Just yesterday someone posted a comment with links to UI design libraries that I've been subconsciously wishing for in my dreams (humaans, undraw.co), and I used it in a product demo. As a self-taught technologist, HN has exposed me to SICP, functional programming, and just yesterday someone posted a book about Data Structures and Algorithms that I started reading. Dang was quoted as describing HN as a "hall of mirrors" or "fractal tree."
The author's focus on the controversial political parts of HN seems to me like going to a music festival and commenting on the food trucks. Yes, it's part of the experience, but that's not why people go and not what makes it magical.
Communicating the beauty of unfamiliar technical topics to a lay reader is much harder than politics, but the New Yorker has done well at that elsewhere (I like the Sanjay and Jeff profile). Moderation is an interesting topic in its own right, though, especially in the age of the IRA and meme-warfare.
> Picturing the moderators responsible for steering conversation on Hacker News, I imagined a team of men who proudly self-identify as neoliberals and are active in the effective-altruism movement. (I assumed they’d be white men; it never occurred to me that women, or people of color, could be behind the site.) Meeting them, I feared, would be like participating in a live-action comment thread about the merits of Amazon Web Services or whether women should be referred to as “females.” “Debate us!” I imagined them saying, in unison, from their Aeron chairs.
Imagine wanting to write a piece about any group or any community and having such coarse ideas of who they are and what they believe before you interview them. Do journalists not care about things like biases, cognitive or otherwise and how they can color your opinion of the subject you write about? The sheer lack of self-awareness is part and parcel of the larger problem both people on the right and the left have with the news media in general.
I'm a leftist personally, I tire of the neoliberal bent towards this place too but I have some sense of context and at least try to be aware of how my own worldview can affect the way I understand others. It's always disheartening to read articles, even if they are opinion from authors that really don't even try, even a little--especially when organs like the media, just like tech companies, have a large amount of power and ability to shape public opinion. You have to be looking for toxic and overly reactionary opinions to find them; they do flare up but are generally downvoted/flagged, and given this experience I have, this article really serves as a great example of the Gell-Mann effect as others have pointed out.
Altogether, there are some interesting bits, I had no idea of the personal life stories around dang and sctb, but it was rather painful to wade through the constant recitals of tech bro stereotypes.
This is not quite related to your reply, but I will say it's rather ironic that the author had this expectation of the mods in particular because in my mind they are often the ones rushing to defense of civility and often chide people making comments of the disposition that the author expected them to have. Of course, that might be because I use this site and see dang or sctb's replies to dead comments and they don't, but approaching subjects you intend to learn about in good faith instead of tired stereotypes would be best.
At least partly that is about being topical for their audience. What I am trying to point out is that just because it is written from a different perspective or for a different audience doesn't mean that it is wrong. You and I might dislike things about Hacker News, but by being here we have accepted those things. But when they write about Hacker News, they don't have to fit into the Hacker News narrative like we do. They don't have to avoid calling out what they see as bad or find what we see as good.
That certain topics can't be discussed because they disappear from view is a defining characteristic of Hacker News. But on Hacker News it has always been justified by it not being moderation. "It was flagged by users" is the common explanation. But for someone coming from the outside, that isn't blinded by internal politics, it doesn't really matter as the result is the same. The same is true of other dogmas or faux pas. For their perspective to be damaging it has to go beyond valuing different things.
The other reason I have a bit of a hard time seeing it as judgemental is because they provided a lot of space for other perspectives (and even link to discussions). And those perspective seems consistent with the different positions. The article for example does not only address your perspective on the moderation, but conclude with it. They specifically and at length talk about the style of moderation and mention things like dead comments. You might even say it is the entire premise of the article.
Finally, I agree with your last sentences. sctb and dang are painted in the best possible light throughout apart from the paragraph of the author's expectations. I perhaps was much too mild with my praise at the end of my comment; I did find those parts important and interesting; I don't think I've ever heard of a moderator invoking actual philosophy in their methods of dealing with users. I still believe even if that was the conclusion of the article (the gallant mods fighting the hordes of tech bro sexists), the premise is still flawed because of what I've addressed above, the sexists, racists, etc are a minority contingent, just like there are in most of the popular forums on the internet.