> But gatekeeping on arbitrary criteria is always bad, and we diminish ourselves when we encourage it. Oh please. Usenet had been routinely accepting new years

> But gatekeeping on arbitrary criteria is always bad, and we diminish ourselves when we encourage it. Oh please. Usenet had been routinely accepting new years since its inception. Even the phrase "Eternal September" is a reference to the regular influx of new users with every freshman college class getting Internet access for the first time. Many Usenet groups were unmoderated and were vulnerable to the tragedy of the commons. Introducing new Usenet users to FAQs and etiquette was important meta moderation. This ad-hoc community moderation had no control over actual group content besides bozo filters. When AOL connected their users to Usenet it broke the ad-hoc community onboarding. A big problem with AOL's users specifically were they treated Usenet as an extension of AOL's chat rooms. It's little different if Discord or TikTok suddenly added a "join the conversation of Hacker News" button. A million teenagers would be a bit more moderation than even the mighty dang could handle.