HN has official moderators, though only one person who comments directly within threads, dang. I'm not a moderator or staff, just a somewhat-too-active partici

HN has official moderators, though only one person who comments directly within threads, dang. I'm not a moderator or staff, just a somewhat-too-active participant. And as dang freely notes, mods don't see everything: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37225175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37225175>. HN depends on community members establishing and communicating standards, not just official mods. Dang occasionally thanks members for pointing out guidelines to others, so I'm presuming my practice is acceptable: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37602788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37602788> (The appreciation is often couched in terms of how to better accomplish the task, as here, but the key is "thanks for watching out for the HN guidelines". I'm not telling you to keep your mouth shut. I'm telling you what HN's guidelines are. Which are generally helpful to heed to participate constructively with the forum, one of the best on today's Internet. <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html> And you'll find that "don't feed the trolls" is an rather common moderator request, with 284 instances at this writing: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22don%27t%20feed%22&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...> If you've additional concerns, you can email mods at hn@ycombinator.com. I've found they're responsive, patient, and clear, even where I disagree with them considerably or have complex concerns. Another useful guideline to keep in mind: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35403096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35403096>