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Hacker news is a platform ultimately subsidized by a billionaire. A billionaire is choosing to be a responsible owner/patron of this platform, but ultimately t

Hacker news is a platform ultimately subsidized by a billionaire. A billionaire is choosing to be a responsible owner/patron of this platform, but ultimately this platform answers to him. HN is a "good king" platform, our king has invested in public works that we benefit from and we appreciate it. Hacker news is good insofar as it accomplishes our kings goals which align with our own, but we still have a king, even if he is a benevolent one.

jjav 3y ago
> Hacker news is a platform ultimately subsidized by a billionaire. It doesn't take a billionaire, even if it happens to be the case. It would be fascinating if they wished to publish the operating costs, but even without that, IIRC the hardware was quite minimal.
- zztop44 3y ago
  There are two full time moderators, who, as I understand it, have professional backgrounds and are paid accordingly. And I’d say HN was exceedingly lucky find these excellent moderators. Not sure you could replicate that success no matter how much cash you had to burn.
  - Gud 3y ago
    Many similar forums back in the day were all volunteer efforts. What is preventing HN from being run by a volunteer staff? Don’t get me wrong, I think HN is great the way it is, I just don’t think paid moderation is a requirement
    - elondaits 3y ago
      It doesn’t have to be volunteers. The organization running a forum can be a non-profit, and charge users for the maintenance costs. In the age of people paying to belong to a community via Patreon, Discord, Twitch, etc. it shouldn’t be hard. There’s a lot of road ahead in terms of learning how to develop transparent and Democratic online communities… but as the shitification of the internet becomes critical, it’s a necessity.
    - zztop44 3y ago
      Of course an online community can be moderated by volunteers. Many are. But this one isn’t. Many people learn that HN runs on a single dedicated server and figure it costs ~$1000/month in operational costs. But my point was just that this ignores the moderation, which is a crucial feature of this community. Of course you could try to recruit volunteer moderators to do the same job. But finding and training and managing them is not easy. Nor is dealing with ideological or interpersonal conflicts. None of this stuff is easy, and just because volunteers can and have done this work, doesn’t mean that “just have volunteers do the moderation work” is a solution to successfully running a big online community.
sholladay 3y ago
Do you believe HN could work as well without a king? Even in fully democratic cooperatives, there always seems to be an inner circle of people who are more engaged, more knowledgeable, and thus more powerful / influential in practice.

jjav 3y ago

> Hacker news is a platform ultimately subsidized by a billionaire. It doesn't take a billionaire, even if it happens to be the case. It would be fascinating if they wished to publish the operating costs, but even without that, IIRC the hardware was quite minimal.

zztop44 3y ago
There are two full time moderators, who, as I understand it, have professional backgrounds and are paid accordingly. And I’d say HN was exceedingly lucky find these excellent moderators. Not sure you could replicate that success no matter how much cash you had to burn.
- Gud 3y ago
  Many similar forums back in the day were all volunteer efforts. What is preventing HN from being run by a volunteer staff? Don’t get me wrong, I think HN is great the way it is, I just don’t think paid moderation is a requirement
  - elondaits 3y ago
    It doesn’t have to be volunteers. The organization running a forum can be a non-profit, and charge users for the maintenance costs. In the age of people paying to belong to a community via Patreon, Discord, Twitch, etc. it shouldn’t be hard. There’s a lot of road ahead in terms of learning how to develop transparent and Democratic online communities… but as the shitification of the internet becomes critical, it’s a necessity.
  - zztop44 3y ago
    Of course an online community can be moderated by volunteers. Many are. But this one isn’t. Many people learn that HN runs on a single dedicated server and figure it costs ~$1000/month in operational costs. But my point was just that this ignores the moderation, which is a crucial feature of this community. Of course you could try to recruit volunteer moderators to do the same job. But finding and training and managing them is not easy. Nor is dealing with ideological or interpersonal conflicts. None of this stuff is easy, and just because volunteers can and have done this work, doesn’t mean that “just have volunteers do the moderation work” is a solution to successfully running a big online community.

sholladay 3y ago

Do you believe HN could work as well without a king? Even in fully democratic cooperatives, there always seems to be an inner circle of people who are more engaged, more knowledgeable, and thus more powerful / influential in practice.