zlacker

>>capabl+(OP)
HN is one of the few communities where I've had scenarios where I've gotten into a spirited discussion, been gently told to cool off (or gotten a temporary rate limit), taken a step back and realized, you know what? I was not interacting in the spirit of the community.

Of course, the community is no more immune than any other regarding group think or rough edges. But on the whole, I've found the level of discourse to impressively high quality over time, and I've been posting and reading here on one account or another for over a decade. It's not just the level of discourse that is impressive, but its prolonged longevity. I think it can only have occurred from a very thoughtful approach to moderation; something I immediately miss when I step into other less curated forums such as Reddit and Twitter, where I can find the interesting content in the discourse, but laden with significantly more noise and significantly less thoughtfulness.

Thanks dang!

>>yowlin+pv
Agreed. But this isn’t just the top-down moderation, no matter how much of demi-god dang is.

My experience is that HN users “moderate” each other, when appropriate, to some degree. I’ve told others they’re over the line and I’ve been told myself, in a respectful manner. This tends to suppress fires early before they become flame wars.

So I think while dang does excellent work, the fact that it’s transparent and most respect that, people voluntarily self-align and help out. Otoh, in places where mods are assholes or automated, people don’t care about the spirit of the rules at all.