> The best moderation I've experienced is here on HN, and on Slashdot. Certain (small!) subreddits have these places matched, if not beat. The key word is sma

> The best moderation I've experienced is here on HN, and on Slashdot. Certain (small!) subreddits have these places matched, if not beat. The key word is small: Once the community grows to become a true microcosm of Reddit, which is a microcosm of a good bit of the English-language Internet, it becomes cat pictures and memes as far as the eye can see because that is what most people want. Individuals decry it, but there is no single countervailing force big enough to do anything about it except, you know, start a new (small!) subreddit. So /r/politics is a hole but /r/sex is a good place for adult discussions about human sexuality. (The only alternative to big-is-banal is a very active group of dedicated moderators empowered to remove posts and ban users. This seems to be hated by a lot of people but, dammit, it works.) I also recall that Slashdot used to be a lot bigger and more important as a news aggregator.