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Your requirements make discussions not be discussions. This is how discussions happen in the real world as well. We're not in Parliament or Congress where speci

by eksith 13y ago

Your requirements make discussions not be discussions. This is how discussions happen in the real world as well. We're not in Parliament or Congress where specific laws and topics are to be discussed (and get filibustered anyway). HN topics don't get "derailed" with tangents since threads exist for just that contingency. While other things may get discussed, I think the majority revolve around the topic at hand. I'm not sure I'd like to participate in your "ideal" discussion forum. It doesn't sound fun at all.

maxerickson 13y ago
The way to try it would be to let thread owners pick the rules that were in force. That way you can have a free flowing conversation in one thread and a serious exploration in another. It also allows room for people to develop a reputation for applying moderation in an even handed fashion (without requiring a reputation to get started).
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  You would have constant moderation dramas though, since you would need moderators going over every thread and finding stuff that was off topic or letting users flag it. Then you would have a lot of disagreement about whether something was on topic or not.
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    I would do it so that the thread owner was the moderator. There could still be some baseline site rules, but each thread would be up to the owner to look after (I suppose it would be nice to allow helpers). It should still be possible to open threads without any extra rules. Reddit sort of does this, at the subreddit level instead of the thread level. But it also sort of isn't a discussion site anymore, it is something else.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - jiggy2011 13y ago
      The issue with that is that you would probably get people starting a thread to state some particular view and then simply deleting everything that disagreed with them. I remember this happening a lot in IRC with ban-happy ops and on smaller forums. Eventually either everyone gets fed up and leaves or it just becomes an echo chamber.
      - maxerickson 13y ago
        Well, the hope would be that instead of leaving people would go to more useful threads. I'm coming at it from the perspective that abuse will happen no matter what, so focus on promoting good stuff, etc.
        jiggy2011 13y ago
        Then you end up with the case where people only want to reply to threads from certain members who then end up as defacto site moderators. You would also get a lot of troll threads where someone would start a discussion, wait for people to get involved and then just nuke the whole thread to piss people off. People who are good at even-handed moderation in the pursuit of constructive discussion are actually fairly rare; it's a skill most people don't posses as they let emotion and bias get in the way. I've seen a number of online communities combust over the years due to either neglect or infighting, the few that remain do so because they have a strong moderation team with a clear common goal. I think the answer is to separate discussion sites from other sites which have a different goal. Stack overflow is an example of this.

by eksith 13y ago

maxerickson 13y ago

The way to try it would be to let thread owners pick the rules that were in force. That way you can have a free flowing conversation in one thread and a serious exploration in another. It also allows room for people to develop a reputation for applying moderation in an even handed fashion (without requiring a reputation to get started).

jiggy2011 13y ago
You would have constant moderation dramas though, since you would need moderators going over every thread and finding stuff that was off topic or letting users flag it. Then you would have a lot of disagreement about whether something was on topic or not.
- maxerickson 13y ago
  I would do it so that the thread owner was the moderator. There could still be some baseline site rules, but each thread would be up to the owner to look after (I suppose it would be nice to allow helpers). It should still be possible to open threads without any extra rules. Reddit sort of does this, at the subreddit level instead of the thread level. But it also sort of isn't a discussion site anymore, it is something else.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    The issue with that is that you would probably get people starting a thread to state some particular view and then simply deleting everything that disagreed with them. I remember this happening a lot in IRC with ban-happy ops and on smaller forums. Eventually either everyone gets fed up and leaves or it just becomes an echo chamber.
    - maxerickson 13y ago
      Well, the hope would be that instead of leaving people would go to more useful threads. I'm coming at it from the perspective that abuse will happen no matter what, so focus on promoting good stuff, etc.
      - jiggy2011 13y ago
        Then you end up with the case where people only want to reply to threads from certain members who then end up as defacto site moderators. You would also get a lot of troll threads where someone would start a discussion, wait for people to get involved and then just nuke the whole thread to piss people off. People who are good at even-handed moderation in the pursuit of constructive discussion are actually fairly rare; it's a skill most people don't posses as they let emotion and bias get in the way. I've seen a number of online communities combust over the years due to either neglect or infighting, the few that remain do so because they have a strong moderation team with a clear common goal. I think the answer is to separate discussion sites from other sites which have a different goal. Stack overflow is an example of this.