Thanks, mods.
Open Source Doesn't Require Providing Builds
https://codeengineered.com/blog/2024/open-source-not-builds/
Sam Altman Says AI Using Too Much Energy Will Require Breakthrough Energy Source
https://futurism.com/sam-altman-energy-breakthrough
Avoid Async Rust at All Cost
https://blog.hugpoint.tech/avoid_async_rust.html
(Perhaps that last one could be renamed to be less hyperbolic, but the content was still an interesting opinion piece)
I don't think this is being done by the mods, by the way. It's more likely some spam filter with false positives, report brigading, or an anti upvote ring mechanism.
Note for everybody: can you guys please include the HN /item link if you're mentioning specific threads? That would be much more efficient and that way I can answer many more of people's questions.
Here's how I look at it: if trust is present, then we don't need to publish a full log, as long as we answer questions when people ask them. That degree of transparency has been available here for many years. If, on the other hand, trust isn't present, a moderation log won't create it. It will just generate more data for distrust to work with—and distrust always finds something.
Thus our focus is on building trust with the community and maintaining it. That happens through lots of individual and group interactions, answering questions whenever we get them, in the threads or by email. That's what I spend most of my time doing.
We're never going to take the community's trust for granted because it's what gives HN the only real value it has, and it would be all too easy to lose. But I would tentatively say that this approach has proven to work well for most of the community. If people learn they can always get a question answered, that's a powerful trust-building factor.
Equally clear is that it does not work for everybody; but that's always going to be the case no matter what we do. I don't mean that we dismiss such users' concerns—quite the contrary, I make extra efforts to answer them. I'm just not under any illusion that we can satisfy everybody. It's satisfying enough if a few people can occasionally be won over in this way—which does happen sometimes!
I fully expect your mindset and behavior to never change (unless forced), but just wanted to point out that your argument against transparency is a cop-out and that you're on the wrong side of history here.
In the first set, the stakes are far higher, which is why the collection of objective data is legally mandated in the first place.
In the second set, you have only the subjective opinions of people who have an explicit goal to cultivate a specific variety of community. As members of that community, we select into the cultivation regime under which we participate. Not everyone will share the same preferences, and that's OK.