate from that are usually buried or flagged very quickly. Of course, this sometimes has the echo chamber effect where it's difficult to get an alternative point of view across, but I'd rather have that, than see threads devolve into wild tangents and shout matches. There's always Reddit for that.

petodo 4y ago
You can have civil conversation with diverse opinions, what you like is called self-censorship, users here sooner or later discover that same as everywhere else if they go against HN hivemind opinion their opinions will be flagged or downvoted. Reddit is same in this aspect (besides smaller subreddits), so you are not really riding on high horse here looking down with despect on Reddit, because this is nothing else than Reddit sub for IT guys.
- imiric 4y ago
  I'm not looking down on Reddit. I enjoy and use it as well, but it's clear that _most_ subreddits don't encourage civil discussion, and moderation becomes much more difficult, even for teams of moderators. The fact that one or two people can moderate a community of this size, speaks volumes about the community itself, not about the moderators. If this place ever gets its Eternal September event (some would argue this has already happened), it will absolutely devolve into chaos. > this is nothing else than Reddit sub for IT guys Hard disagree. There are plenty of IT subreddits where the discussion is nothing like here. There's actually less of a hivemind here than on any subreddit, as there is some tolerance of dissenting opinions, as long as they're presented tactfully and they make the discussion more interesting.
  - filoleg 4y ago
    Hard disagreed with HN being just reddit for IT guys as well. On most reddit subs, you get banned/flagged/downvoted for simply disagreeing with the hivemind of a given subreddit, your tone doesn't matter. On HN, I found the exact inverse, you can bring up dissenting points with no issues, at worst you are going to get downvoted (but even that doesn't happen as much as one would expect), as long as you stay polite and reasonable. But if you are being inflammatory or act like an asshole, even if your opinion aligns perfectly with the hivemind of a given comment section, you are getting downvoted/flagged (often by the same people who would agree with your point otherwise). That alone makes the quality of discussion and the entire interaction with HN community massively different from reddit, and for the better.
dang 4y ago
> I think he's helped a lot by the self-moderating community. That's true, and in this sense the moderators proper are really just a proxy for the community. We don't know how to build an entirely self-moderating community (I wish we did...it would be so much less work) but we do know how to take the temperature of the community and fill in the bits that the system can't accomplished unsupervised. Or at least that's what we're gunning for.

by imiric 4y ago

petodo 4y ago

You can have civil conversation with diverse opinions, what you like is called self-censorship, users here sooner or later discover that same as everywhere else if they go against HN hivemind opinion their opinions will be flagged or downvoted. Reddit is same in this aspect (besides smaller subreddits), so you are not really riding on high horse here looking down with despect on Reddit, because this is nothing else than Reddit sub for IT guys.

imiric 4y ago
I'm not looking down on Reddit. I enjoy and use it as well, but it's clear that _most_ subreddits don't encourage civil discussion, and moderation becomes much more difficult, even for teams of moderators. The fact that one or two people can moderate a community of this size, speaks volumes about the community itself, not about the moderators. If this place ever gets its Eternal September event (some would argue this has already happened), it will absolutely devolve into chaos. > this is nothing else than Reddit sub for IT guys Hard disagree. There are plenty of IT subreddits where the discussion is nothing like here. There's actually less of a hivemind here than on any subreddit, as there is some tolerance of dissenting opinions, as long as they're presented tactfully and they make the discussion more interesting.
- filoleg 4y ago
  Hard disagreed with HN being just reddit for IT guys as well. On most reddit subs, you get banned/flagged/downvoted for simply disagreeing with the hivemind of a given subreddit, your tone doesn't matter. On HN, I found the exact inverse, you can bring up dissenting points with no issues, at worst you are going to get downvoted (but even that doesn't happen as much as one would expect), as long as you stay polite and reasonable. But if you are being inflammatory or act like an asshole, even if your opinion aligns perfectly with the hivemind of a given comment section, you are getting downvoted/flagged (often by the same people who would agree with your point otherwise). That alone makes the quality of discussion and the entire interaction with HN community massively different from reddit, and for the better.

dang 4y ago

> I think he's helped a lot by the self-moderating community. That's true, and in this sense the moderators proper are really just a proxy for the community. We don't know how to build an entirely self-moderating community (I wish we did...it would be so much less work) but we do know how to take the temperature of the community and fill in the bits that the system can't accomplished unsupervised. Or at least that's what we're gunning for.